Day 24 - dome
Govan Wilson Road —-> Puhoi
23km + 16km hitch + 1km
Signal was pretty patchy at the campsite but Steph had managed to get a message through from her brother about a severe weather warning for parts of Auckland. Looked like a whole heap of rain was about to be dumped on us over the next couple of days. It wasn’t due to hit until the morning, so we had the day to work out if we needed to manoeuvre around it.
I’d heard some horror stories about the Dome Forest - tricky navigation and endless mud; so both Steph and I decided to leave early doors. I’m not saying that packing up and leaving was quicker without Josh but I will say I was walking by 7.15am. The forest started out with a gloriously flat, leaf-coated track, a few km in and I was wondering what all the fuss was about - this was great! There were tree roots (endless tree roots), but they were intermingled with stream crossings and trunk scrambling which made the whole morning rather fun.
By 9am I was out of the first section of Dome and sat down for a snack in the logging forest that divides the Dome into two. Steph and I had been flip flopping past each other all morning - as she paced it up the hill to enter the second section I was perched at the top in my chair eating an OSM bar. The chair is still, by far, the best thing I’ve brought on this trip - even if everyone laughs at me when they see me in it.
The next section was much more of the same forest up until the summit, maybe a bit more mud but no where near the same level of mud as the day before. I thought I was going along fairly wonderfully until I tripped on a tree root. With my hands looped into my walking sticks, I couldn’t put my hands down, so I fell face first into a tree branch lying on the ground. I sat on the floor for a good ten minutes wondering whether I was concussed. Confident I wasn’t, I made a mental note (yes Josh I know you’ve already told me this) to not loop my hands into my walking sticks when I’m in the forest. I made it to the dome summit around 11.30am which again had a rather unremarkable view. I was at the bottom having lunch an hour later.
Steph emerged not too long after and wasn’t in great shape - she had real trouble with blisters on her toes and was debating having a few days off to let them heal. We sat outside the closed Dome cafe, sheltering from the rain, had a cuppa and discussed plans for the afternoon.
I decided to press on to the campsite we’d arranged for the night; trail angels some 10km south of there. The weather was starting to close in and I realised that my planned walk tomorrow (to meet Josh in Puhoi) would be in heavy, heavy rain. The forecast didn’t sound fun. A quick call to Josh later to sort accommodation and I changed tact to walk as planned today, but instead of staying with the trail angels, I would hitch from there to Puhoi to meet him at the pub where he was staying - skipping a small section to avoid the downpour the day after.
Now with the promise of a real meal, bed and a pint at the end of the day, the afternoon flew by. I first had to cross over the highway which took about 10 minutes of waiting until there was a space - it was mayhem.
The route was fairly non-descript after that - through more forest, out onto a gravel country road and finally through some farmer’s fields.
I ended at Matthews Road where I would have walked a few hundred metres to the angels, but instead stuck my thumb out and hoped I wouldn’t be waiting too long. Within 10 minutes I had a ride to Warkworth. I jumped out and walked over to the petrol station to get the attention of anybody who looked like they were leaving out of the Auckland exit. This proved a little trickier, it was probably half an hour before someone gave me a ride - a guy who was heading back to Auckland after dropping props off at the new Jason Momoa movie set!
He dropped me just outside Puhoi and I walked the final km into the village - Josh, Milton and Wyatt were all sat in the pub garden with a drink. I could give Wyatt his sunglasses back! Steph and her brother Ryan then turned up a little while later - he’d driven down from Auckland to pick her up so she could rest her feet. Desree, a NOBO hiker was also staying at the pub. Excited to have a whole gang of hikers together, be a day ahead of schedule and nothing to do tomorrow but hide from the rain :)
