Atene Skyline Track, Whanganui National Park

This happened on Monday.  I had the day free to try out my boots and I was told about this day-walk by one of the nice ladies at the iSite in Wanganui.  She warned be that there was a lot of uphill climbing   and added: "but that should be no problem for a young fit man like you."

"Fit."  Hmm.  We would see about that.

Anyway, here's the walk.  It's supposed to take between 6 - 8 hours.  It climbs up to the Atene ridge and then along it.  The geographical interest is the loop of old river bed.  You see, what happened was that the Whanganui used to go through this valley and then it found a quicker way to get to where it was going by punching through a hill.  That means now theres a dry river bed in the shape of a horse shoe and my walk was going to give all sorts of views of it.  Anyway, here's the walk:

And here are some pictures from the walk.  I must have brought all my vintage cameras with me.

This character was snuffling around me as I was putting on my boots at the start of the track.

There were a lot of wild goats.  Big ones, little ones, middle-sized ones.  One time I walked around a corner of the track and there was a mummy goat and a baby goat.  The mummy goat looked terrified to see me but the baby goat came bounding right up to me, bleating like a maniac.  Being me, I got freaked out that the mummy goat was going to come and smash me to protect the baby goat so I jumped into a tree.  "Go away baby goat!"  I yelled at it.  

This isn't the baby goat from the story, but it is an equally baby goat.

The panorama below shows the old river path. It's now farmland.

I got back to the car only five and a half hours after I left it.  That's quicker than the 6-8 hours they said it would take.  I am fit!!