Hump Ridge Sandstone (Fiordland) Rowallan, South Island, New Zealand
By daywalk on 27-May-15. Waypoint GC4PVT4

Walking the Hump Ridge track with a group of 23 trampers. We generally had good weather but rain set in as we arrived at Okaka Lodge. It was cold and wet overnight and not much better in the morning. However our group headed up to the rocks and tarns in cold, steady rain and poor visibility. I had come with a printout of instructions for this earthcache but pen and paper weren't going to work in these conditions. What a striking area, so glad to have visited and take photos, but my phone was starting to fail to respond in the wet conditions. Too bad not to have been able to complete this one, but very glad we got to see the beauty. After leaving and heading for Luncheon rock the sun came out for the rest of the tramp! Thanks daywalk for a very well presented and informative cache page.

I enjoyed completing this cache along the track and had stunning views along the way. Thanks for making me stop and look closely at the area. TFTC

We do a tramp yearly with Kiwi friends and the Hump Ridge was our chosen one this year. I see that the last geocacher to do it was a fellow Queenslander.
It has been quite an epic, weather wise. We had an hour of torrential rain on the way up on day one but were incredibly lucky that it cleared late in the afternoon for a few hours so we were able to enjoy the views and find the information for this EC. But today the bad weather returned as well as gale force winds so it was quite scary walking on the exposed boardwalks. I didn’t get blown off but a couple of our friends did, luckily without injury.
No views from the ridge but it did clear by the time we arrived at the South Coast Track. I didn’t mind the boardwalks as my 67 year old knees struggled on the steep muddy rooty sections.
I found the two waypoints, collected the information and have sent my answers to the CO. My first D/T of this combination! Woohoo! Tft EC.

On day one of my walk on and up the hump ridge to the okaka lodge, the weather uh.. wasn't the greatest.
I briefly considered continuing on upto the the summit and the tors to answer some earthcache questions, but decided in favour instead of shedding my sodden clothes and instead getting myself warm and dry.

Sadly the next morning, despite the rain holding off this time, the entire mountain top was still held captive in a dense cloud, once more denying me a summit view on a (soon to be ayway) great walk. Oh well. I still trudged up and around, answering the questions as best i could before rejoining the main path and the oodles of boardwalk steps down the other side of the mountain.

At some point i came across waypoint two and set to intensely studying the rocky overhang and surrounding environment.

I do love myself an earthcache and this was one that had so much information and pictures and graphs i had a delight in learning from, thank you so much daywalk for a fantastic and deeply informative earthcache that i hope every geocacher that passes by takes the time to learn from.

This is also just the third time i've ever come across this elusive combination, aaand it surprisingly hasn't been 'found' since early april!

Thanks for teaching me about the different terraced levels of mountainside down in fjordland national park at the bottom of New Zealand. My most southerly discovered earthcache on the planet!

Awesome earthcache to chip away at as I did the Hump Ridge this weekend! What an insane track. Truly a testament to humans’ “we can conquer anything nature throws at us” attitude that this track even exists. Super challenging but well worth the pay off! And the summit (where the first waypoint is) was more than worth all the effort to get up there. TFTC!

No caching during Covid-19 alert levels Level 3 & 4.
This includes virtual waypoints - we need to stay home except for essential outings.
Working together, we can beat delta and keep our community safe.

[https://covid19.govt.nz/](https://covid19.govt.nz/)

[https://wiki.groundspeak.com/display/GEO/New+Zealand?fbclid=IwAR2GUaxN7zpUQI2Suglt1ggVnCqw8V1emnygD1Tdw6YTu1f4LUcIt92oZhs](https://wiki.groundspeak.com/display/GEO/New+Zealand?fbclid=IwAR2GUaxN7zpUQI2Suglt1ggVnCqw8V1emnygD1Tdw6YTu1f4LUcIt92oZhs)

The south cost is one of my favorite places to go close to home .
So after I got home from my 3000km through hike of the Te Araroa ,And one amazing adventure it was time to relax ahhhhh nop .

