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| Heaphy a long the West Coast |
At 78.5 kilometres long, the Heaphy track is the longest of New Zealand's great walks. With one end starting in the foot hills of Golden bay and the other on the wild West Coast. This great walk is said to pack the most variety of NZ environments into one enjoyable tramp. Even though this is our last great walk to complete on south island, it still had a handful of first experiences to throw at us.
460 kilometres of road separate the two trail heads. This, in itself can be a logistical nightmare. To solve this nightmare, a handful of companies offer services from one road end to the other; four connecting buses, car relocation, helicopters, plane's and the old fashioned hitchhiking. Lucky for us, cheap back flights and good weather favoured our very first light aircraft flight!
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| Golden bay take off |
20 minutes in clear blue skies and we had flown the track that would be our home for the next three days. Our pilot pointed out the local highlights; farewell spit, a gold mining dam, Mt Perry, most of the Heaphy huts and the long, slithering Heaphy track below us. Even with Lucy as 'co-pilot' (as she put it), the plane journey easily lowered us into a sight seeing tourist mode and we had to reality check ourselves back with the 17k of wild West Coast track.
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| West Coast |
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| Heaphy river |
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| Lucy in 'copilot' seat |
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| Landed! |
Immersing ourselves into the first of the environments. We hit the Nikau palm tree forests, which gave a very tropical feel to the surf battered coast. The track naturally splits itself up with Crayfish Point. At just under half way and the only point that gets covered by high tide, the headland reaches far enough out into the Tasman sea to give great views down the coast. With the sun beating down and a haze blown in off the sea, the West Coast wouldn't look out of place in any of the Jurassic Park films. Coupled with the scattered shells of giant carnivorous land snail's, the environment really does create a wild place.
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| Snail shell's |
We were glad to finally arrive at the newly built Heaphy hut. 26 beds perched by the mouth of the Heaphy river, with cracking views up the valley and out to sea.
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| Sunset from the hut |
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| Not the best night shot but there's some stars.. |
Our first 30k+ day of the trip soon had us heading uphill and out of the tropical feeling palm trees. Steadily climbing from the coast the palms gave way to beech tree forests where the climb never seemed to end. We obviously weren't the only ones feeling the strain of the hill and the desperate messages scratched into the dirt asking how far the hut was gave us a giggle or two.
Reaching the new James McKay hut marked the start of the Gouland Downs. This was the third environment for us to pass through. Starting with dwindling beech tree patches and opening up to grassy moorland, this plateau of land gave a very Scottish highland feel to our trip. The older Saxon hut was our home for the second night. With only two other people to share it with, this rustic hut had a very cosy feel and thankfully didn't smell of bug spray.
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| One of the wire bridge's |
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| Rainbow |
Whether it's a primordial brain function, social normality or something else, thunder and lightning gets the blood pumping. Waking in the middle of the night to a light and sound display, might even get the odd bit of adrenaline going too. All I can say is, ' thank God we decided not to camp!'. The short lived storm passed in ten minutes, but rattled the Spanish couple enough for them to move from the top bunk to a lower one...
We had spotted the shell's of the giant carnivorous land snail already, but none with a living snail inside. So, I had already concluded that these creatures would probably look more like a dragons head poking out of the shell. With horn's as antenna and big sharp dinosaur like teeth, ready to devour any and all flesh that stood in its way. Of course, all of this was based on the single fact that it was carnivorous.
As we set of for our last and second 30k+ day, the dream of this magical snail was destroyed. It just so happens, they look like almost all other snail's... just slightly bigger.
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| Carnivorous land snail... |
This day was always going to be a wash out, as the weather had predicted rain all day. We managed however, to duck and dodge the rain until we arrived at another new hut at Perry Saddle. This was the fourth and final environment to experience on the track. The sub alpine shrubs gave a nice open view, which on a clear day would have been spectacular. For us, the hut gave a welcome lunch spot and the final rest stop before the end. At this point, the posts that mark one kilometre to the huts had become beacons of hope. These popped up out of the forests and informed us that there would only be ten more minutes or so to the hut. I've never liked little green wooden posts as much as those posts that appeared out of the rain beaming hope and warmth.
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| Beacon of warmth and joy! |
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| Damp |
Four hours later, and three very wet bodies arrived at the Brown hut at the end of the track. I always found walking in the rain to be very therapeutic, but after the second hour, my therapy was done and the end couldn't have come soon enough. Luckily, folk's had already got a fire going and ushered us in and next to the warmth in the rustic hut.
All in all, the track gave a very nice end for us to the South Island great walks. Being one of the two great walks to make it into the lonely planets top 20 things to do, I was expecting the experience to be on par with the other South Island walks. The Heaphy however, has completely different landscapes than the others and because of that I personally don't think they can be compared side by side. I love the mountains, glacier's and deep cut valleys, so I would always side towards those environments of the mountainous regions, but the Heaphy, has something different. It has differing environments every 20k, a combination of rustic and state of the art huts. It has numerous limestone caves, arches and rock formations to explore, unique giant snails and of course it has the wild West Coast.
The Heaphy, simply put has four walks stacked on top of each and offers a fantastic trip through some of New Zealand's unique environments and wildlife. Another must do.
