- Official kms: 15km
- Garmin kms: 15.55km
- Total time: 6.36
- Calories burned: 3287
- Body battery: 8/10
- Accommodation: A bed at my dads place.
- Tent nights: 6 total.
Last night was an early to bed night & I set the alarm for 6am. I didn’t get up until then. My feet are extra sore this morning as i hobbled down to the public toilets.
The plan is to leave before 9am & just take our time up & over Whangarei heads. Dean turned up at 8.15am & we set off around 8.30am. He also gave me 2 packs of Migoreng noodles as that is what he gave me the 1st time I met him in the Richmond ranges. Below explains:
It was also awesome that Dean bought some fresh sandwiches & a powerade for me for lunch! I was so grateful.
The morning started with a pretty steep climb of just under 500 metres of elevation & was the 1st real day I’ve had where my calve muscles were burning! It wasn’t too long before we hit the high point & the views were spectacular!
The track was quite undulating & technical with a bit of mud, rocks & routes to navigate, before the final descent which consisted of over 1,000 stairs (so I have been told). This was slow going & I was trying to preserve my knees as they like to let me know they prefer not to go down steeply!
I finally made it down after about 20 minutes of slow descent to drop over 350 metres. The crew that had started earlier were all at the bottom having lunch & were just leaving. Dean & I carried on to the beginning of the road & sat down to eat lunch.
It wasn’t long after this point & less than a kilometre of road walking, Dean & I said our goodbyes & he turned right to walk the road back to his car which was at the start of our walk. It was great seeing him & just chatting & catching up for the day.
The road walking part was only 7km & was fairly fast going & about 30 minutes prior to arriving at today’s destination of the boat ramp I text Blair who does the boat taxi across to Marsden to let him know we weren’t far off. When Marko & I arrived, Gokul & Broken were there waiting & Gemma was only a minute behind. We jumped in the boat put the life jackets on & were off. We were able to get dropped straight to my Dads jetty in Marsden.
Once all the crew arrived we got all set up & washed & went to the local Foursquare to buy stuff for dinner. This was an easy dinner of hot chicken, chips, salad, fresh bread rolls & a box of beer to share between the 10 of us.
The Foodstuffs Community trust & Foursquare have offered me support with my fundraising hike with gift cards to help with resupply, such & awesome thing to do!
It was another early night with all of us retiring to bed before 9pm. It was quite a hard day of walking that took a lot longer than expected! Looking forward to a zero day tomorrow & seeing Dad & Andrea. Big shout out to Dad & Andrea also, for hosting the Tramily (hiking family) & allowing them to tent next door & use the facilities.
The Backcountry hiker 
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