Auckland Baptist Tramping Club 2000 Seven stalwarts braved an unseasonably cool and rather wet November Saturday to tramp into DOC's unfrequented Mataitai Forest off the Ness Valley Road about 10km east of Clevedon.   Val and Peter Osborne led us from the car park, on the 60m contour, up ridges and along the orange marked track in the existing DOC forest on to a new red marked track into recently acquired forest. This red track climbed to a fence line at 340m where we were just outside the forest and able to fully appreciate the shelter it had provided. After 200m or so the track re-entered the forest and descended along more ridges, past many kauri rickers, rimu, puriri and other natives for about 2km before arriving at a grassy plateau dominated by a splendid pine. Under calmer and sunnier conditions this would have been a grand spot to have a lunch break but we continued down to a camp site, at 60m again, where we found shelter from the wind and direct rain.   We didn't stop for too long, to avoid getting too cold, and rejoined the orange track westerly, crossing the steam three times, before climbing up No.2 Ridge track.   This track eventually joined the Puriri track, with Pink track markers, and climbed to 200m.   We passed more puriri specimens, which give this track its name, and diverted briefly along No.1 Ridge track to get a good view across to the ridges we had walked down before lunch.    Our path dipped and rose over a couple of knolls so we had another 110m or so to climb before rejoining the orange track.    Now it was all downhill as we retraced our steps and were soon back at the car park where to our surprise and pleasure we found Nelson waiting for us. Although we had only tramped about 9km we had climbed a total of about 550m. We all appreciated the more open aspect of this piece of bush along with the very well marked and maintained tracks looked after by Manukau Tramping Club who had kindly provided the map for us.