Into The Interior- Journey to Edoras; Part 2

Continuing on from Part 1

After lunch at Lake Clearwater we carried on up the valley, we've another 21kms of gravel road to travel before we reach the end of the road.

But..it's not long before I've shouted out 'Stop!' (ever so nicely) yet again. These unusual lines have formed in the sheep tracks as the snow has melted away. I think I've mentioned it before, but you may notice a colour difference sometimes in my photos (see above & below). This is due to the photo above being taken through the tinted windscreen of the ute...and me not having time to adjust them all as I process the photos. 

Our next stop is at a lookout point- it's not an official lookout, but going by the rough gravel pulloff area just before the road drops down into the valley, it's a place that many people stop to take in this breathtaking view (click to enlarge).

Ahead of us is the spectacular braided Rangitata River plain, the Rangitata (which means 'close sky' in Maori), is made up of several rivers that flow from their headwaters high in the Southern Alps, that spine of mountains that runs down the middle of the South Island. The eagle eyed amongst you will spot a hallowed Middle Earth location, the rest will have to return to check it out once they've finished reading the blog post.

The Potts River, contained in a deep narrow valley, sweeps dramatically around from our right to join the Rangitata below us.

It's so hard to get perspective in these huge vistas, here's another pano with the road we've just driven down on the right. It's absolutely stunning scenery!

We carry on and as the road (sealed on this downhill/uphill section) drops to the valley floor I can't possibly shout 'Stop!" again so make do with another shot through the windscreen.

We pass by an old friend, the Te Araroa Trail. We've criss-crossed the trail so many times on our journey through the South Island. There'll not be anybody walking it at this time of the year, there are many places that are inaccessible during winter.

We called in to check out Mt Potts Station, a large farm station nestled below the rugged Potts Range and overlooking the river valley.

Mt Potts also offers lodge accommodation and has tent and powered motorhome sites available too. There's plenty of activities to do for anyone staying. During the winter there's heliskiing or skiing at the Mt Potts skifield, farm tours, hiking, fishing, hunting, rafting, biking or just relaxing and enjoying the spectacular scenery. Unfortunately we wouldn't get 'Out There' up the driveway, the overhanging pines are too low.

There's another reason Mt Potts Station is also popular with visitors, along with it being not too far a walk off trail for Te Araroa walkers to spend a night, it's also home to Mt Sunday.

Mt Sunday, that small brown rocky hill in the centre of the valley has been made famous by Sir Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy and has become the El Dorado to die-hard LOTR fans, a must visit while touring the country.

Mt Sunday was the set for Edoras, the fortress city of the Rohan people in the Lord of the Rings. The Golden Hall and surrounding buildings were built at the top of the sheer cliffs, with the gatehouse and more buildings at the foot. And even though the area was returned to its natural state once filming was finished, Mt Sunday still attracts hundreds of people on a pilgrimage, they come to see it, walk it, touch it, photograph it, and then to go home and be able to say they have journeyed to Edoras.

Unfortunately we didn't have the time to walk to the summit of Mt Sunday, a 3km, 90 minute return walk, we carried on up the road stopping again to take in the views. In this panorama shot you can clearly see Mt Sunday in the middle of the river plain. Mt Sunday is a 'roche moutoné', a low rounded hill of bedrock, left behind by a glacier as it's retreated up the valley.

I couldn't get enough of the spectacular views in every direction; just to stand there and take it all in was breathtaking (not least because of the cold air!). 

The sheer vastness and how remote and untouched it was; we are but just small fry in this land of splendour. I love how the mountains rise so sharply from the valley floor. 

We haven't much further to travel before the road runs out. We're heading to the base of that mountain ahead of us. But first we'll cross Jumped Up Downs, those gentle slopes leading down to the braided river below (I wonder how they were named).

Long before Edoras there was Erewhon, a huge 14,000 hectare high country station world famous in New Zealand, and one of the main reasons why people ventured to the top of this valley. Erewhon's name is a play on the word 'nowhere', and it must have really felt like that when early settlers, and then later; farm managers, shepherds, musterers, shearers and their families arrived to work on the farm.

Samuel Butler wrote in his classic novel Erewhon, a great description of this harsh landscape. "Never shall I forget the utter loneliness of the prospect- only the little far away homestead giving sign of human handiwork, the vastness of mountain and plain, of river and sky; the marvellous atmospheric affects sometimes black mountains against a white sky, and then again, after cold weather, white mountains against black sky”. 

