Mt Karioi and the winner of the Great NZ Sausage Awards Supreme Award – 2022.

Mt Karioi and the winner of the Great NZ Sausage Awards Supreme Award – 2022.

While in Raglan for the summer holiday I did a jaunt up Mt Karioi.

This was part of my preparation for the Jumbo Holdsworth trail run later in the month. The track to the summit of Mt Karioi follows Te Toto Gorge and takes a direct route to the peak. It is steep, and the vertical climb is over 400m in the first couple of kilometres. There are some chains and ladders to assist over a few of the more gnarly sections of the track.

This is the only place in the North Island of New Zealand where there is bush from the coast to the summit.

When I reached the summit of Mt Karioi, I found a sausage on a rock.

I identified this as a pure pork sausage from Te Rapa New World. This superior snarler won the Supreme Award at the 2022 Great NZ Sausage Awards. When you taste this simple, yet elegant, sausage you can understand why the judges selected it from the hundreds of entries. It is a medium grind sausage. Pork is the dominant flavour. It is, simply put, a cracking pork sausage. It will appeal to all as an example of modestly understated simplicity and excellence in the art of butchery.

As I enjoyably munched on this sausage I thought about how much I enjoy being in the outdoors, in the bush communing with nature. Summer is a great time of the year here. And there was a swim and boogie boarding to look forward to at the beach after I returned down the edge of the chasm of Te Toto Gorge.