Leaders: Kate Krawczyk & Sue Henley
It was a beautiful day to travel up to Canaan Downs and go for a walk in the Abel Tasman National Park. The Evans Ridge / Wainui Loop makes a great day walk exploring an area of the park that avoids the crowds of tourists and boaties. It’s about 15km long with a total climb of approximately 350 metres and takes around 5–6 hours at a leisurely pace.
We reached the Canaan carpark around 9am and carried on up to Wainui Saddle where the track branches to either go straight towards Moa park Shelter or left towards Wainui Hut. We carried on straight up the ridge with a bit of a grunty climb up onto Evans Ridge and the Inland Track. Instead of turning left to start the loop we detoured to Moa Park Shelter for a lovely morning tea break in the sunshine.
Back on-track, after morning tea, the birds were singing. We meandered along the lovely bush-clad ridge admiring the gnarly old Northern Rata trees until we reached the turnoff to Wainui Hut. From there we descended steeply off of the ridge into the Wainui River valley and onto the hut for lunch.
DOC has built a large aviary at Wainui Hut for their bird re-introduction programme as part of Project Janszoon. This trip was planned to have a surprise kaka interlude at Wainui Hut as the birds were to be waiting in the aviary for release in two weeks’ time but, unfortunately, the release into the aviary was postponed by a week, so as I am writing this, the birds will happily be sitting in their aviary up at Wainui Hut—never to be seen by the Nelson Tramping Club.
From Wainui Hut it was another hour and a half or so back to the car park via the farm tracks for a bit of different scenery and some new lambs.
Participants were: Pat Holland, David Cook, Penny Parker, Anya Schol, Anette LeCren, Marianne Hermsen, Sue Henley and Kate Krawczyk.