Never ending stairway

Today we took a family walk up the Hakarimata ranges…

It started off gently enough, the lower track runs through the bush along side a lovely creek and there are lots of small waterfalls.The initial goal was to make it to the Hakarimata dam which only took us about 20 minutes. It was lovely and peaceful, there was (as I’m sure you can imagine) a lot of stone throwing, exploring and a little picnicking.Since everyone was in such high spirits we decided to make the trip to the summit. After all it was only about 2kms… how hard could it be?There is a very good reason why there are no photos between this point and the summit, actually there were a number of reasons… they are called stairs.  Between the dam and the lookout we climbed 1306 of them and believe me it was pretty much straight up hill.  As you can imagine we did question our initial enthusiasm at a number of points along the way, but once we started there was no turning back. Maia knocked our socks off, she did the whole climb by herself…Carter spent approximately 60% of the journey on my back and the other 40% of it over Paul’s shoulder. I’m guessing he climbed maybe 100 stairs.

It was well worth it for the amazing views across the Waikato. And after a well deserved rest and picnic lunch we retraced our steps.

Down…Down….Down… All the way to the bottom. Ill put money on us all sleeping VERY soundly tonight! xxx