Distance: 4.6 km (2.5 DOC hours) - Tramping track - Easy-moderate terrain
Altitude: 804m to 1170m. Gain: 154m. Loss: 495m . Gradient: 8 deg (Gentle)
Skills:

Tramping track (4/9)
Cut, marked tramping track: natural, rough ground surface

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

Gentle (difficulty: 2/5)
Gentle slopes

Easy-moderate (difficulty: 2/5)
Tussock / river-gravel / open bush / cut track

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

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

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

West of the Whirinaki Hut turnoff, it’s downhill to the roadend (heard that before!), a barely noticeable sidle down the valleyside. Sadly major windfalls interrupt the easy going with tangled scrambles.

Suddenly, about 800m before the road, the bush ends, and we’re on a sandy track – a water-cut canyon through solid scrub. In this vein, it drops for a few hundred meters more to the creek, climbing briefly and emerging onto a sandy 4WD track: the roadend. The former Pakahunui hut is no more.

Note: Described in the reverse direction to your journey

From the signposted junction at the Pukahunui Roadend (former hut site) a well marked track siudles above the road in sandy, post-logging desolation, before dropping, crossing the creek on a bridge, and making a sidling climb up the spur to the east.

800m for the roadend it enters unlogged mature podocarp forest - a sudden and wonderful transition. It then continues it's gentle sidling climb a further 3.5km to reach the signposted Whirinaki Hut turnoff just beyond the highpoint of the track.

The track was once benched and easy, but windfall and erosion are returning it to more of a tramping track standard. It was due a haircut in 2014 and getting overgrown.