Hunua Falls
Călin / 15 October 2022
We are still getting used to the notion that October is Spring! But that is no reason to prevent us from going hiking. This time Robert proposed to visit the Hunua Range and walk the Massey Cossey Loop Track with a few of his friends.
The weather promised to be excellent and we started early – it’s been a long time since we left home at 8:30 for a Saturday hike :)
But we did and we enjoyed being out in nature. We picked our lunch, lamb sandwiches (Victor’s new favourite) at the local Italian bakery. Then picked up Richard who carpooled with us, and we drove the 45 km or so to the Hunua Range park. The park is South of Auckland, in a very rural area, with lots of farms, mainly horses and cows.
The Hunua Falls is the first thing you see as you cross the bridge from the parking lot to the trail! But we ignored it for the time being (modulo a couple of pictures) and we started the long climb up the track. For a detailed description of the hike, the blog linked above has both topo and elevation maps, as well as turn by turn directions. Certainly many more details than I would write.
So we climbed to the top of the hill for some nice views of the Cossey Reservoir.
The hike goes through a forest of tropical-like trees: giant ferns (including silver ferns), palm trees, birch trees, and kauri trees (although I have not seen kauri as nice as on the Great Barrier Island).
We reached the Cossey Dam just in time for lunch.
And then it was time to head back. Because of the kauri dieback disease, a large number of trails are closed, including the one we were planing to use to close the loop. Rather than walking back, we chose to take a road through the farms, a bit longer, but quite nice.
Beside horses and cows, we saw tūī birds and other birds.
We got back to the parking lot on the road and then did the falls loop, and the falls lookout loop within the falls loop. After a while we stopped looping and enjoyed the actual falls!
