Routes
Huts / campsites
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Junctions
DOC Land
Altitude: 521m to 1083m. Gain: 731m. Loss: 499m . Gradient: 11 deg (Moderate)
Skills:
Heading back upriver from Central Te Hoe it’s 800m to the turnoff to Upper Te Hoe. Again, the track is a benched track, though narrower and climbing steadily. Gaining altitude rapidly, it traverses a face of near sheer bluffs, the track cut right into the face. You can see why it’s not a cycle track. Some 200m of altitude are gained this way, before gaining the ridgeline, then returning back to sidle the north face. After another 100m-or-so of altitude, stacked branches block the way forwards along the benched track, and a well-trodden tramping track cuts south to return to the ridge. Though steeper, and slower going on a lower grade tramping track, the walk up the ridgeline is in many easy more pleasant, shaded from the sun by mature bush, tall trunks of hammered bark reaching skyward for the light.
All in all it’s a pleasant climb to the first of three 1000m+ peaks, the track then rising and falling with the ridgeline over the remaining two. After the third, the benched pack-track returns – god knows where it’s been in the meantime – sidling the western face. With it comes a complete change. Majestic podocarps are replaced by beech; dry faces of sun-bleached rock by fern and moss. Each gully and crevice a trickle of water. The benched track winds its way I and out of side creeks on a stead gradient – a surveyor-drawn line – all the way to the creek.
A mossy-green wooden bridge awaits, then a sidling climb – another 300m upriver to a terrace and the hut.
(The river provides an alternative route between these two huts)