Bay One Crag, Manawatu Gorge

After finishing early on our last day of work for the year, I managed to convince Campbell Harvey and Mike Chalmers to come with me out to Bay One for a few hours of climbing.

Cam hadn’t climbed for ages, so we spent a little while on Groovy Gecko (14) getting the hang of things. I practised climbing in both my Tramping and Mountaineering boots, deciding the latter was going to be more appropriate for the upcoming Darrans trip. Cam lead Groovy Gecko, then Mike lead it and escaped off to Wellington.

I then lead Andy’s Arete (15) in my mountain boots, brought up Cam then we scrambled out and went home.

Rangitikei River Trout Fishing

Dad came down to Palmy to have a flight in the Iroquois during the 3 Sqn Family Day. After his flight, we went out for a bit of a fish on the Rangitikei River, just south of Hunterville. Arriving at the road end, we thought we’d taken a wrong turn when ‘Private Property- NO ENTRY” signs greeted us. But with a little snooping about, we found an access spot a bit further back down the road.









Dad with our first fish of the day

First catch of the day

Crossing the river, we were amazed at how tepid the waters were. Fishing upstream, we passed a pair of fly fisherman working a pool. The river was quite wide and generally quite shallow, though it had the odd deeper section.

Just above the fly fisherman, Dad hooked and landed the first Trout. It was just a small guy, but we kept it so we’d have something for dinner. Not too far upstream, I hooked into a fish at a great looking pool. Initially it just sat there deep in the current, but soon began peeling line off my little rod. I had to follow it downstream a ways to avoid getting too much line out. I was rapt when I finally beached the fantastically conditioned Rainbow.

My best trout of the day :)













Dad quickly evened the score with a similar sized trout from the same pool, though his one wasn’t quite as conditioned and gave up pretty quickly.

Further upstream, we came to a difficult ford. We both agreed that we’d gone far enough today, so sat down for a cup of tea prior to retracing our steps back to the car

On the way back, Dad stopped at the pool where the other guys were fishing and proceeded to land another nice trout from right under the other fisherman’s nose!

We had a delicious dinner that night with Kay; freshly baked trout with salad and chips!

Dad and I