Zealandia Faultline and Raingauge Spur tracks

 16 April 2016
Just me
7.4km, 1hr52min, total gain 229m, Visitor Centre to Visitor Centre, inside the sanctuary fence

I wasn’t feeling massively inspired this day, but we had no LJ at home for the weekend, and the sun was shining after a few days rain, so off I went while Mark did some work around the house and study. I was still aiming to finish my goal of red-lining all the tracks inside Zealandia, which I still haven’t completed, so off I launched into the back of the Upper Valley.

The best view I had all day

The faultline track was muddy. I seriously regretted opting for sneakers and shorts rather than boots and gaiters. It wasn’t overly surprising though, given the weather we had recently had, and the fact that the faultline track doesn’t see a lot of sunshine. I opted not to take the detour up the Western Firebreak for some reason that I cant recall now, perhaps I was running low on time, as I had only started walking at 2:30, and knew I had to be back at the visitor centre by 5pm, not knowing how long the loop around the back was going to take.

A burst of colour on the upper Raingauge Track

The track climbed gradually, with a couple of short steeper sections, until it got to the back fence. Unlike around the Brooklyn side of the valley, this part of the fence line track inside was actually moderately well defined. It was also quite steep (and so quite slow). I also found a surprise – a road around the back of the sanctuary. It looked to connect Brooklyn and Wrights Hills. The amount of undeveloped farm land to the south and west of the sanctuary was also quite a surprise. I sort of knew that the bottom of the island scooped around like it did, but at the back of the Faultline track, you feel like you are in the back of beyond – and then you look out and you are nowhere.

The raingauge track was also steep, and slippery in places, as well as starting to get quite overgrown with gorse and blackberry in places. I definitely wished I had gaiters and walking poles inching my way down the hill. The bottom of the track is very sudden – one moment you are in a dry, exposed bit of track, the next you are in the bush, and barely a moment later you are back on the faultline track, heading home again.

This leaves me with the Western and Eastern Fire Break and Tui Glen tracks to complete, and then I will have done all the tracks inside the fence except some sections of the clearing around the inside of the fence. Given the average condition of the “track” inside the fenceline, I’m not going to push to complete the last segments of that once I have done the others, instead I will do the loop around the outside one day.