We were lucky to have a fine but overcast day for this walk. We arrived at Te Whiti Park to find a soccer tournament going on, so parking was a bit further away. Sheila, Peter and myself did the vehicle transfer, ensuring we two cars to get everyone back to Lower Hutt. We commenced our walk around 9.45am. We were joined by Anne-Mette for the walk up the Riser only. It was a nice walk up the Te Whiti Riser which zigzags up the hill. At the crossroads, we stopped for a drink and to say goodbye to Anne-Mette before heading through some pretty bush before coming out on the ECNZ track. We then headed off in a southerly direction, passed the track we were going to descend on to get to our morning tea/lunch spot on top of Mt Towai. The wind was fair blowing up here so we only stopped for about 15 minutes before heading back to the start of the Konini Climb. I took our group photo by the sign. This is a brilliant shared track to walk down as riders can only come up the hill, which makes spotting them very easy. The track wound down the hill for 6.5kms through some really lovely bush before joining onto some of the older tracks which took us to the park. We were all feeling a little footsore when we arrived at the end nearly 4 hours after setting off, so enjoyed a break to polish off the remnants of our lunches before we went for a coffee at Mitre 10 in Wainuiomata. We then dropped everyone off to their cars before heading back to Silverstream for the Upper Hutt people. It had been a really good walk and all were feeling pleasantly tired.

Trip Leader – Judith O’Leary

Walkers – Gordon, Nichole, Andrea, Delphine, Anna, Denise, Sheila, and Peter.