Black Birch Range Bivvy, Saturday, May 3, 2008. Map: U20
Trampers: Ted Angove, Paul Exeter, John Russell, Julia Mackie, Penny Mead, Arthur Mead, Gordon Tapp, Simon Hill, Sue Marshall, Jude Paton, Marie Sturgess, Murray Goss, Geraldine Olive. Report by Simon Hill
Two carloads of trampers left Church Road on a fine morning, heading for Makahu Saddle. We walked in from Littles Clearing on the Black Birch Range.
After passing through some pinus contorta, we came to the drop-off to Lotkow Road. A hunter was not pleased to see us, so we retraced our steps to the junction for the Black Birch bivouac.
At 11am, after a short rest at the bivvy, we headed down the track and shortly turned off it, on to an unmarked track and a bushbash down to a stream. We walked alongside the stream for a short while before scrambling up to the Matauria Ridge.
We had lunch in the sun on a clay pan, with a good view of where we had travelled and the Black Birch bivvy nestling in the trees opposite.
Forging on through the beech forest, we arrived at the Ngahere Hill loop walking track. This joins the road, which we walked up for 10 minutes to the Littles Clearing car park.
Before leaving the Kaweka Forest Park, we stopped and tried to locate the kauri trees that were planted during the Anniversary tramp in 2007. We managed to find two of the six.
We arrived back at Napier at 3pm, after a short and pleasant day.
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