Cone Hut tramp

We woke to a nice day on Saturday morning and Aaron decided he wanted to go tramping to see the snow in the Tararua's (the mountain range just to the north of Wellington). Well we didn't get up to the snow, but we had a nice walk through the temperate dense forests. It was pretty steep as we tried to avoid the flat stuff along the valley in order to avoid the boggy, muddy bits.
We headed up and over the hill to Cone Hut, unfortunately we didn't have time to go up Cone Peak. We had lunch at Cone Hut, built in 1946 and obviously each bit of wood had been shaped with axes. Then we returned back via Cone Saddle and down to and along the Waiohine Gorge to the newly built suspension bridge and the carpark. We did see some snow on the top of Mt Holdsworth in the distance.

We timed it perfectly as it was just starting to spit with rain when we got back to the car. It took us 6 hours of walking - which was bit more than we had anticipated. The tracks were pretty rough and slippy and we were pretty cautious descending some of the slippy, tree routed sections. We were walking with tramping poles - which helped a lot - especially with testing the depth of the muddy sections! Unfortunately we have spent a couple of days since in a little bit of pain as our tramping muscles are rather un-fit compared to our biking muscles. Need to get out and do some more tramping and get fit again.


The dense jungle


Cone Hut


Snow-capped Mount Holdsworth


Waiohine River