I was home for about 7 days and it got to me not getting up and walking so what to do
The through hiker just needs to walk .
I know I will walk the hump ridge track.
The funny thing is I have walked the track 4 times before and the first 2/3rds have been in the dark .

Yes we started at midnight.

So I thought I could see the track in daylight and get to see the amazing views from the top .
But it was not to be as I left the beach it started raining and the closer to Okaka lodge i stared to get clouds in the trees . Yay
So as I left the bush for the bord walk on top the clouds and rain dropped visibility to almost zero.
And the rain was coming from underneath .
So I put my head down and pushed around the loop track before I froze in to a block of ice and back to the lodge .
At the lodge a nice showers to warm up .
After a good night's sleep and the weather had not changed so off down to port craig .
As I passed wp 2 I remembered that the last time I was here it was about 4.30 am so did not get to see the formation, so in daylight it was completely different.
As the rain had now stopped I just kept walking and after 40km was back at my car and heading for home .
I will be back as I have unfinished bissness with the hump.
I will be back as I just love this part of the country and the history that go with it .


Life is short. Live one foot step at a time.Never say" I'm gonna "- Just do it!!

Thank you daywalk I learnt a lot.
tftc

I was told that the best thing to do when walking the track and you get to the turnoff to the lookout or Okaka Lodge is dump your pack, don't think about it, just do the loop before going to the lodge, you mustn't miss it. It was after 5 when I got to Stag Point so I'd rung the track office to say I was still coming as instructed, it had also started to snow. I was exhausted and all I wanted to do was sit down and have a proper rest, frankly I didn't care what was up there or how many caches. However this morning was a different story, the snow stopped not long after I arrived at the lodge, dawn had broken with a beautiful blue sky, apparently a great sunrise however I was still asleep. After a good nights sleep and belly full of porridge I was ready to get up there. While putting on my boots it suddenly clouded over and there was a brief snow shower which was gone again by the time I got my jacket out. Left my pack at the junction and headed up to the lookout. Awesome view, saw the one and only kea on the track here. Then on to luncheon rock for lunch. I have to say the Hump Ridge Track is the hardest tramp I've ever done and had to really push myself to keep going. Something I am very proud to have achieved. Thank you for placing this earthcache here, it helped having something else to think about and make myself really look at the rocks around me.

#10309

Re enabled because of the move to Level 2. Stay safe; be kind.

New Zealand is under Level 4 lockdown from today for at least a month, because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

I am disabling all my caches for the meantime to remind people that we MUST break the chain of infection.

Covid-19 is now being spread within the community, person to person. We know that the virus will remain on surfaces like metal and plastic for up to 4 days.

We have only one chance to stop the Covid-19 virus spreading further. This is to BREAK the chain of infection by keeping each household separated completely. During this time each of us MUST keep isolated and only share with the people in our own household.

The best advice is to act as though you are infected... which you might be. We know there are cases in Dunedin... I might be infected and so might you.

If you touch a cache container, you will leave viruses on the plastic, logbook and pen. Those will remain infectious for up to 4 days. Suppose some other person finds the cache tomorrow. They are likely to pick up those viruses and will get infected.

Playground equipment is out of bounds for exactly that reason- touching surfaces can spread infection.

Each of us has to do our bit to save lives. If the Covid-19 virus spreads, a lot of us will die. Maybe your grandmother, or my friend who has just had a bone-marrow transplant.

Stay home, stay safe, let's get to the other side of the pandemic before we go geocaching again.

what a slog to get up to WP1 yesterday and then fighting the wind to read the requirements from my printout resulted in me misreading the first question. Some back and forth with the CO and I got the approval. This cache certainly made me notice subtle differences in the rock formation as I went along. I had been up to tors further north about 35 years ago and to Okaka hut about 6 years ago. I'm rapidly ageing out of this sort of stuff so it is nice to have this one polished off. Thanks daywalk for giving me another incentive to come this way.