We drove through to the turning bay, I'd have loved to have carried on and seen the homestead and farm buildings but I couldn't twist my conservative other half's arm. I had to make do with seeing some of the Clydesdales the Erewhon is famous for in a paddock beside the turning bay.

The Station runs Merino sheep (the only breed that can survive in these harsh conditions), Hereford cattle, deer and has a Clydesdale Horse Stud.

Most of the Station's tractor work is done with a team of of Clydesdales, all the stock work is carried out on foot or horseback and in this unforgiving environment, horses are quicker to ride places and can cross the rivers even when in flood. In the summer the Station offers visitors accommodation, a backcountry farming experience, wagon or saddle rides and overnight treks up the valley. I'm so coming back here!

We head back down the road pulling over to have a cup of tea at the same spot as before, overlooking Mt Sunday. And why wouldn't we?

Well, David would say because it's too bloody cold, there's an ice cold wind blowing so we rug up with jackets, gloves and hats and rather than sit on the tailgate like usual, we jiggle about trying to keep warm and keep our tea in the cup at the same time. I know it's hard to believe it's that cold when you look at the photos, but believe me it is freezing, perhaps 2-3c with a minus degree of wind chill.

At the far end of the valley, the Rangitata River disappears around the end of the mountains on the left and passes through the Rangitata Gorge. Another famous farm station, and twice the size of Erewhon at 30,000 hectares, Mesopotamia Station is on the other side of the river, centre right. Mesopotamia is at the end of the Rangitata Gorge Road, we've not been that far up the road, making it just past Peel Forest when we explored up that side of the river a couple of years ago.

While we were having our afternoon tea we spotted two vehicles driving along a track heading to the top of Mt Sunday. They belong to a LOTR tour company that is allowed to drive to the rock; the vehicles pulled in behind us when we were at the lookout. It's not long before we see little ants walking about at the top of Mt Sunday.

Mt Sunday gained its name because boundary riders from the surrounding high country stations used to meet there on Sundays for a cuppa and a catch up. Makes perfect sense! 

The cold eventually gets the better of us and we hurry about clearing up before climbing back into the warmth of the ute and head off towards home, stopping one more time just before the lookout so I can get a shot of the Potts River Bridge. You can see Mt Sunday, centre right, way in the background (remember to check out the photos I took at the lookout for Mt Sunday too).

Not far past Lake Clearwater, we do a quick drive-by (in and out) to check out two more of the Ashburton Lakes, these ones are side by side; tiny Lake Roundabout...

...and quite a bit bigger Lake Emma, two shallow depressions in the surrounding tussockland.

I wonder if that's the historic musterers/fishing hut across the water, where the old dinghy was based, the one that's now on display at the historic Hakatere farm buildings.

We had a fantastic day tiki-touring, and if you haven't already guessed it, we thought the scenery was absolutely spectacular. We didn't know it yet but this wasn't to be our last visit to the Lakes.

White Cliffs of…..Mangaweka

We said a final farewell to Kuripapango and turned right at the gate. Next stop Mangaweka.

We cross the Ngaruroro River for the last time and start the steady and slow climb up the “Gentle Annie’. From the top of the first climb we look back down on the river and can see part of the oxbow, the camp is around the far side of centre hill. Across the valley is Mt Kuripapango where you can clearly see the track I climbed  running up the ridge.

The ‘Gentle Annie’ was a lot longer than I remember with the road winding it’s way up, down and around for about 10kms. We were a little worried about hauling the van through the range but as it turned out it was a piece of cake compared with some of the roads we’ve travelled in the South Island. Although, going by some fellow RVers we spoke to in camp,  it’s a longer & steeper haul coming the other way, from west to east.

We had a great view of the Central Plateau mountains once we’d finally finished with climbing and were passing through rolling farmland. Some of the largest high country sheep stations in the North Island are located along the Napier-Taihape Road and other than the green crop paddocks the pasture looked bone dry. A long & hot summer has parched the land.

We stopped on the side of the road where I took this panorama looking south east, the Rangitikei River valley is somewhere down there.

We stopped to check out the historic Springvale Suspension Bridge, built in 1925 as the route from Taihape to Hastings became more popular, especially with farmers getting produce to the port in Napier.

And right along side is the new Springvale Bridge, built in 1970.

