William Pike Challenge - Lake Daniell Day Tramp

Room 8 Lake Daniell

On Wednesday 9th of September, Room 8 set off to tramp Lake Daniell. For the William Pike Challenge. Lake Daniell is at Lewis Pass which is on the Southern Alps. My car group was my Dad, Billie, James and Bob. It wasn’t a long way to travel because it was only one hour and 48 minutes. When we got to Marble Hill car park, I put my wig on because it was crazy hair day, raising money for the child cancer foundation. I was the only one wearing a wig but my wig was awesome because it was rainbow. At the end of the day when we were in a group after we finished tramping, just before we drove back to Greymouth Ms Kemp awarded me with Coolest Hair Of The Day which I thought was pretty funny.

Before we went tramping, we had to do some preparation. We learnt about being safe in the bush and how not to get hypothermia, the signs of it and what to do if you get it. A website we looked at was to leave no trace which meant leaving the bush how you found it and don’t litter. Some people did litter though so I picked it up. 

When we started tramping my head got itchy from my wig but I kept wearing it. I took some cool photos of my friends and I and I also got some cool photos of the rivers. The water looked really nice. I walked with Olive and Phoebe for most of the way. Olive was pretending to be a grandma which was really funny. 

It was spring so all the leaves were really nice and green and the rivers looked so pretty. There were lots of boardwalks and they were fun to cross. There weren't many hills and when there were hills they weren’t that big. It was 8.5km to the hut so we walked 17 km all together because we walked there back in one day. I really enjoyed the tramp especially because I got to do it with my classmates. The beech forest was really pretty and I can understand how you could get lost easily. It all looked the same, so if you walked off the track you wouldn’t know what direction to go back in. 

At Kōhanga Atawhai-Monsoon Nicholls Hut we ate lunch and went on the jetty. When I sat down to eat my lunch on a big tree stump, I fell backwards and screamed so lots of people looked at me so I said “ I’m fine, I’m all good!” and hoped everyone forgot about that. The lake looked really cool from the jetty. The mountains reflect on the water and it looked amazing. When we were about to leave we all signed the visitors book for the hut. The hut looked so much cleaner and better than it had been before when I last tramped there.

My feet were super sore and I had a blister in between my toes by the time we got back to the car park. We started at 10:20 and finished at about 3:45 so it took us about 5 hours and 20 minutes to walk to the hut and back. It was such a good experience to do with my class friends. It felt so good to sit down when we finished and just relax. 

I want to say a HUGE thank you to all the parents who came, transported and walked with us. I had a great time walking with Donna and Olive because we were chatting and laughing the whole time. It was really nice to hear all the parents' comments that we were a really cool group of people, we had nice manners and we were a really good group to take out of the classroom. Overall, I had so much fun and an awesome day!