Next Hike

The next hike will be on Saturday, 5th January.

We meet at the Ballpark in Gillies Bay at 10:00am

Last week I was able to go on the hike again after missing several in a row and it proved to be a little bit different to what we had expected. We had had quite a lot of rain in the week before the hike so it really did not occur to us that there might still be some snow on the higher ground not far from Gillies Bay.  However, we found the side road near Bell Farm had a thin coating of snow and decided to park a little before the gravel pit where we usually park when heading for the top of Black Mountain. Weather conditions were really quite good, we soon warmed up and we made quite good progress except that the steeper parts of the trail where it climbs up through mature forest was certainly slippery in places.  We found that the strong south-east wind was bothering us on the highest part of the trail, but the  lunch stop viewpoint was surprisingly calm and after a while the fog cleared away and we were delighted to have the view of the coast mountains that we did not expect when we first started the hike.

JD. 

Hiking a snow covered road on the way to Black Mountain.