Tramping in the Waiohine Gorge

We decided to do a tramp today in the Waiohine Gorge. We have been out here before, just looking around, but this was our first time actually tramping around some of the trails. We did a loop track - Lets call it Cone Saddle Loop (not actually sure if it has a real name)....It was a big loop, but we didn't realise how much of it was actually up/down hill, so it took a long while.

The first thing you do on this trail is cross one of the tallest swinging bridges in NZ - happy it wasn't a windy day!!...No pictures of this because it was quite rainy.
The track itself is lovely. There are massive trees, lots of pretty waterfall/creeks, big ferns etc.

One thing that I will comment on, is that you need to be prepared for the mud. Definitely wear your boots and gaiters, as it can get a bit messy. Plus there are several little creeks to venture over. The first part of the tramp is straight uphill - no warm up, just "GO"...It's about a 400m incline over about 1.5K so it is non-stop for about 35min. straight up. Then the rest of the tramp is pretty up and down, so at least you get a moment to rest between the next uphill part. Overall this was a pretty decent trail, although the roots and rocks can be a bit treacherous when it's wet and slippery. It was a 12K tramp, but we thought it was gonna be shorter, so we weren't expecting it to take as long as it did.
This is Travis' only time of having to cook - EVER - he is in charge of our food/beverage while tramping...He made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (as per usual) and is making us a nice cuppa tea...
Just love these cool trees...
It might be a bit dark, but you can sort of see how steep it is in parts. We came across this about 4.5 hours into the tramp, so needless to say, it was a bit harder to get up! I haven't done a long tramp like this in a while, so my legs started getting a bit shakey around the 4th hour - too bad the tramp was 6 hours! haha......I made it though, and actually felt pretty good in the end.

We highly recommend this tramp, but definitely be prepared for a long one! It would have been really nice to have had a snack for about halfway through, but we didn't know it would be such a hard track. The map makes it look like the last 3K are pretty cruisy and just follow the river, but in reality it's a continuous up/down path and it's not as easy going as you might imagine.

This was a nice day track, though, and we really enjoyed it.