Day 7 - change of plans
Takahue Saddle Campsite —> Blackbridge campsite. 9km walk, 20km hitch, 17km walk.
We’d planned to have a fairly short day today, to not stress our feet too hard and attempt to let them recover a little. That did not happen.
The original trail route through the Raetea forest, although not officially open yet, we’d read was just about passable. We weighed it up, but knowing it would be a cess pit full of mud and more mud, we decided to take the easier diversion and continue on the delightful Takahue Saddle Road through the forest valley down to Broadwood. The notes didn’t have any mileage details for this section, and the track didn’t appear on any maps… but we sussed it was about 15km - deduced from some other TA hiker posts online. After about 6km of gradual decline and honestly us almost skipping along, we bumped into a local woman walking her dog who told us that Broadwood was exactly 3km down the track…winning!
We arrived into Broadwood village around 11am, grabbed a drink and sat down to eat an early lunch. It felt like a cheat day if we were to stop now as planned. 9km downhill?! Too easy. The next section of the diversion was a 20km road walk down a major road to Mangamuka, the notes said you could walk but it was risky - there was no shoulder to walk on so it was advisable to hitch. Didn’t have to tell us twice.
As we were finishing up lunch and planning where to stand with our thumbs out / where Josh was going to stand with his thumb out a car rolled up and a Kiwi couple got out. “Are you doing the TA?!” they asked. Amazingly, the guy himself had just finished 90 mile beach a few days ago. His partner then met him in Ahipara where they were supposed to be continuing on to Kerikeri, however his feet were so shot up that they’d rented a car and were spending a week driving around instead! Before we could ask, they wonderfully offered to take us wherever we needed to go. Mangamuka was entirely the opposite direction of where they were headed but they insisted, laughing that they could live vicariously through us by helping us out. Incredible.
They dropped us at Mangamuka dairy and we sat outside with an ice cream and pondered what to do. 1pm and we’d already travelled almost 30km for the day! We could have very easily stayed in Mangamuka… But despite the incredibly stocked dairy, and the lure of a burger for dinner…. we decided to push on a further 17km and camp in the forest. That would give us a very good chance of getting to Kerikeri for Christmas Day…
The track up into the Omahuta forest was fairly easy walking, up and along a gravel 4WD track. It was only during the last 5km where it got tricksy and our trail runners began to show their weakness. Every stone underneath our shoes felt like we were treading on it barefoot. Every step was onto a thousand nails.
Hobbling into camp at 7pm we were very proud that we’d pushed on, but we were knackered. A very quick dehy dinner and a baby wipe shower and we were dead to the world in bed.
