Giveaways
ARTHUR’S PASS is the most important alpine pass in the Canterbury region of New Zealand’s South Island. It’s certainly the only one with a regular train service, stopping at a rather Swiss-style mountain station at the Pass. The A-frame design has paintings on the ceiling inside.
The train service is a scenic excursion train called the TranzAlpine. In the South Island north of Christchurch,the Coastal Pacific and the TranzAlpine normally run daily services, year-round in the case of the TranzAlpine but not in winter in the case of the Coastal Pacific.
Both by car and by train, you get there via the small town of Springfield, which has a very unusual claim to fame, as towns named Springfield go, in that it was the birthplace and early home of an important leader of the Chinese Communist Revolution, Rewi Alley.
Alley popularised the phrase ‘gung ho’, now a byword for enthusiasm in English: it literally means ‘work together’. As to how a man from a small town in New Zealand ended up by the side of leaders from Mao to Deng Xiaoping, well, that’s told in several storyboards on the monument.
Beyond Springfield, if you are travelling by road, you go through Porters Pass, which is 920 metres or just over three thousand feet above sea level.
That’s higher than the township of Arthur’s Pass, which sits at 739 metres or 2,425 feet, and coincidentally the same height as the Arthur’s Pass summit, also 920 metres.
Between the two passes, you drive through an upland landscape of lakes and river flats — cold, bleak and bracing.
There are four skifields in this part of Canterbury: Porters Ski Area, Mount Cheeseman, Broken River and Craigieburn. There is also the Craigieburn Forest Park with its many tramping tracks.
But probably the most culturally important thing that you will come to, between the two passes, is Kura Tāwhiti, also known as Castle Hill, beside the main road to Arthur’s Pass. Here is its location on a map with aerial imagery.
Kura Tāwhiti lies to the south of other interesting places on the way to Arthur’s Pass from Christchurch, such as Cass Station and the Bealey Hotel, indicated on the map above. I will be talking about these below. Incidentally, the words Arthur’s Pass on the same map refer to the Arthur’s Pass Ecolodge; Arthur’s Pass township and the actual mountain pass of the same name are off the map, to the north of the Bealey Hotel.
I hesitate to call Kura Tāwhiti Castle Hill: not only because it is very sacred to Māori and should therefore have its proper name, but also because there are Castle Hills everywhere in New Zealand and even two others in the very same area I believe, so it gets confusing!
Kura Tāwhiti means ‘treasure from afar’ and refers to the cultivation of kūmara or sweet potatoes in this area, unusually far south for kūmara cultivation but very sunny and sheltered between the rocks.
The area was long used for shelter from the biting local winds by humans as well and has traces of 500-year-old charcoal drawings done by the Waitaha people, early Māori of the South Island.
The previous photos were taken during the warmer part of the year. In winter, the site looks positively Icelandic.
The Kura Tāwhiti Access Track does a loop behind the stones of Kura Tāwhiti, a loop which goes close to the top of Castle Hill (also 920 metres). Kura Tāwhiti is quite close to Craigieburn Forest Park and very close to a locality called Castle Hill Village, from which some other tracks go up into the hills including the local Leith Hill Loop Track and the Hogs Back Track that leads to Mount Cheeseman, Broken River, and Craigieburn skifields, and to Craigieburn Forest Park more generally.
Here’s a story on Kura Tāwhiti, from the pages of New Zealand Geographic: nzgeo.com/stories/the-rocks-of-castle-hill. You can also look up DOC’s webpage on the Kura Tāwhiti Conservation Area, as the site is officially known.
There is also the Cave Stream Scenic Reserve, about six kilometres northward of Kura Tāwhiti on the other side of the road. Here are some winter photos of the track leading into Cave Stream.
By the way, you have to go by road to get to Kura Tāwhiti and Cave Stream, as the TranzAlpine’s line takes another route through these parts, through a district called Avoca, which has an interesting history of its own to do with now-defunct coal mines.
Before Arthur’s Pass, the train from Christchurch passes through Cass Station, about 25 km from Arthur’s Pass township by road and a slightly shorter distance by rail.
After the artist Rita Angus painted a striking picture of it in the mid-1930s, Cass Station became famous throughout New Zealand. In a contest held in 2006, Angus’s Cass was voted New Zealand’s greatest painting.
You can drive to Cass Station also, as it is just a few hundred metres off the main road. It doesn’t seem to have changed much.
A few kilometres up the main road, as it turns westward below Mount Horrible, there is a gravel road off to the right leading to the Hawdon Shelter Campsite, by the Hawdon River at the foot of Woolshed Hill. You can see all those features, near Cass, in the topographical map just above.
Shortly before the main road crosses the Waimakariri River, you come to the Bealey Hotel where you can stay or, if passing through, enjoy refreshments while gazing out on the valley and the mountains through panorama windows. There is also the Arthur’s Pass Ecolodge and other accommodations nearby, but the Bealey Hotel is well worth it for a casual visit.
