With heavy rain the night before and then waking up to low cloud this morning, it wasn't surprising that only three hardy souls turned up for what can only be described as a trip of many parts. The results of last night's rain was obvious right from the start as the Pipeline Track, where we had walked on a dry surface only a month earlier during trip #9/100, was now slippery with a thin layer of mud. After only 20 minutes walking on the Pipeline Track we reached the start of the Burns Track and from here the real work began.
The Burns Track has always had a reputation of being muddy and while I'd not been on it for a number of years, I was pleasantly surprised to find that while there was plenty of mud to contend with, it wasn't difficult to avoid most of it. The track has been well maintained with a number of channels dug to help drain the water and the vegetation has been cut back reasonably recently with one substantial section of 'board/branch walk'. We made good progress and reached the Burns Saddle in around 40 minutes.
It was on this section that we startled a couple of small pigs relaxing
on the track. The pigs were very quick to dive into the scrub as soon as they became aware of our presence. The track follows the contour around and crosses the Burns Creek before climbing up a short but steep section to the junction of Rustlers Ridge where a morning tea stop was called and we got to have a short break (we had crossed here about a month ago on trip #9/100).
Continuing on the Burns Track, we headed towards Swampy Ridge with the track starting to deteriorate with larger and deeper patches of mud but mostly we were able to skirt around the edges of it. On this section we had another encounter with wild life, this time we surprised a family of goats which took off in all directions and for some time we could hear them crashing through the undergrowth trying to regroup and move away from us at the same time. We passed the steel stile to no where and continued onto Swampy Ridge where we turned towards Sleepy Hollow and the Silver Peaks. This is where we really encountered the mud, making anything we had already been through on the Burns Track seem insignificant. It felt like the mud went on and on with some hilarity along the way, seeing who could avoid the worst of the mud and who would go in the deepest.
Everything must end eventually and so too did the mud. As we got nearer to Hightop, it was with relief when we entered the golden tussock. This was a really enjoyable part of the track to walk along as it reminded me a lot of what the Silver Peaks looked like 25+ years ago when the all the tops were covered in this tussock and we were able to wander at will down any of the ridges. A bonus was that we were past the mud and were able to walk along without having to be careful of every step taken.
We made a small detour off the track and up to Hightop where we stopped for an early lunch at 11.30am in the sun. We nestled amongst the golden tussock looking towards the tops of the Silver Peaks and reminisced about some of the trips we'd been on over the years into the Silver Peaks and some of the people that had been on those trips. It was during lunch that Rob discovered he had left his cup at home and his tea was too hot to drink straight from the thermos. Feeling sorry for him having carried his hot tea all this way and still with quite a distance to go, I donated my lunch box to him to use as a cup and Rob was able to enjoy his hot tea.
Feeling replenished we shouldered our bags and continued on our journey. Finding our way down from Hightop involved a small amount of bush bashing as the track is overgrown and difficult to follow in places but all to soon we found ourselves on Mountain Road. This next part of the trip was the section that I was least looking forward to as it involved about 6km of walking along Mountain Road. I must confess that it wasn't as monotonous as it has been in the past due to the fact that all the pine trees have been harvested which meant we weren't walking in a tunnel of trees but instead had good views and were able to amuse ourselves by picking out distant landmarks as we walked.
After about an hour of road walking we reached the Rongomai track which starts off on a gentle slope then descends steeply down a defined ridge. Thankfully there were a few well placed trees to hold onto but mostly it was a careful descent making sure to stick to the track as there was no room for error with extremely steep sides. At one stage we heard a snuffly snort almost under our feet and not wanting to see what made the noise we quickened our pace and eventually we had dropped 300m to emerge at Careys Creek. The final stretch of track involved a 3.5km walk along the grassy bank of Careys Creek winding in and out of the bush. This part was what we affectionately named the 'boot cleaner' section as the long grass wiped all the mud off our boots and we emerged from the track looking a lot cleaner than we might have otherwise been. All in all a fun day out where we walked 19.2km in a little over 6 hours.
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