The reserve beside the bridges is a freedom camping area and would be a great place to stop for a night or two especially if you were a keen trout fisherman. We only stopped to check out the bridge this time. While there this tiny retro caravan on a big road trip pulled into the reserve. I’d seen it the night before camped at Kuripapango. It wasn’t going to be the last time we saw it either.

You can see here that the north facing slopes of the hills behind are very dry.

Further on down the road we speed past a large collection of farm buildings which belong to Erewhon Station, a very large sheep station (originally spelt Erehwon, the reverse of ‘nowhere’)- there’s also another Erewhon Station in the Canterbury high country, I wonder why, is there a connection? Other than both of them being out in the middle of nowhere. In the 1870s this Erewhon Station carried around 80,000 sheep. The wool was taken to Napier by packhorses or mules and quite a few were lost while negotiating the narrow track down and up the Ngaruroro River Gorge- now known as the ‘Gentle Annie’.

Just out of Taihape, David has to screech to a halt, when, as we round a corner, I spot this cute little church on a rise ahead of us. This is Opaea Maori Church, it's beside a marae.

We stopped in Taihape to dump the tanks (which, with careful management, lasted well over the two weeks at Kuripapango) and have a coffee at a cafe. Then we continued on south, now on State Highway One which, as it happens, wasn’t very busy. But it still felt like a 10 lane highway after two weeks out in the wops!

Finally we reached Mangaweka, a small settlement the rest of the country has left behind. Abandoned buildings litter the main street which was bypassed by SH1 back in the 1970s. Adventure tourism and farming are now the mainstays. Although Mangaweka is still famous (in NZ) for two things; a DC3 plane that is now tearooms & the beautiful white cliffs that form a gorge for the Rangitikei River.

We turn off the main road and head down towards the river where there are two camping grounds, one on either side of the river, the commercial campground is across the bridge. A more rustic one with limited amenities is in a reserve just before the bridge- the commercial campground collect the fees ($7pp per night)so there is some connection there. We’ve heard from several people that this one is a great place to stay.

There are two levels to the campground and we’re keen to park up on the lower level beside the river rather than up top where it’s just another grassy patch albeit with beautiful white cliffs as a backdrop.

The road down to the lower level is very narrow and overgrown but I walk ahead and we squeeze through. Luckily it’s soft branches that rub down our sides. Take note of the river level measuring stick! We’d have been outta there quick smart had it started to rain heavily!

Behind us the bridge crosses the river, we hear a gently ‘thump, thump’ as each vehicle crosses. It’s a one way bridge with wooden boards & there’s a 10kph speed restriction.

The Rangiteiki river starts on the eastern slopes of the Kaimanawa Mountains on the Central Plateau and flows southwest for around 185km. For much of it’s course the river flows through steep gorges with high papa rock (greywacke) cliffs. The river is very popular for fishing, canoeing, jet boating and white water rafting. Like the Ngaruroro, this river is running very low,  though we can see that it has crossed the gravel in front of our van very recently as there is still damp mud.

All the photos below have people in them, hard to believe but look carefully, that will give you an indication of the sheer height of the cliffs. They are very impressive and rise near vertical from the river. A sign in the campground warns not to swim underneath the cliffs (ignored by many), due to their soft structure. And not to be too concerned if you hear crashing sounds in the night, very few slips reach the water as the soft face breaks away on a regular basis.

There’s a fly fisherman in the middle left photo, I zoomed in & that’s him on the right. David went fishing both evenings we were at the camp; he hooked one small fish & landed a beauty which he released, much to the pleasure of tourist watching him from a nearby rock. It was a surprise there were any fish in the pool, it was near where everyone went swimming.

The following day we headed inland exploring (more on that in another blog) but stopped over the other side of the river to check out the commercial campground- a nice spot too- and the river & bridge from that side. This is looking towards our camp, you can see our van peeking out of the undergrowth and people down at the river’s edge.

The Mangaweka Bridge first took traffic across the river in 1904 but was never officially opened. The community have finally planned an  ‘Opening & Pioneer Day’ for 7th March, 2015, 111 years later. Better late than never!

It was a tight squeeze getting back out of the lower level but hey, we don’t do things by halves, we do push the boundaries occasionally but that gets us into some special spots.

We had a lovely two days at Mangaweka but we were both keen to get back on the road & head further south, getting ever closer to crossing back to the Mainland.