Expedition with the Certificate Students

Coromandel Area

Instructors: Doug and Me

Students: Matt, Richard, Andy, Justin, Monique

End of year 10 day expedition with the Cert students at Hillary Outdoors. It was not particularly well planned, it came down to the last minute.

Day One

Mining

Packed and then drove up to Coromandel, were we set up our camp and then went up to the mines for an explore. Abseiled in and then spent an hour or so exploring.

Day Two

Sea Kayaking

Start of sea kayaking. Started out in Colville Bay and paddled out to Double Island where we had a couple of hours exploring. Camped at Rauporoa. Very cruisey day.

Day Three

Sea Kayaking

Had an earlish start to ride the tide out, started as a clear windless morning, within an hour a thunderstorm engulfed us and the wind and swell came up. Had a good hard paddle over to Rabbit island. The weather cleared again and after an explore we made our way to Long Bay.

Day Four and Five

Unfortunately I had to spend the next couple of days getting the van fixed and running shuttle. Drove around to the start of our tramp, camped at Broken Hills.

Day Six

Bush

The plan was to leave the van here and loop around back to it, but this was not meant to be. the plan for day one was to make it to the Campsite at Waikato Stream in the Kauaeranga Valley. We started out with all the students, about 3 hours in Monique sprained her ankle and decided she would need to turn around. Doug went with her as I had already missed out on some sea kayaking. Doug drove around the the proposed campsite.

Things finally got interesting. the tramp was much harder than the students had expected and they had 5 days worth of heavy food. The terrain was steep and slow going with all our gear. Amazing views and awesome scenery. We did not make it to the campsite and ended up camping in the bush just below Junction Stream.

Day Seven

Bush

Got them going early (or they thought it was anyway) and we made it to the planned campsite. Because Doug and the van were there, and they were feeling a little broken, it was quite an uphill battle to get them going again. But eventually we made our way up to Crosbies Hut.

Day Eight

Bush

The big day! Table Mountain. Again, they thought this would be much easier than it was. We went along the track from Crosbies to the south west spur of Table Mountain. They decided to leave the tack about 100m too early and we ended up doing some excellent step climbing through supple jack. Eventually the stumbled onto the old track along the spur which steepened until we got to the rock step. We had lunch at the trig point.

Thinking that the hard part was over they did not take too much care in where they were going. We started following the vague old track, but quickly they lost it and carried on crashing through the bush. They took a bearing and carried on. The going started to get more difficult and we stumbled onto what looked to me like track. I suggested that they look into it, but they were keen to crash on.

Four hours later they were regretting that choice, I wasn't though, this was the character building adventure they had needed a long time ago. The going now was incredibly slow (probably about 200-300m an hour) we weren't touching the ground, it was just tree fall on top of tree fall on top of rotten tree fall and they weren't sure were they were (they thought they were going much faster). Matt climbed a tree and we changed our bearing slightly.

Finally, six hours after lunch, Justin found the track (I was metally preparing for a night in the trees). They were very careful now not to loose the track and about 2.5 hours later we made it to the Moss Creek Campsite.

Day Nine

Bush

Doug came up to meet us at our campsite. Unfortunately he ended up walking back out with Richard. So I was down to three students.

Over some very marshy and then very steep terrain we made it to Pinnacles Hut where we had a long lunch. We then scampered up the Pinnacles, spent half an hour on top and then made our way back out to Doug at the end of the road.

Day Ten

Canyoning

Sleeping Gods. Russel from Canyonz came down with us. Was rather wet (he said water was at the upper end of what we would take people down at) and so windy that half the water was going up not down.

Learnt lots of things about canyoning, was great having Russel there; not using self protection on abseils, blocked eights, flying fox lines. Quite a long trip getting all of us down.