Five Foot Ronna

11/07/2025

About 100ml of rain fell in the Whakatāne District last night. The Rangitāiki River wasn't as high as last week, but our backyard is definitely getting close to becoming a rice paddy. A light fog had mostly cleared by the time we walked up to the stopbank. First time seeing all the spider webs.

09/07/2025

Today's magic on the Rangitāiki. 😍

01/07/2025

I want to take you back to November 2020...

This hike had a lot of firsts for me: First overnighter at a hut (the incredibly Boujee Pinnacles Hut haha), first time hiking with a pack and first time hiking with my cousin, Rommel. He's the OG hiker in our family - growing up and seeing his hiking adventures in the Philippines really inspired me to follow my curiosity into mountains.

I got my pack for free from a workmate - he guessed it had been in his shed for over a decade and was only too happy to help me out. If you've been to the Pinnacles Hut, you know it's pretty flash. You don't need as much gear as you would staying at other huts - there's gas, a BBQ, heck, even a cold shower! But this was before I knew what the real backcountry was.

When my alarm went off at 4:30am, geez there was a part of me that was tempted to hit snooze. I had only just got back to sleep after waking up to a toddler sleep walking towards the open door. Luckily their mum caught up with him before he went wandering outside.

I don't remember anyone else leave the hut with us, but there were already people at the peak when we got there. Maybe ten of us, if that. As the sun slowly rose over the horizon and the sky glowed a sunburnt orange, it was the birdsong that took me by surprise. There was no escaping the glorious symphony of the forest before. Simply breathtaking.

If you're looking to do more backcountry adventures, but the cost of gear puts you off. Do what I did - ask around and see what people have in their sheds. Hang out at op-shops, I picked up so much of my gear there. And I reckon it's worth spending your coin on good merino socks and proper fitting boots...toe socks, what a game changer!

24/06/2025

Big changes brewing!

I've been using Squarespace for my website since I first started writing blogs in 2015. The platform was really easy to use, but that convenience comes at a price. With yearly price increases these last few years, sharing my adventures online just got too expensive in the end. So yeah, my website is now offline.

Reading posts from my early days sure feels like I'm catching up with an old friend. A new website will probably pop-up sometime in the future. Bring on the adventures I say!

Catch you on the trails. 💚

xo The Shorty

14/06/2025

The pursuit of purpose - having that one thing that drives me didn't really make sense, but knowing why I continue to do it does. And that's where I'm at with my hiking and bush adventures.

Here's a start. I'm connecting with community groups who share the same love of hiking and the bush and see where it takes me. This weekend, I tagged along with the Manawahe Eco Trust to learn how to check and reset pest traplines to support native birds, especially the native kōkako.

I'm definitely a noob compared to these guys, but they're patient with my questions and the banter is solid. I'm looking forward to next month's get together - will remember to bring the thermos and some home baking too!

P.S. If you went to Whakatāne High School, yes, that's Mr. Soppit and Mr. Ferguson, but they're cool with just Brian and Pete.

09/06/2025

I love this lookout on Latham's Track in Awakeri. On a clear day you can see as far as Mt. Tarawera. It's only a minute walk from the trig as you head down the steeper track to the Awakeri Hot Pools. There's even a wooden bench so you can sit and stay awhile.

02/06/2025

Beautiful light on our walk along Ngā Tapuwae o Toi in Whakatāne.

27/05/2025

😳 Wow, my book, STUCK: Friends, Lovers and the Obscurity, turned eight today! Grateful for the Whakatāne Library hosting us that morning and for everyone who joined us to celebrate the book launch.

Do you have a copy?

Lots of signed copies...

25/05/2025

Not the bushwalk I wanted, but the views at Pāpāmoa Hills sure made up for it! It helped build up my appetite for the bottomless yum cha at Master Kong in the Mount. I even enjoyed the stairs section, not sure my glutes did though. Oh and shout out to the running guy for going for a run that morning and giving me my fave shot of the day.

13/05/2025

Check out this great tool to double-check private land boundaries when heading out in the outdoors. Even if tracks have public access, it may be on private land (only the track is open to the public) and it's important to respect owners to ensure it continues to have public access in the future.

Friendly reminder: Base maps on WAMS and Pocket Maps don’t show legal public access. To see where you can legally walk, make sure to activate the public access layer in our mapping system.

Base maps have limited colours, while public access maps burst with hues! 🗺️

If you spot a mistake on a topo base map, contact LINZ. For a mistake on other base maps, update crowd-sourced data like OSM or Google Maps.

For any corrections to public access areas, we’re here to help. 📩

https://www.herengaanuku.govt.nz/maps/help/public-access-maps-versus-base-maps-the-colourful-difference

06/05/2025

Saturday felt like a world away from all the rain we'd had these last few weeks. Hamilton turned on the sunshine and we had a great morning walking through the Hamilton Gardens. As beautiful as the water features and statues were, I was most inspired by the giant edible and rongoa/medicinal gardens.

Hamilton sunshine. 🫰🏾
Hamilton Gardens. 🫰🏾🫰🏾
Eating ice cream in the sunshine. 🫰🏾🫰🏾🫰🏾

01/05/2025

"The more you allow people to live their lives, the better your life will get. The more control you give up, the more you gain."

Mel Robbins, The Let Them Theory

I finished the book last night. It took me over a month to read it, not that it was hard to read, but I wanted to take my time to read, play, and put into action changes in my life long overdue. I told some workmates this morning that I already knew a lot of what she wrote about, but it was the way she wrote about her experiences that gave me the courage to take some wobbly first steps to embracing my peri-menopause era.

To be continued...