Auckland Baptist Tramping Club There was a turnout of 37 people for an afternoon’s tramping on the Karekare coast that included a short piece of the new Edmund Hillary Trail. This trail had recently been opened and is a four-day tramp from Karamatura near Huia to Muriwai along existing routes. Three car loads of people left The Bracken at 1:30pm to meet up with the rest of the group at the Karekare beach carpark. We were away by 2:35pm to begin our walk with the Edmund Hillary section, the Ahu Ahu Track. This was a steady climb along a well-formed track, and an hour later we had a short break at the junction with the Mercer Bay Loop Track. We followed the Mercer Bay Loop Track which led to as clifftop lookout where we could see the rugged west coast below. A new section of track gave access to a second viewpoint where we could look south and see the wide sand belt beyond Karekare. We returned to the first lookout for our devotions stop. Jill read Psalm 2, and commented how God can lift our heads when we feel down. For those who wanted to, there was a GPS treasure hunt. We found ourselves grunting up to the top of the Mercer Bay Loop Track, and it did not taker us long to find the treasure - a geocache. In a small black box we found some toy cars, and a few other small playthings. We did not take any of these things - the rules of geocaching games are that if one takes something from a cache, they must replace it with something of equal or greater value. But one of us wrote a note in the tiny notepad that is an essential part of all geocaches. At 4:40pm we left the lookout to return to Karekare, this time along the rougher Comans Track that was up and down and rocky in places. As we descended towards the finish we had spectacular views out to the coast. We were back at the carpark one hour later, feeling sweaty from the hot weather workout. One of us had a dip in a nearby stream. Seventeen of us went up to our leaders’ bach nearby for a pot-luck BBQ dinner to finish the day off.