Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Pont des Japonais hike

Distance: 2.7 km.  Elevation low/high/total: 99/133/63 m.
Difficulty: 2.2/10.  Scenic: 6/10

Here lie the remains of the "Japanese bridge" - click pic for album
Click here for the geotrack of the hike
Another geocache inspired hike, this is a relatively easy 2 km round trip hike to the remains of a WWII Japanese built railroad bridge.  Along the way you see some remains of the wooden cross beams (the iron tracks are long gone) and occasionally you can find a rusty spike.  At the main river the concrete trestle bases are still there with a bit of wood still inside rotting away.  The hike path along the old track has been almost entirely reclaimed by nature.  Ildiko and Iris didn't make it to the bridge as Iris had a slip on the red earth back where we parked the jeep.  Miss K and I (on my recently surgically repaired knee) made the trek and were rewarded with some gorgeous vistas.  We all return here a couple of months later (november 2nd, to be precise).

Saturday, September 6, 2014

Malaoui roi (chapeau du gendarme) hike

Distance: 7.5 km.  Elevation low/high/total: 468/800/500+ m.
Difficulty: 7.8/10.  Scenic: 9.2/10

Malaoui roi peak, the reward for a long hike (click pic to see album)
Click here for the geotrack of the hike
For this outing, two of our new friends here in New Caledonia came along with us: Alex Tidd and his partner Sara Wilson.  Alex started at SPC about three weeks after me so we'd both been less than six months in country.  This turned out to be a challenging hike for this party - round trip was something like 9 km and the elevation gain was around 380 m (1200 feet).  Total hiking time - 3.5 hours plus a fantastic hour at the peak.  The best part was the final 0.5 km which is along the spine of Mount Koghi to the peak.  The parenthetical name "chapeau du gendarme" means "policeman's hat".