Hiking adventures in New Zealand
Hiking adventures in New Zealand
Over the past few weeks I was lucky enough to be a part of the latest intrepid intake attending the Beginners Whitewater Kayaking course with the Nelson Canoe Club. Learning to kayak had been on my list of things to try for a while, so I was thrilled when the course came up. There were about 15 people in our group, with a mix of all ages, experience levels and reasons for wanting to give it a go. I was in the older dynamic of...
This weekend's hike took us South West into Victoria Forest Park. If like me, you haven't heard of it before, it is roughly sandwiched between the Nelson Lakes National Park to the East, and the Paparoa range to the West. The nearest town is Reefton. There are lots of walking tracks in the park, and we walked the 'Big River Track' from Waiuta to Big River.
We chose this track because it is pretty low elevation (we didn't fancy...
We made the most of a lovely sunny Winters' day to take a day trip from Nelson over to Takaka Hill and Harwoods Hole. Quite unknown to me before now, Harwoods Hole is the deepest vertical cave/shaft in New Zealand. The opening is 50m wide, the entire drop is 357m (1,171 feet) and it is spectacular! The track from Canaan Downs car park is 2.9Km one way and took us around 30 minutes. We combined it with a trip up to the viewpoint overlooking Gorge Creek, a quick...
Winter served up a rather damp weekend, so we made the most of it by taking a local walk in the Mount Richmond Forest Park along the Hacket Track to Whispering Falls and Hacket hut. We returned via the disused Chromite Mine Track. All up, with an hour-long lunch we took 5.5 hours but no doubt in summer you would want to spend longer as there are plenty of opportunities for river swims and exploring.
The Tablelands area of Kahurangi National Park accessible from Graham Valley Road or the Cobb Valley is a great spot for all kinds of weekend and multiday activities - for adventurers and beginner trampers alike. We were making the most of the weather on a quick weekend mission; over the tops of Gordons Pyramid on Saturday to Balloon hut and back along the river valleys of the Salisbury Track and the Flora Track on Sunday....
We used the excuse of snow in the mounatins, to make a weekend trip out to the Kahurangi lighthouse and keepers house. This beautiful West coast walk was a delight! The long drive in to the Anatori River, via the causeways of the Whanganui inlet near Farewell Spit was incredible in itself. The main event - the hike to Kahurangi Point and the lighthouse crosses beautiful farmland to the Turimawiwi river. From there you...