Limestone Creek Cave & Toka Biv & MORE

This trip is running from Wednesday evening from about 6pm, and returning home late Friday evening.

Turns out there's an amazing place called Limestone Creek on the western side of the Ruahines, which makes for an excellnt short and "easy-ish" canyon walk and a small cave!

Despite being called a canyon, it doesn't require any ropes or special gear, it's more like a river walk in canyon scenery. The cave is also very small and has easy solid footing with no speical gear required. I had no idea there was some limestone karst so close to Wellington and I'm very keen to explore this area.

The plan would be to drive up there on Wednesday night (3hrs) and stay overnight at Alice Nash memorial lodge, or tent somewhere.
The next day (Thursday) we would spend a few hours exploring Limestone Creek, then walk up to Toka Bivvy and then to Top Gorge hut to stay the night (8ish hrs).
On Friday we would walk out via Iron Gate hut (8-9hrs) and drive home (3hrs).

This trip is MEDIUM FIT, it requires river travel with some mild canyoning, which means confidence with climbing around on rocks and logs and getting submerged in water probably up to about your waist. The cave is very easy and beginner friendly so no special skills required there. The walk to Toka Biv is classic Ruahine tramping so it will be steep, scrubby and probably a bit rougher than your typical track. It is also very exposed to weather (especially wind).

This trip is quite weather dependant so I will postpone it if there's rain.

Here's some info about Toka Biv:
https://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/places-to-go/manawatu-whanganui/places/ruahine-forest-park/things-to-do/huts/toka-bivvy/

And Limestone Creek canyon:
https://www.kiwicanyons.org/limestone-creek-v1a1i/

And the cave:
https://www.irongates.co.nz/limestone-creek-glow-worm-caves.html