Waiau - Waikaremoana Route

Time: 4-5 days

This route in the Te Urewera national park takes in a wide range of terrain and scenery. Rough gravel rd, easy river valleys, bouldery creek bed, ridge track covered in windfall and carefully manicured great walk track. It doesn't form a complete loop so you'll need a way to get back to your car at the end or the tramp. Parts of this track poorly marked so a good map and compass as well some decent navigation skills are essential.

Getting to the Waiau valley 

0-2.5 hours walking. Depends on whether you walk the entire road or take a vehicle.

There is a four wheel drive road through Whites clearing to the Waiau headwaters. This road is through private property. You can walk it no problems but if you want vehicle access you'll need to get in contact with the land owners. They can be contacted through their business Ahurei Adventures. For a fee they will provide secure car parking or a lift up the road in one of their vehicles.

Whites Clearing to Wairoa Junction via Parahaki Stream

2-3 hours 

A fairly common sight in a Urewera clearing. Most of the horses seem to be at least partly domesticated, this one followed me for a few minutes as I walked through the clearing and was quite keen to have a go at eating my hand while I was patting it.

This rather elaborate and fairly permanent looking bivy was on the true right of the Parahki Stream just upstream from the confluence with the Wairoa. There are other bivy's setup in the Waiau valley but this was by far the best one I saw.

Old Parahaki Hut Site to Central Waiau Hut

~2 Hours 

There are a lot of trout in the Waiau river system. On this visit most of the trout were holding in the pools and very wary, or perhaps I was just out of practice (probably a bit of both).  The fish in the photo was taken from a fast riffle. The Parahaki and Wairoa streams were also holding good numbers of trout.

Waiau river valley The Waiau river valley is very open in places making for easy walking and good views.

There seemed to be a lot of large spiders in the valley. I've often seen these spiders at night in other areas but they were out and about during the day here.

Central Waiau Hut is a fairly standard 8 bunk hut. There are good fishing and hunting opportunities around this hut. Central Waiau Hu

Central Waiau Hut to Te Waiotukapiti Hut 

3-4 Hours 

The track here mostly follows the river apart from a detour to avoid a gorgy section near blue slip. The gorge is quite passable in normal river flows although its a little trick in places. Probably only worth travelling down the river if hunting or fishing.

Te Waiotukapiti Hut to Lake Waikaremoana via Pukekohu Range

9-13 Hours

This section is marked as taking 10 hours but it would be quite difficult to get there at the time of writing (Apr 2010) due to the huge amounts of windfall on the track. Constant detours are required to get around the fallen trees, this is very time consuming as its not always easy to find the track again particularly if the detour coincides with the track changing direction.

A few hundred metres down the Waiau from the Te Waiotukapiti hut the Te Waiotukapiti stream enters on the true left. The Te Waiotukapiti stream is followed for 2-3 hours until the second major junction is reached. The stream provides fairly slow travel as it is quite bouldery in places. From the junction there is a track up the ridge onto the Pukekohu range. The beginning of the track is fairly well marked with a "track" sign visible from the fork in the river.

The track up the ridge and along the Pukekohu Range is difficult to follow in places because of the windfall. 

From the junction the track to Waikaremoana drops 500m in altitude down to the Manganuiohou River. There is another campsite just before reaching the river.

From the Manganuiohou there is a 300m hill to tackle before dropping down to meet the Waikaremoana track near the Maraunui campsite. If you've walked over from the Waiau in a single day you'll most likely be happy to stop there for the night. As it's part of a great walk you'll need a booking for these campsites as they charge double price if you don't have one. The cooking shelter is nice to have in bad weather but if you want to save the hassle of booking you could stay back at the campsite by the Manganuiohou river.

Maraunui Campsite to Hopuruahine

5-8 hours

This section covers roughly 19km. This sounds like a huge distance but the track is of such good quality that it can be covered reasonably quickly. Certainly much faster travel than the trip over the Pukekohu range from the Waiau. You'll pass several huts and campsites along the way which are great if you're looking to spread the trip out. See the DOC website for more info on the Waikaremoana Track.