TRIP REPORT: Upper Takaka

Date: 19/09/07

Organisers: Eric Sullivan, Dave Haycock

Trip Report: Scott Carpenter

The day started wet but warm at the turnoff to Cobb Valley. About a dozen hearty souls I think, headed up the Cobb Valley just after 10:30 am in some fairly light but constant drizzle. Not the type of day the organisers were hoping for as they had planned a couple of stops for the views.  We got off the tarseal fairly quickly and headed across a farm property and headed up to meet the Pylon Road.

The trip carried on fairly uneventfully until we turned off the main track and headed up a steeper track, to a pylon for the “view”. Low cloud soon put the kibosh on that.  Not too far up the track insult was added to injury when not only did I follow the one finger salute up the hill I also had to ask it for a tow when I ran out of traction. Only 2 vehicles had to be towed that day and ironically the other a “Mitzi” as well.

We headed back down the hill and took a right turn, we carried on up the main track to a place called Barron Flat where we stopped for lunch.  We all got a look across Barron’s Gorge at the power lines, as the cloud came and went, a 1.3 km span with 1.6km cables if I remember correctly. The Sheriff can verify the stats. 

After a lunch break we headed back the way we came up the Takaka Hill and turned off at Canaan.  Kooze and Scotty left us due to a bearing failure in the Mitsubishi Jeep. I think it was the Jeep bit that was giving trouble.  After everybody arrived we got a quick briefing from Dave and then made our way down the hill across farmland. 

We headed down the Ngarua Quarry and stopped near the bottom at the early Quarry site where they cut slabs of marble out and took them away for use in such buildings as the old Parliament Building and the Nelson Cathedral. We had a bit of a wander around, some chose to climb the hill up to some of the workings, while others had a drink and a chat. The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful although quite picturesque.

We arrived back at the tarseal on the Marahau side of the hill at about 3.30pm, and judging from the comments on the radio, I think everybody quite enjoyed the trip.

Well done to Eric and Dave for their respective parts, too bad the weather didn’t cooperate with Eric.