Hiking the GR1 - Stage 1

Distance: 14(22) km.  Elevation low/high/total: 6/354/617 m.
Difficulty: 7.5(9.0)/10.  Scenic: 6.5/10

An intended 14 km hike that turned into 22 km - click pic for album
The geotrack (use Google Earth for best view - you may need to download and then open with Google Earth)
Here's a very large geotrack with embedded pics

Whew, this was a doozy!  Miss K and I have been planning on starting to hike the "GR1" (Grande Randonnée or Great Hike, a set of seven challenging hikes that take you along half of New Caledonia) for a couple of months. With Ildiko and Iris away on Lifou, here was our opportunity to hike the first stage, which is a 14 km jaunt starting at Prony and ending at Refuge de Néocallitropsis.  To help with logistics, I talked two work colleagues into coming along - they wanted to mountain bike the stage while we hiked.  So we drove to Chutes de la Madeleine Parking, where I  inexplicably thought was the end of Stage 1.  We left the Frog (our LandRover) there, Kincso and I jumped into Paul's truck and we headed to Prony where Stage 1 of the GR1 starts.

We said goodbye to the mountain bikers and over the next five hours we made our way along the trail, stopping for lunch at Twin Falls (we'd been there before), and generally found the hike not overly difficult though a bit lengthy.  We placed a geocache along the way as we plan to do for each stage.  It got more vertical the last few kilometers and as we started to approach the expected end of the stage, it steadily dawned on us that someone was guilty of VERY POOR PLANNING.  At Refuge de Néocallitropsis (end of stage 1), there was a camping location and an explanatory billboard about Stage 2 which began there and was a 10.9 km, 3.5 hour hike that ended at Netcha (near Chutes de la Madeleine).  We were out of water, my legs were dead and it was approaching late afternoon.  We were at least a couple of kilometers from a road.  So we filled our backpacks with river water and started off bushwhacking to the east where we knew the main road was located.  Eventually we found an old dirt road and within a half hour were on a totally empty paved road.  We just kept walking - three vehicles passed us during the next hour but none would stop to give us a ride.  Finally, when we were within 1.5 kms of Chutes de la Madeleine, a van with three cleaning ladies stopped and drove us to our vehicle.  As I write this the following morning, my legs feel every extra km.  We're hoping the other stages of the GR1 are as fun as this one was!