#9 of 100 trips for 100 years - Pipeline Track - Rustlers Ridge - Swampy Lagoons - Leith Saddle Walkway 13 November 2022

The weather forecast was for afternoon rain so it was pleasing when 10 of us arrived at the Leith Saddle Walkway carpark in sunshine and warm temperatures. Leaving the carpark we followed the Waitati Valley Road for about 500m to the Pipeline Track and from here it was a nice easy stroll for about half an hour following the pipeline which traverses around the same contour line to the Rustlers Ridge track. The pipeline once supplied water to the Northern suburbs of Dunedin. Once at Rustlers Ridge the track makes a sharp turn up the hill with a steady climb on a well-defined and sometimes steep-sided ridge through the native bush. We stopped for a brief rest and drink at the edge of the bush where we had uninterrupted views of the Silver Peaks including The Gap, Pulpit Rock and Rocky Ridge. This is the area that we had been walking two weeks ago on trip #5 of 100 trips for 100 years.

After our rest, we continued up Rustlers Ridge and onto Swampy Summit where we noticed the clouds were starting to obscure the sun and the temperatures were cooling. Not to be deterred we left the track to wander over the peat bog that has formed a wetlands in a hollow on Swampy Summit. It is an interesting area covered in subalpine vegetation, bogs and tarns and is not often visited as there are no tracks through this fragile wetlands.

Heading in an Easterly direction it didn't take long before we came across the first of the tarns. It's hard to judge the depth of the tarns as the water appears black. We found a number of black tarns varying in size. Thankfully the weather had been good over the past few weeks and the peat bog surrounding the tarns was not overly wet which made for pleasant walking.

The peat bog is very different to the surrounding vegetation and is a fascinating place to explore. The area of peat bog surrounding the black tarns is reported to have been where Moa gizzard stones were found in the late 1800/early 1900's. Sadly we didn't find any gizzard stones but this might have had more to do with the fact that none of us knew what a gizzard stone looked like. The colours of the vegetation in the peat bog surrounding the black tarns is quite stunning ranging from bright green through to yellow and orange

We could see the clouds were getting darker and the wind was picking up so we didn't linger at the black tarns as long as we would have liked and we made our way through the scrub towards the telecomunication tower. This proved to be tricker than first thought as the scrub was much denser than where we had entered the bog and some of us emerged dripping blood after doing battle with the scrub. Sheltering behind the telecomunication building to eat lunch and clean up some of the battle wounds, we were well aware that the weather was changing rapidly. We were chased down the Leith Saddle Walkway by a cold wind and the first few drops of rain. Traditionally the views from the Leith Saddle Walkway are worth taking your time over but today our main intention was to beat the rain so we powered down the hill, stopping only briefly at the lookout and reaching the road and carpark about 4 hours and 11km after leaving. We couldn't have timed it better as the rain arrived just as we were driving out of the carpark.