Up the creek

Stand down, panic over. my form is a little better than a week prior, and Sunday's hit out with the Albany bunch showed that I can certainly suck a wheel, and climb like a tortoise, but my knee was utterly fine.

I can claim that Friday morning's ride in the hills, and a decent tramp with the spawn through some rugged bush and terrain, along with more steps and stairs than I can remember for sometime may have blunted me a little, but the grim truth is that I was never that sharp.

That said, I am looking forward to the K2 this Saturday, even though it will hurt, I suspect that I will also face rearward ejection from my bunch before the summit of the Kopu-Hikuai. But that isn't the end of the world, as I still have so much of the field behind me, and I'm damn certain that in one, or more, of those bunches I will find company.

The tramp with the Loinfruit was a fine affair, up the Mokoroa Stream. He and I were the first through for a while, as the recent rain had pushed the river level up, depositing silt on the trail, and flattening grass in places. We found no footsteps, and took great pride in being the first again. There was the odd misstep in the murky water, but nothing serious, some good scrambles and a ton of satisfaction.

The big benefit of the higher water levels was that the Mokoroa Falls, and the Houheria Falls were spectacular.

After the walk up the stream, the traipse out was a bit of an anti-climax, and the steep, long stairs back to the car at Constable Road were a bit of a drag, but the regenerating Kauri, a sighting of a Grey Warbler and conversation about Bigfoot did make time fly.

We will be back in summer with togs...