Distance: 3.6 km (1.5 DOC hours) - Benched track - Easy terrain
Altitude: 1042m to 1090m. Gain: 77m. Loss: 67m . Gradient: 2 deg (Flat)
Skills:

Benched track (3/9)
Benched, maintained, marked tramping track or pack-track

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

Flat (difficulty: 1/5)
Flat

Easy (difficulty: 1/5)
Grass / prepared surface

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

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

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

The Black Birch Ridge track starts across a small beech gully before becoming a wide cut canyon though the manuka scrub to the ridgeline. Here it joins what appears to be an old 4WD track heading south along the summit. First through swamp and tussock, this dries increasingly to barren claypan before the contorta takes over. In places: low, stunted, scattered; in other mature – the track a dimly lit tunnel on a bed of needles beneath the pine canopy. It is very easy going along the stony gravel surface, climbing slowly to the evocatively named summit at ‘G no. 2’. The turnoff west to Black Birch Bivouac lies just beyond. Lying to the west of the ridge, just where the contorta give out to a wall of beech, this is another typical Kaweka dog-box-biv.

Note: Described in the reverse direction to your journey

No description