Another trip out of town luckily it wasn’t to much of an early start but none the less another coffee was consumed on the way out of town, heading north past Hamner Springs and towards Springs junction which is on the way to Nelson. The journey out of town and to the meeting point in Springs junction was uneventful and soon enough we arrived to meet with the others and not long after arriving we set off for the first destination being Marble hill campsite as this has the entrance to the track we were to start out on.
Airing down the tyres to make it a little more comfortable and better traction as the leaf springs are not so great for comfort, the big hole where the winch usually sits (still broken from the last trip). This part of the trip wasn’t actually station creek just a small trip into an old mining hut.
Some of the other trucks that had come a long as well, very well setup machines with way more comfort than mine having coil springs verses my hundred year old plus technology of leaf springs.
The start of the track was easy going with a few tight spots where the wider trucks had to take more care, it was a well groomed track maintained by department of conservation as far as I know.
Crossing the river in front of the hut, pretty shallow apart from the entry as it was rather steep, came to the top of the bonnet on the way down the bank.
It was a great day to be out in the country, just needed a fair amount of sunscreen as the sun was out in force.
A random concrete wall built across the Alpine Fault in 1964, it was built to measure if there is slow movement creep between earthquakes.
This bank digging was bought to you by boredom, we didn’t really have a need to get down there but it seemed like a good idea at the time, it was at the end of a track that was blocked off by private land further down the river.
Camp for the night was a old loading bay for logging, the gravel tracks in the area are from the era of native logging and we followed a really overgrown track up a hill that went for a good twenty minutes and in some spots I could not see the truck in front which at times was only four metres in front of me.
After breakfast we headed out for a track that sounded rather tricky with the name of the mad mile, It stared out tame enough with easy track through the bush but we soon found out that it wouldn’t be that easy for the rest of the day.
We had to reconstruct the bank here as it had suffered a big washout and there wasn’t an easy way through the river due to all the big trees blocking it.
We had a few dogs on the trip which was fun, including this little guy being two months old and out adventuring already.
The rest of the day had a few interesting bits, including a rather muddy bank to climb that if you go it wrong at the top you would slip into some big ruts.
Back at camp for lunch and it being another scorcher of a day with plenty of sunscreen needed again, this is where I gave up for the day and headed home as the gearbox was making a few to many funky noises.
We managed to make it home all right, fifth gear was really noisy and getting worse but I can’t complain all that much as I made it home without a tow truck, so that is something else to add to the damage list and get it repaired. Overall another great trip with the weather really playing ball and a great crew to go with.