Black Range - 14th December 2014

Uncle Roddus Tramping Diary: Tramp No. 150

Black Range - 14th December 2014

After completing the last piece of the Craigiburn range a couple of weeks previous, this trip moves slightly North West to the Black Range, overlooking the Waimakriri River and Bealey Spur. A CTC club trip, 12 of us left the cars at the Broad stream bridge around 10am on a pleasant and warm summers day and rocked hopped our way up stream until we found the track that took us through the Beech forest to Harper saddle between Mt Bruce and Point 1672. Graded Moderate/hard it certainly was a bit of a grind with the big drops before re-climbing back up to each point we reached. So we summitted points 1672, 1658, 1734 and 1854 before heading along the ridge above McKay stream looking for a nice scree to take us back into Broad Stream. Some of the team investigated one just at the bush line but it proved too hard and so they dropped down in the bush to Broad Stream while the rest of us bush bashed along the ridge until we found a track on the knob lower down that took us into McKay stream and back out to the cars.