Hiking the GR1 - Stage 3

Distance: 15.3 km.  Elevation low/high/total: 163/491/555 m.
Difficulty: 5.0/10.  Scenic: 5.0/10

We had Simon along as company on the 15.4 km Stage 3 hike
Click on the pic for link to picture album, geotrack links: (kml) (gpx).

Less than two weeks after completing Stage 2 of the GR1 (the Nouvelle Calédonie Grande Randonée 1, or GR NC1 as it's officially titled), Miss K and I were able to tackle Stage 3, thanks to the willing participation of an SPC colleague, Simon Nichol.  Heading out on an early Good Friday (hence, work vacation day) morning, we drove to the western terminus of the hike, which is near the eastern entrance to the Parc de la Rivière Bleu, dropped his truck there and then the three of us drove over to Netcha which is the eastern terminus of the hike.  We managed to hit the trail just after 9:30 AM on a semi overcast, quite pleasant day for hiking.

While the overall length of the hike suggested  it might be a bit of a challenge, in fact this was the easiest of the 3 stages to date.  The 15.4 km hike took about 4.5 hours and involved two relatively modest hills (well, one was modest) and provided some spectacular vistas.  We crossed a couple of creeks as well as a mostly dry riverbed that was littered with thousands of huge boulders indicating that, on occasion, some serious flooding (from a typhoon, perhaps) washes through the valley here.  We placed a geocache (linked here) at the top of Agathis Pass, where we also enjoyed a nice lunch.  Next up is Stage 4, which is inside Parc de la Rivière Bleu, and hopefully we'll tackle that shortly.