Dramatis persona*

helenhead Helen Chick

I've always wanted a bumper sticker that said "I'm a female, LDS/Mormon, Scout leading, geocaching, piano-playing, bicycling, mathematics educator with a PhD in maths ... and I VOTE"!

I think this makes me a minority group of cardinality 1!

* Since there's only one of me and "personae" is plural (I think), I've gone with dramatis persona.
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Lake Waikaremoana hike, day 4

With patches of blue appearing in the morning sky some of us were confident enough of improved weather conditions to pack rather than wear our rain gear before setting off for the day’s big climb. It began moderately strenuously, the track undulating its way through lush damp rainforest, which glistened in the increasingly frequent patches of sunlight that appeared during the morning. The undulations were of the frustrating kind, because every downhill was resulting in a loss of altitude that you knew would have to be regained again (uphills are bad enough without having to do them twice!). Each of us tackled this section at our own pace, and, as it happened, I ended up out in front, enjoying the solitude and the simple focus on walking and enjoying the scenery. Every so often I’d stop and allow the group behind me to catch up, as I didn’t want to get too far ahead.

After about 4km in the softer-feeling part of the rainforest we hit the harsher part as the track climbed more steeply across the front of the Panekiri Range. The harshness was reflected in somewhat rockier terrain and less richness in the undergrowth … and in the increased angle of the track with the resulting decrease in my enthusiasm for uphills! As we neared the ridge line we started to get occasional views of Lake Waikaremoana below us, but the forest grew tenaciously all the way up to the top in contrast to my expectations that there might be an exposed rocky skyline traverse.

I feel the need to highlight the backpack that you can see in the photo of me (in the hat) overlooking the lake below: this is the pack that my parents gave me for my 21st birthday. It is a trusted comfortable friend that didn’t leak in yesterday’s rain and which seems to have adapted to my contours … by still hurting in all the places it ever did! (All packs hurt. You’re carrying stuff you don’t normally carry. Of course you will ache.) Interestingly, Macpac — the company that made it — is a NZ company that still exists, and they still make the “same” model — “Cascade” — but with a rather more contemporary set of features.

Once up on the main ridge, the track continued to undulate as the ridge headed to the higher parts of the range. In places years of rain and trampers’ boots had eroded the track to a waist-deep 50cm-wide canyon; in other places the tree roots provided useful steps as the route made its way steadily higher. I’d put the coordinates of our goal into my GPSr (and I was carrying a map), so I had a good idea of how far we were from our destination (well, at least in terms of “as the crow flies”, since the GPSr—though it had the track marked—couldn’t calculate what length of track remained). It was, therefore, no real surprise—but a very good feeling, nonetheless—to come out at Panekiri Hut which perches on Puketapu, one of the summits of the ridge.

From here there were a couple of gaps in the cliff-top vegetation which afforded great views over the lake below us, and we marvelled at the extent of the massive body of water with all its inlets and headlands, and at the altitude change between lake shore and ridge line. Needless to say we also took a group photo at the trig point (the photo below shows some of the gang trying to get organised without losing the plot; the actual group photo is on the separate photo page), in addition to taking photos of the lake. Just before dinner Ann, Victoria and I went for a walk along the track a little further in order to find a better place for getting views of the lake … and to get a sense of what we might face tomorrow when the 600m of height that we gained today has to be lost with as little physical damage as possible!

An additional set of bigger photos can be viewed here.

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