This article was first published in the Tararua Tramper Volume 79 No. 11, December 2007
Access to Rimutaka Range south of Mt Climie
9 September 2007
A map of the Pakuratahi Regional Park available on the Greater Wellington website (http:// www.gw.govt.nz/story_images/990_PakuratahiForestM_s8722.pdf ) shows a legal access into a Regional Council owned forestry plantation from Colletts Rd, Mangaroa. This plantation is part of the Regional Park. The access is through a gate about 400m up Colletts Rd from the intersection with Flux Rd and is at the foot of a spur covered in mature pines. There are a number of signs on the gate including one saying that permission of private landowners is required, however that seems to be a bit superfluous as the trails are all on Regional Park land!
The Council map shows a trail following forestry roads up onto North Climie. For our trip we followed the roads up the southern spur to the top of the pine plantation. The road ends at the boundary fence with neighbouring scrubby grazing land. The next 600m of Council land is thick scrub and badly in need of a trail cutting through it. Good stock trails through the scrub just over the fence are a lot easier. Beyond this band of scrub you enter beech forest and there is a good trail with some signs of it having been cut at some time. This brings you onto the main ridge about 500m southwest of Climie No. 2. It took our medium/fit party an hour and a half to this point, which is considerably quicker than the usual route via the road.
Our party then headed south along the ridge. The going is awkward until point 828 owing to wind throws, but after that the going improves. We lunched in the shelter of a prominent rock bump marked as point 809, after which we did a loop down to the forks in the creek to the south of 809. The feature of this area is that there is no evidence of people due to the isolation. Our route out was along the ridge to the west of Cooleys stream. This ridge is private land but Colin Cook knew one of the landowners and was able to arrange the necessary permissions. There is a prominent ground trail along this ridge but care needs to be taken to pick up all the turns. We had more trouble following the instructions for crossing the farmland than in navigating the bush.
- Party members
- Sieny Pollard, Robin Chesterfield, Colin Cook, Neil Challands (leader & scribe).