Distance: 6.5 km (6.0 DOC hours) - Unmarked route, clear - Hard terrain
Altitude: 504m to 1162m. Gain: 804m. Loss: 275m . Gradient: 10 deg (Moderate)
Skills:

Unmarked route, clear (7/9)
Unmarked route, follows obvious geography (river, spur, trail, etc)

Primary, mapped (1/5)
Formal route, on maps, principal access to hut or along range / catchment

Moderate (difficulty: 3/5)
Occasional moderate climbs

Hard (difficulty: 5/5)
Thick scrub-bash / continuous river boulders, waterfalls, or gorges

None (difficulty: 1/7)
No alpine skills required

None (difficulty: 1/6)
No unbridged river crossings

None (difficulty: 1/7)
No alpine skills required

No description

Note: Described in the reverse direction to your journey

The track junction is lost in thick scrub on what seems ot be an old clearing. Both track and junction unlocatable. Map and compass work is required for the 1st 500m SW until you get back into mature bush. This 500m took me almost an hour - be warned. Very think, steep gullies not shown on the map, and abundant windfall.

Finally, crossing a creek, things start to improve. Eventually you get back into open beech, a faint ground trail, and 40+ year old track markers. A few high points offer glimpse views down towards Lake Waikaremoana and south west as far as the Kawekas.

The turn off the ridge is well marked, the track ok for the 1st kilometer. After 1km it swings of the map-marked route, down the next spur north – the one heading between two close-together streams. Track markers become almost non-existent, and the trail disappears in low fern. Around the 700m marker the track swings south, cuts through a creek and basin, and sidles to an unnamed/unnumbered 700m knob from where it cuts down the next spur south – the spur where the map shows it running. It remains poorly marked and hard to spot all the way to the creek, but basically – stick to the spur until you reach water. A signpost at the bottom states an optimistic ‘Lake Waikaremoana, 7hrs’. Potential campspots exist at the track/creek junction.