Paparoa Trail 2023

on

Paparoa Trail 2023

2 May 2023
Greymouth / Blackball / Smoke Ho / Ces Clark Hut / Moonlight Tops Hut / Pororari Hut / Punakaiki

A 50km trail. 
Me, Steve and Phillip.

Day 1

Day 2/3


Getting there
Steve and I drove up from Queenstown and met Phillip in Greymouth Top 10 for dinner, arguing, shopping and then we dropped one car at the Punakaiki DOC Visitor's center carpark.
The day was sunny, but the forecast had been terrible all week for the three days of our planned tramp. 
In fact the DOC guys informed us that the middle section of the track would be closed on Wednesday due to high winds and rain. So we threw some extra muesli bars in the shopping cart along with the leek!

Day 1
We drove from Greymouth around to Blackball (which is a super quaint village that I want to explore sometime), and then along the 8km of gravel road to the Smoke Ho carpark. It was drizzling a bit but little wind.



We hefted our packs and started along the very pretty trail, crossing several swing bridges.





We were overtaken by a strong lady (Cath) who we would later befriend.




As we went along, the rain started building and was soon persistent. But it was warm enough and we reached Ces Clark Hut for lunch without drama.

The next section of the tramp was heading above the treeline, and Cath decided that she would join us in case the wind up higher was dangerous, so the 4 of us trudged through the heavy rain. The wind was super strong on some of the ridges - enough to cause us to stumble at times, but there weren't any precipitous bluffs to be worried about falling off.





With about 1km to go before the next hut, Steve got a sore leg muscle which slowed him down a bit. But finally we got into the very nice Moonlight Tops hut where the sole occupant Pip had the fire going. Yay!


Day 2
We hunkered down in the hut for the whole day while the rain continued (and the trail was officially closed). It was nice to have time to properly dry out our gear and boots etc.


Steve thought that he was a mastermind at (modified) Hearts, (much to Phillip's frustration), but I simply bided my time before showing them how it was done :)


The hut had rudimentary lighting and even power chargers for phones. Fancy indeed!

Day 3
We had a million discussions about our plans for day 3. The rain was forecast to be a deluge in Nelson, and Phillip was under pressure to return home to watch the slip engulf his house. Steve was semi-lame and wasn't sure how his body would survive a tramp. I didn't think that we could walk out to the finish (given it was 35km away). We had options about reversing our steps back to Smoke Ho, or walking partway out.
In the end, we got up at 6:30am and made the last minute decision (thanks Phillip!) to tramp out towards the finish.


The rain had stopped, and as we walked, the mist departed and we had beautiful conditions. 





And the views opened up.




I just loved the rainforest. Super super mossy trees everywhere!
We had lunch at Pororari Hut (none of us managed to remember how to pronounce this for the duration of our trip).



 Since we were all feeling fine(ish), we pushed on to the finish. 






We got to Punakaiki about 30 minutes before sunset after a long long day of tramping. We were all pretty stuffed. My hip flexors were complaining, Steve was struggling to walk, but it seemed that Phillip was merely a little tired!



An awesome walk, and I'm energised for some more tramping adventures.








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