What a killer climb up yesterday! But today the sun is shining on the snow and I'm so happy to have finally done the Humpridge Track. Fantastic views, both of the tarns and to the sea, lake and Fiordland. I'm lucky to see this amazing landscape in the snow, with no footprints in front of me.

Found during a 3 day tramp on the Hump Ridge - superb tramp with no tourists as out of season. Lodge was empty and mostly locked up but one win go dorms is open and the kitchen (though not the lounge). But cold and soulless - like an out of season ski field. However it was great to get the the cache. Answers sent too CO. Many thanks and a FP..

Thanks very much for a very interesting backgrounder to the local geology A favourite for sure Our group managed to fluke three days of fine weather The views out to Stewart Island and deep into Fiordland were magnificent It was well worth the effort to get in here TFTC

This walk to the Hump had been on our radar for a while. Certainly a really hard earned smilie but such an amazing spot. Wasnt sure about waypoint 2 as it didnt make sense but on the way down I suddenly realised i must have entered it wrong. Always good to find more about the world we live in. TFTC

I flew down South on Monday and was supposed to be hiking the Milford Track right now, however the weather had been terrible and DOC had to close the track - that left me with a few days spare and nothing to do!! So I had a chat to DOC about my options and eventually I settled on doing the Hump Ridge Track instead and within a couple of hours I was on a shuttle down to Tuatapere to stay the night! I started the Hump Ridge Track yesterday and it was certainly a challenging 3 day hike, with the weather a bit of a mixed bag, but overall the scenery and experience was great!

I arrived at Okaka Lodge after a solid climb up the hill in quite awful conditions late yesterday afternoon, so I hung out in the lodge for a while, before blue skies started to appear after dinner and I decided to head up the hill to take a look at the area and make a start on this Earthcache. The tor and tarn landscape up here was amazing and a completely different landscape from what we had been hiking through all day! On top of that the views were great also - I really enjoyed my time up at the summit. Today I continued my walk along the Hump Ridge track to the 2nd way point, with great views along the way and I finished off the requirements for this Earthcache and have now emailed my answers to the CO.

Thanks for an interesting Earthcache - favourite point added for the amazing location!

Thank you for a very informative geological lesson for the Hump Ridge track.
We enjoyed the earthcache and the walk from Okaka Lodge.
We are also very pleased to be the third to log it!
Thanks for the Earthcache daywalk.

dll_floppes and me started the Hump Ridge Track during the rain. After an exhausting climb up the hill we were rewarded with an amazing view from the top the next morning.
Just after leaving the Okaka Lodge we did the walk along the ridge which offered more impressive views and gave us some answers for this earthcache. A couple of hours later we passed the second waypoint and took some notes as well.

All our answers have been sent to the owner by dll_floppes.

Thank you for this unique cache!

We started our hike on the Hump Ridge Track an Thursday and reached Okaka Lodge the same day. On Friday we took the loop walk to WP1 and descended from the Hump along WP2. Very impressive and beautiful scenery, even though the weather was quite rainy.

We sent the answers to the questions and hope they are correct, to continued the logging order I am now submitting my log here.

Thanks for the detailled listing and background information!

Published

GNS NZ geology webmap http://data.gns.cri.nz/geology/

- To get a topographic map showing:
On the top grey bar: Select background layer.
Choose LINZ Top50.

- To see the geologic units:
On the Layer menu bar to the left, use the tickbox to toggle Geological Units ON or OFF.

- To see both the geological units and the topo map background:
Click on the sideways triangle on the left of the Geological Units tick box.
Select the Control tab.
Use the slider to adjust the layer opacity, so you can see both the overlay and the topo map.

- For information on geological units or faults:
Click on any point on the map.
A Feature Information box will pop up with information on the rock or fault.






This entry was edited by daywalk on Wednesday, 27 May 2015 at 07:39:00 UTC.