Day 33: Wairora River to Hunua Range

Distance Covered: 24 km

What a way to start the day. We woke up at the saddle in that beautiful gorge all by ourselves. The trail was really showing how much potential it has. Walking the rest of it up to the ridge and Hunua Ranges was a real pleasure. The Hunua Ranges aren’t too tall… they top out around 1,000 feet or so. They are primarily used for storing water and as a quick vacation for those in Auckland.

As with so many days lately, road walking was called for. Not too bad, though, since the trail jumped off the road soon after crossing into the regional park (kind of like a state park in the US). And the trail was great! Wide, well maintained, top-notch stuff that wound around inside a small river gorge and valley. 

A five minute detour along the way led to Hunua Falls.

Besides being pretty, we saw something else… about 12 young kids, maybe 8 years old. They were in two groups and were set to race their bamboo and jug “rafts” that they had built themselves. Their course was from shore to shore and back in front of the waterfall. We were both astounded! What an awesome, adventurous thing to be doing as part of school work. We both felt like we would have loved to do that when we were their age… or now would be fun too. We also thought the odds of a US school doing anything like that were pretty low. Good for the Kiwis.

We also met another hiker there. She is from Japan and brought art supplies to draw the pretty things she sees. Cool stuff!

On we went, next taking the detour to see Kauri trees. There was only 8 of them and yet this was important enough to make special boardwalks and trail. They are majestic and it’s sad that they were so over logged that 8 of them warrant such treatment.

It was such a good morning! Next up was what the notes said was 6 km of tramping trail with “views across the reservoir”. Along we hiked remarking how awesome it would be if all the trails were this high quality. And just then… the Te Araroa decided we'd had enough fun and left the main trail via a narrow, muddy, heavily rooted path up a hill. Good feelings gone.

What a mess that trail was. Another overgrown mud pit with vines that grabbed, roots that tripped, hills that rocketed or plummeted, and vegetation that spanned the narrow ribbon of path. And the views did not exist. They might have 5 years ago, but years of growth blocked everything as we scrambled over and under and around at about 1 km per hour.

In fact, at the end of it was a lookout option. We went that way primarily because the signs don’t exist anymore and the map said to (it was wrong.) So we climbed the lookout and saw… trees. It’s been so long since the trail was maintained that the trees grew up all around the lookout, blocking views of almost everything. I took a picture of the one thing we could see.

The difference between the glorious morning and this forgotten, neglected “trail” is a microcosm of the whole trail. Sometimes spectacular and sometimes bordering heinous. We have deep appreciation for the outstanding effort it must take to even get to this point and, in the same breath, add that it will take a decade or more for much of it to be something you would recommend to your friends and family.
Anyway, onward and forward! The trail led us down to the reservoir where we had a little break and talked more with the Japanese hiker. She saved for three years to do the trail! It’s fun to hear everyone’s stories and hers was no different.

Then it was up another trail. Up, up, and up to a repeater station on the highest peak in the area… with no views. Probably was at some point before everything grew back. But! The trail down was different. It was a dirt road that had a nice cutout that showed what the area really looked like. Quite nice, it turns out.

And then down to more roads and finally to mountain biking trails. If you’re a mountain biker, this area is for you. The local club has done an outstanding job. We followed one spur down, through a stream, past some interesting berry plants (edible?), and finally to what we thought was the camping area. It had an old toilet and a grass field. We think that it’s just run down enough that it might not be it, but it’s good enough.

Tomorrow we go through a 6 km section that the trail notes basically say “uh… good luck with this.. trail… thing…”. Huzzah!