By Justin Atkinson, 02 September 2023
Get ready for plenty of puns... I asked people to come clim(b with) mie up a mountain that simultaneously tells you it's a climb-ie and challenges you to climb-ie it: Mt Climie. I'm sure you're loving the climb-ieng puns, so let's get on with it!
I was joined in my quest to summit Climie by Karina, Liu, Utsav, Connor, Orlando, and Laura. We headed off on a beautiful day towards the Remutaka forest park. This involved some complex transport arrangements, including myself having to catch the Wairarapa line bus replacement and be picked up by someone in the Hutt. We all arrived at the Mt Climie car park around 11am. After an embarassing amount of attempts to take a good quality group selfie, we headed up the Climie track at 11:15am.
It was about 12km to the summit, and we were immediately left in no doubt why this peak is called Climb-ie. The first 4km climb-ied steeply along a gravel track, with gaps in the canopy out over Upper Hutt. There was some nice goblin forest along the way.
We eventually reached what could be mistaken for the summit just before 1pm, with a telecomm tower greeting us. We stopped for lunch and admired the epic views. Fortunately the weather was perfect, with almost no wind and clear blue skies all around.
We continued on to find the actual peak. We passed what we initially thought was the trig point, but I realised it was actually a false summit. The track ascended over some hills for another 20min before reaching its end. We had great views of the Remutaka valley all the way to Remutaka peak. This had been hidden almost the whole way by forest. We were confused as we couldn't find the actual trig point.
We chilled for a while at a nice lookout. We spotted two mysterious trampers trekking through the hills below us, but they disappeared without a trace after a while.
At about 2:30pm, we started the journey back to the car park. We found the actual trig point hidden off to the side of the track, before taking a photo with the first trig point.
It wasn't much of a climb-ie as we returned back the way we'd come. Admiring the goblin forest one more time, the afternoon sun beamed down on us.
We got back to the car park at 4pm, but we weren't done yet. We set off along the loop walk of Tane's Track. We found a cool little hanging waterfall, but it generated a disappointing swimming hole. Two unnamed group members climb-ied to the top, and found a big pool and another waterfall.
After passing a "lookout" with a bunch of pretty trees, we circled round to the Mangaroa Rail Tunnel, an old passageway the old Remutaka railway ran through. It's now abandoned and can be walked through. We crossed to the other side screaming at the top of our lungs, before returning back to the carpark. Overall a great day, and if you are sick of my puns, Climb-ie was definitely deserving of its name!
