Solvitur Ambulando: Mt Auckland

Saturday, 12 April 2014

Mt Auckland

Date: 11 April 2014
Party: Anna, Elizabeth, Lesley
Map: http://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/tracks-and-walks/auckland/north-auckland/mount-auckland-atuanui-walkway/
Distance: 7 km
Elevation: 300m
Time: 3 hours, just cruising
Notes: A nice walk, without being fantastic. Nikau and Taraire specimens; cows; mushrooms; and a neatly plaited flax-leaf close to the summit lookout. Best Toetoe (Austroderia) glade we have seen for a very long time.

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It is quite hard to track our first walks because we didn't know it was the start of a bigger commitment! But I think this is how the order of our Waitakere walks unfolded, initially inspired for me by doing the Montana Heritage Trail a short while earlier with Janet:
1 Montana Heritage Trail. End of 2011 some time?
2 19.1.12 Goldie Bush Loop. Goldie Track to Mokoroa Falls Track to Mokoroa Stream Track
3 10.2.12 Kauri Grove Loop
4 17.2.12 Karekare to Pararaha
5 2.3.12 Kura and Omanawanui Tracks - clockwise
6 8.3.12 Parau Track Loop
7 10.3.12 Maungaroa Ridge and Lookout
8 20.4.12 Lone Kauri Loop Road
9 21.9.12 Waitakere Dam
10 13.12.12 Kura and Omanawanui Tracks - anti-clockwise
11 20.12.12 Fairy Falls
12 29.1.13 Whites Beach and Te Waha Point
13 1.2.13 Te Ahua Point from Karekare, plus Karekare Falls
14 8.2.13 Te Toiokawharu
15 1.3.13 Slip, Pipeline and Incline Tracks
These walks are all following [more or less] the walks in our bible 'Walking the Waitakere Ranges', by Alison Dench and Lee-Anne Parore, whose wonderfully evocative descriptions of bush and natural beauty make us realize how much we don't know. We especially respond to such enticements as '...not for the faint-hearted' and '...mud, stream-crossings, several ascents and descents...' Their walks are well planned and the descriptions of those walks are brilliant. Although I have to say I walk with a photocopied copy in my pocket and always seem to pull it out once we have passed the spot in question and we all go "Ahh, duh, so that's what it was." And once again make resolutions to learn the names of our native trees, and birds, and ferns, and fungi, oh dear.
Hunuas
Now these walks have been trickier because my book, 'New Zealand Leisure Walks, Auckland - South' was published in 1996 and some things have changed, which has added a certain frisson to the trips:
1 2.2.12 Cossey's Dam Circuit
2 23.5.12 Cossey's Dam Circuit
3 22.3.13 Ernie's Track Circuit
4 15.4.13 Waharau Ridge Track