As per usual I love perusing our map book looking for roads tracks we haven’t been on. We leave Murchison in Jimny heading up the Mangles Valley road that follows the Mangles River, a lovely river with many deep pools that looked very inviting. We head up the Braeburn track classed as 4WD but was pretty easy to drive with 4 small creek crossings along the way, we then drop down to Lake Rotoroa a long narrow lake completely surrounded by native beech forest, a lovely camping area and quite a few holiday cribs, popular for families and I bet the fishing is great too. Plenty of tramping tracks that link to Lake Rotoiti. We find the entrance to the Porika track and start our climb… 466m at base we climb 546 m in 4 km so you get the picture it’s steep! drop offs spectacular didn’t want to look over the side!!! Sharp hairpin bends but Jimny or “the Goat” is as nimble as a goat and climbs steadily never missing a beat! We reach 1000m at the top and views out to the Howard valley. From the top there is a gradual descent to the valley below. The road predominantly is through beech forest, also certain areas allocated for gold fossicking. We spy a caravan parked up on an off shoot road god knows how they bounced there way up there! We end up at the Howard River for a picnic lunch and coffee sun beating down, boy it was a scorcher! It was a relief to get back to the forest for the return journey to Murchison. Another back road ticked off and explored.