Kate bailed because her mom wants to do the timber trail with her, so she’s taking a zero to wait, which is a bummer for me but understandable. So instead of trying the section before I decided to take advantage of the nice weather (forecast is sunny and warm for the next week) and hitch to the Timber trail.
I started hiking the trail around 9:30 and it was fantastic, the timber trail is a mountain biking trail (TA hikers can hike it or bike it) that goes through a ton of old growth forest, massive trees all covered with moss and filled with birds singing. In hindsight I wish I would have biked it, although there are great sections there are also some less interesting sections that would have been nice to move through quickly, and mountain biking looked fun, that being said it was easy to take detour loops because I had no bike.
My first detour was to summit Pureoia mountain, which has amazing 360 views. I wanted to lunch at the top but it was too windy so I decided to just get down instead. The trail down the other side isn’t maintained by the DOC so I was a little concerned that it would be difficult, but it wasn’t any worse than many of the trails I’ve done on the TA.
The second detour was to the Bog Inn hut, which has a lot of character, partly looking like a shack you’d come across in Alabama, partly looking like a DOC hut, but situated in the middle of a beautiful mossy forest. I thought about staying there, but it was too early in the day and I kind of hoped I’d run into other TA hikers, so I pressed on.
After that I didn’t see a lot of great camping options, although there were plenty of places I could have stayed in the woods on the side. I pressed on to Piropiro campsite after timber trail marker 39.
I rolled in at 7:30, set up camp and headed up to the hut which has pizza and beer and WiFi and a lovely view of sunset.
Near TA kilometer marker 965, Today I hiked 39 km of TA trail and probably about 3 extra km, for a total of 42 or so (26 miles), and I can feel it! Even though the stars were out my body hurt too much to get out of my hammock and walk 20 meters to the field to take it all in. I also realized I left my camp shoes at Te Kuiti 🙁