14th November 2021
https://www.strava.com/activities/6254202954
Hunua
Barnaby drove me, Will and Neville out to the Upper Mangatawhiri Dam for our assault on the highpoint in the Auckland region.
The weather was horrid but warm. It had been raining for 36 hours - not super hard, but pretty consistently.
We ran up the west side of the dam (Waterline Rd) and plowed up Ernies Track. The going was slow, with puddles everywhere in the drizzle. We had to wade (to mid-thigh) through the very top of the (overflowing) dam lake, and the main inflow river was flowing fast but easily passable.
Will steamed up Ernies Track with us in his wake, and we turned off onto the Upper Mangatawhiri track and kept going up to the Kohukohunui Trig track and then the trig! This is the highest point in Auckland, and it felt it. There was a complete lack of a view. But we had a quick picnic snack.
The descent down Kohukohunui Track was fast and flowing, with much better footing and often stairs. We got into a good rhythm even though we were tiring by this point. Neville opted to slide feet first down one set of steps on his back at high speed, which fortunately only caused a small amount of blood on a grated finger, which Dr Luff cured by wrapping with an adhesive bandage which promptly fell off.
We got down onto Mine Road (a gravel road open to cars) and turned left, and then entered Mine Road Track after just a few hundred meters. This track descended and then descended steeply and then descended even more steeply. Eventually we got down 250m in elevation to a river, only to be greeted by the track climbing up out of the gloom even more sharply than it had come down. It took 21 minutes for that kilometer... Nasty!
Eventually we joined up to the rest of Ernies Track and got back out onto Lilburn Rd and the gravel road back to the car. Not nice on mashed toes and sore waterlogged feet!
A solid 5:30 of extremely tiring fun.
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