8-12 November 2007

From the Psychotic to the Sublime

The Lake Waikaremoana Track

Day 2, Page 2

We've climbed a little and are back near the edge. That's still a hell of a long way down.

Miranda gets her camera out.

We're down hill a bit from here. We've been walking a bit over 90 minutes and we're starting to look for the "very steep descent".

Certainly looks as if we're dropping a bit.

Hard to tell at present, so I guess we're not there yet.

A patch of sunlight coincides with a patch of moss. Halfway through our second fine day we should be expecting it to piss down any minute if local climatologists are anything to go by. But we end up with six consecutive days of calm and sunny. Has to be some kind of a record.

There are occasional small sections of root hopping but mostly it's just smooth, easy going.

We appear to be still cruising along the top of the ridge, just back a little from the drop.

But it's only a matter of minutes or so and we have the ridge on our left.

Here's a wonderfully lush Dr Seuss tree. The Auckland ones seem to be somewhat more austere.

We're definitely on our way down, but steep?

Here we go....

This boardwalk takes us across the face of a sheer stone cliff,

and then we head down a long staircase

and down again. This I can live with.

and we're back on the ground, still heading quite steeply down.

I stop a moment to record a small fern on the edge of the cliff.

We're still quite a long way up, but what a day out there!

The next bit is quite rocky, and I'm careful about loose boulders, but not concerned. We're still descending fairly quickly.