🏔️#72 - New 3-Wire Bridge, Mount & Wairere Falls Updates, Great Walks, & More.

And we are back with the 72nd weekly NZ Hiking Newsletter.

The fight for spots on Great Walks is coming up soon, and I saw a trick from Dan (of schnerp.co.nz) that I haven’t seen before that’ll increase your chances of getting a top spot in the lobby. To quote:

“Each browser gets its own lobby position. When DOC's lobby opens, everyone is assigned a random queue position — and each browser counts separately. Open the booking site in Chrome, Safari, AND Firefox; that's three rolls of the dice instead of one.”

That’s a good tip to tell ya mates. He’s got other tips in this post.

Anyway, I'll let you know what’s going on in the hiking scene in New Zealand, along with other related bits and pieces I find interesting.

🗒️ Other Track News Etc.

Great Walks Out Of Season Season Off To A Flyer. It’s been a great week of weather for most of the great walks since the Great Walk season officially ended on April 30th. That means from May 1st it’s first in first served for most of the Great Walk huts. With a stunning weekend, hopefully that didn’t make things awkward with huts being swamped with people.

If you’re planning to stay at the huts, note that most of the Great Walk huts require more than a single ‘serviced hut ticket’ which is worth $25.

Example: Routeburn Falls Hut is $35 for stays between May 1st and June 30th. So you need a serviced hut ticket ($25) and a standard hut ticket ($10).

It’s confusing with fixed hut ticket prices, and variable hut prices…just make sure to check how much the hut you’re staying at costs before you go, and have enough hut tickets to match the value.

3-Wire Bridge Rebuilt. I feel like my bucket list of routes on the West Coast is growing out of control, and seeing a photo of a new 3-wire bridge has now added the Lambert Tops Loop to that. This is the third bridge over the river with the first one build in the 1970s and the second in 2010-ish (from what I can gather).

Hopefully this one sticks around for a long time! I did get confused for a sec, the Wanganui River (and valley tracks) is on the West Coast, not in Whanganui. Details here.

2 More Huts Move To The Booking System. In Tongariro National Park, both Waihohonu and Mangatepopo huts (and Oturere when it reopens) now need to be booked over winter. Mangatepopo makes sense given it’s only 2km from the road, but I’m not so sure Waihohonu Hut needs to be. Details here.

Scrambled Legs Shuttles Closing Doors. If you’ve ever taken a shuttle to the trails in the top part of the South Island, you might have used the brilliant Scrambled Legs shuttle service.

In a sad post, they’re closing down from May 8th. I’ve always seen great reviews from them. But fair enough, it seems as though it took the owners away from actually being on the trails so it’s time for them to explore more of our country. Announcement here.

Ultimate Hikes (owned by Trojan Holdings) has also got their paws in transport to the Milford Track, with the launch of transportmilfordtrack.co.nz (run by the Ultimate Hikes team). I’m not sure how I feel about this…

😹 Hiking Funny

🗒️ Other Track News Etc.

Norbury! I mentioned James Norbury a couple of newsletters ago. He has again been getting roasted in the comments of his Instagram posts for using drone footage in his content, with many believing he can’t have the correct permits for using drones in National Parks.

It’s getting awkward, with DOC not saying anything at this stage, nor are any of the brands that have supported him on his tour of the country…and it’s looking ugly for all involved. James has also gone quiet…is he banking on all publicity as good publicity?

Wairere Falls Track Repairs To Cost $150,000. The Wairere Falls Track was closed last June when a 3-metre boulder was deemed to be a threat to track users, and it’s still at least another six months before it’ll reopen.

Engineers and other fancy people are looking into what needs to be done to get the track up to safety. At this stage, the works will cost ~$150,000, which includes costs thus far, and upgrading the visitor experience.

Throw some dynamite under the boulder, see what happens and go from there? I don’t think anyone was complaining about the visitor experience pre-closure…More details here.

Which Hut Has The Best Deck? I saw the post on Instagram vouching for Powell Hut’s deck…but it instantly reminded me of one of the best commercials in NZ of all time (below).

If you’ve never seen it before…it’s a must watch. If you’ve seen it before, a must rewatch. Silly kiwis.

🧔‍♂️ What I've Been Up To...

I was up in Tauranga for a birthday bash for a few days, so no trails were explored. I was assuming I’d go for a standard trip up Mount Maunganui, but to my surprise, it’s still closed.

It seems as though the track around the base of the Mount is cooked for the near future, with 29 landslides. There’s a chance for remedial work to reopen the summit track to start soon based on feedback from a community meeting on Thursday.

Ideally they can get that sorted ASAP, it’s a big drawcard for the town. I can’t help but think that in many countries, a lot more action would have been taken by now (the landslide was on Jan 22).

Details here.

Have a great week, hike it up.

As always, reply to this email (or message me on Whatsapp +642041702764) with anything and everything…I’m happy to chat.

Chur,

Jub

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