Once over the Waimakariri River from the Bealey Hotel, you come to the Arthur’s Pass Scenic Lookout, which is well worth another stop.
As you can also see in the topographical map above, just to the south of Arthur’s Pass township, the Mingha River branches off the Bealey River. Some trampers like to hike up the Mingha River via the Mingha Track and Goat Pass, where there is a hut, to the Deception River, which flows in the opposite direction, and to follow the Deception Valley Route down to the Morrison Footbridge over the Ōtira River. That’s another way to get across the Southern Alps!
Once you get to Arthur’s Pass, it is worth checking out the many hikes and other things that can be done in the pass. Here’s a map from an excellent New Zealand Department of Conservation (DOC) brochure called Discover Arthur’s Pass.
A good place to base yourself and find your bearings is by the Visitor Centre, at the Avalanche Creek Shelter Campsite.
Right next to the Avalanche Creek Shelter, there is the Arthur’s Pass National Park Visitor Centre and a kiosk with a bronze statue of a kea, the famous mountain parrot of New Zealand. Just across the road, there is the Avalanche Creek Waterfall, a small but attractive cascade that has the advantage of being in the middle of town.
The New Zealand Department of Conservation (DOC) is trying to discourage kea from visiting Arthur’s Pass township because they scavenge for unhealthy food and cross and recross the main road on foot and get run over by cars. A local man was feeding them for a while and DOC didn’t have the powers to stop him. Other dangers include getting poisoned by lead-headed roof nails and flashings and, unfortunately also, by 1080 that was dropped to kill pests. One was also killed by a cat. DOC is working to reduce all these dangers and fewer kea have been killed and poisoned, just lately, than was the case before.
For more, see Venetia Sherson’s recent story ‘Arthur’s Pass tourists love kea, but locals are desperately trying to keep them away.’
From the Avalanche Creek Shelter Campsite, you can do a roughly seven- hour loop hike to the top of Avalanche Peak and back, arriving a little further to the north in the village.
No doubt because it is so accessible, Avalanche Peak is said to be the most-climbed peak in the country, even if the name is a little off-putting. The New Zealand Department of Conservation webpage on the Avalanche Peak loop describes sections of the way as ‘advanced tramping track’ and others as ‘expert route,’ the highest common category of difficulty. People who have, perhaps, overestimated their abilities or the seriousness of the climb have been killed on it or otherwise got into trouble.
On my most recent visit to Arthur’s Pass, with my friend Grant, I had wanted to do this loop, but Grant declined.
Fortunately, there are also plenty of shorter and easier walks to do from the village. For instance, there’s a waterfall at the Devil’s Punchbowl, a bit further north and on the other side of the main road from the Avalanche Creek Shelter.
There are also lots of heritage trails and other things to do in the town itself, and they are described in Discover Arthur’s Pass.
You can download the full brochure from DOC’s web page on Arthur’s Pass National Park. The local website arthurspass.com is also informative in more general terms and carries a link to the brochure as well.
Just off the previous map, to the north, is the actual summit of Arthur’s Pass and, right next to it, the Temple Basin Skifield, accessible by the Temple Basin Track.
Temple Basin is a club field, and not accessible by car. You have to hike up from a carpark near the main road, a climb that can take an hour or more for normal people, or less if you are super-fit and keen.
There is a goods lift that carries people’s skis and packs up. It is a good idea to hang onto the poles, though, and use them as climbing poles on the track.
The skifield is worth hiking up to even in summer, for the view. The view over the pass from Temple Basin is praised in the brochure (December 2019 version) as follows:
A nature photographer’s dream. This track starts from above the bush line at the Temple Basin car park, five km north of Arthur’s Pass village. It zig-zags steeply up the hill to an open tussock basin, ski-club buildings and the Lockwood day shelter. On a clear day you get magnificent views of Mt Rolleston/Kaimatau across the valley.
By way of an update, I hiked up to the Temple Basin skifield for the first time, eventually, in spring. Here is a video I shot of that visit. It is a beautiful climb, though a bit hardcore to get to a skifield!
Here are some photos I took, the first one of Arthur’s Pass township, and all the rest of the track up to Temple Basin and the skifield, including the view.
I had always wanted to climb up to Temple Basin, and I am glad I have done it! There were only twenty to twenty-five people there when I made it to the field, mostly drunk students.
There was beautiful fresh snow and the lodge on the skifield has modern bunkrooms, but I didn’t want to stay the night. I might have had I gone with friends.
Note: I have included the name of Ōtira without a tohutō, or macron, in the title, as the more strictly correct version with the macron sometimes doesn’t show up if you search using the non-macron spelling.
And that’s all, folks. Happy Matariki, the revived Māori midwinter festival of the rising of the Pleiades, a public holiday in New Zealand since 2022 and catching on elsewhere in Polynesia!
Next week, I will be putting up Part 2 of this essay.
If you liked this post, check out my book about the South Island! It’s available for purchase from available from my website a-maverick.com.
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