Hogsback Circuit

Sunday 14 April 2019

Roaring stags forced a diversion from Knowles Top to Hogsback. A tidy eight people in two cars parked behind Castle Hill Village, and set off on a clockwise circuit. The predicted southerly arrived at midday, but this basin seems to be blessed so we got no rain while Christchurch and the plains got a bit wet. Snow on the tops all around us was a fore-taste of the months to come.

On our circuit we met lots of small mountain bikes with little people peddling them, and being guided by bigger people on shiny new bikes. Through the day, we must have been passed by twenty peddlers, all very willing to stop and let us through, but it’s easier for walkers to step off an incised slippery clay track.

We had lunch at the north end of the Hogs Back scarp then continued south, marvelling at the flaky limestone we were on. A nice ramp got us off the scarp, then a narrow track got us to Hogs Back Creek. Crossing the creek and getting up the steep bank to a terrace was a bit harder than some of the group were used to. A tussock flat and a little climb got us back to the track we came in on, then through beech forest to the cars at 3:30pm.

We were: Diane Dixon, Kyung Sang and Danny Lee, Helen Tapper, Wendy McCaughan, Judith Barnsley, Shi Ping Wang, Kerry Moore (KM)