Another great hike

I went on my second Otago Tramping Club hike this past weekend to Maakatua, or "mountain of the gods." There are plenty of gorgeous pictures below, preceded by a few from a potluck dinner/poker night on Jura Street last weekend. As you can see in the pictures, the hiking weather was perfect--not a cloud in the sky and even on top of the mountain the wind was minimal. While we were waiting at the trailhead Mike and I rescued a cat stuck in a tree. It turned out to be the friendliest cat I've ever met, purring frequently and begging to be petted as we stood around before beginning the walk. When we finally did start on the track, we assumed the cat, which we christened Maaka, would wander back to its owner. Instead it followed us for two kilometers, across a stream and up a very steep slope to the bushline. There it rolled over and looked pretty exhausted; Mike tried to give it some water but the other hikers scolded him, saying that this would only encourage the cat to continue with us. Sadly we left the cat behind at this point, but much later in the hike we came across another party who said the cat followed them for at least a kilometer as well, above the bush line and into the tussock.

Most of the walk was bush bashing through the tussock along a ridge. We passed some interesting rock formations and mountaintop swamps and ponds. The return trip was rather painful, as we headed down a side of the mountain where the trail was severely overgrown or nonexistent. We did battle with at least two plant species notorious in New Zealand for inflicting bloody wounds in hikers: gorse and bush lawyer. Eventually we stumbled again across the poorly marked trail and followed it out to the road.

One interesting event occurred near the top of the mountain when someone found an invasive pine growing amongst the tussock. They shouted out to everyone and we quickly gathered around as one of the older members on the trip attempted to yank the whole sappling out of the ground. When he failed, Mike volunteered and extracted the pine, roots and all, and layed it in the tussock roots side up. Everyone let out a cheer and said "Well done!" Kiwis do not like intruders amongst their flora and fauna; they've already had to deal with plenty unwelcome species.