2026-01-14 < Weekly activities > 2026-01-28
Activity summary: Wednesday 2026 January 21 to Tuesday 2026 January 27
Eastbourne, Butterfly Creek & return/Takapu Rd to Petone Railway Station/Gentle Annie Saddle/Te Whakatūrākau (Atiwhakatu) tributary exploration
Wednesday
E Trip ‘Eastbourne, Butterfly Creek & return’, led by Lois Kluger, Wed 21/01 3M
We enjoyed a cloudy, windless 5 hour tramp.
EM Trip ‘Takapu Rd to Petone Railway Station’, led by Alistair Beckett, Wed 21/01 14M
Our group left the Takapu Road Station at about 9.50am on a threatening to overcast Monday toward the Belmont Hills. After a short street walk beneath State Highway 1, we began our climb. The route rose steadily via Jamaica Drive, winding upward through lush kohekohe and tawa forest to reach the crest of the Belmont ridge—around 300 metres above the coast. Morning tea was enjoyed on the track just below Horokiwi Road.
Following the break, we headed north-east along Horokiwi Road for just over a kilometre.From the ridgeline, the views were superb—Kāpiti Island in the distance, and the western hills rolling away toward Porirua. This section follows part of a 19th-century Māori ara(pathway) that once linked Porirua Harbour and the Hutt Valley. The route was well used until the arrival of the Wellington–Manawatu railway in the late 1880s making overland travel less necessary.
Our descent toward Petone was steep in places, but rewarded us periodically with grand views over the harbour entrance, toward Mt Victoria and the spreading city. At the valley floor we stopped for lunch in a clearing beside a branch of the Korokoro Stream. The tramp resumed with thirteen stream crossings (gaiters proving their worth for some) which interspersed the beautiful native bush we crossed through. Beyond Baked Beans Bend the going eased and then we crossed seventeen DOC bridges, rebuilt after the devastating 1998 flood. The valley widened and soon the track opened the approach of Cornish Street. A short stroll past the rust-red brick façade of the 1906 Gear Meat Works—now stylish apartments—brought us to the pedestrian overbridge and Petone Station. Right on time, the 14:33 train carried us back to Wellington.
M Trip ‘Gentle Annie Saddle’, led by Joan Basher, Wed 21/01 17M
Not Pinnacle, but Gentle Annie Saddle
Not a single one of the trampers who signed up for the Pinnacle trip pulled out beforehand, despite a poor weather forecast. It was a decent-sized group of 17 who turned up at Holdsworth Lodge, togged up for a day in the rain. But commonsense prevailed, and we did a shorter circuit instead: slogged up to Holdsworth Lookout, meandered along the lovely track to Gentle Annie Saddle and puffed up via the Carrington Ridge Track to .801. We'd had enough rain by then, so we galloped back home down the Gentle Annie Track, whose normal broad highway had become a fast-flowing stream along much of the way. Good fun to slosh down it! 5 hours.
MF Trip ‘Te Whakatūrākau (Atiwhakatu) tributary exploration’, to have been led by Mike Wespel-Rose, Wed 21/01
The forecast was for significant rain and severe gales on the tops. Not conditions conducive to this adventurous trip and so this trip has been postponed until March.
Total 34 members and Nil non members