A Walk in the Waitakere Ranges

We are just coming out of winter here and entering spring and it's still very cold. Last weekend we decided to get out of the house on this fine sunny day, even though it was only 11C (47F). We have a book "Walking the Waitakere Ranges" that we like to use on our adventure walks. It describes some of the 140+ tracks and trails in the ranges (our house is located at the foot of the Waitakere Ranges). We weren't feeling very adventurous so chose what we thought would be an easy walk by the Lower Huia Dam.

The description said that this was a good walk to do on your first date (5 years too late) since it has wide tracks, making it possible to walk side by side. It didn't mention that we would be walking on gravel for the first half of the trail and wouldn't be able to hear each other talk or the native birds up above. Come to think of it, not being able to hear each other must be why it's a 'good first date' walk.

We came across a fork that was not in the book and decided to go left. The book did say that after the track heads downhill the bush pushes in closer.


Well this was nice and cozy, thanks. When we reached a rather large stream and realized that we couldn't cross it, we thought we would retrace our steps back to the last fork in the track.



I assumed we were back on track when we came across the "short set of clay steps" described in our guide book, that happen to be taller than half my body. Not exactly what someone would want to do on their first date.





We decided that I would go down first because I wanted to help Sunny and take a picture of Holming while he was coming down.

All three of us made it down without a scratch! Here is a picture to prove it.


It turned out to be a nice walk even with the detours. Till the next adventure!