Giveaways
On the other side of the road from Temple Basin, which I explored in last week’s post, there is the Ōtira Valley Track, up the headwaters of the Ōtira River.
I did this just lately with Grant, who was up for hiking this one even if he wasn’t too keen on another hike I mentioned last week, Avalanche Peak.
The Ōtira Valley Track is susceptible to avalanches from May to November.
About an hour and a half in, the track turns into a mountaineering route. We didn’t go past this point.
Here is a short video I made on the track:
In terms of places to stay in Arthur’s Pass, you can stay cheaply in the backpackers’ hostels. And of course, there are the more expensive motel options available. There is also cheap camping, such as at the Avalanche Creek Campsite I mentioned in Part One.
If you want to stay longer, here is a story about everyday life in Arthur’s Pass: ‘What it’s really like to live in New Zealand’s smallest town’.
Passing through, you can also eat at the Arthur’s Pass Store and the Wobbly Kea Café, named after New Zealand’s famous alpine parrot the kea.
But I ate at the Ōtira Stagecoach Hotel in nearby Ōtira, about 14 km closer to the West Coast, which in this area means 14 km north of Arthur’s Pass, as the road runs from north to south through the pass.
The ‘Stagecoach’ bit isn’t made up. For some time, before the completion of the Ōtira Tunnel in 1923, they really did run stagecoaches through this area. The hotel is full of old-time memorabilia.
There were lots of interesting images of Maori. In the next photgraph, you can see a named reproduction of a painting of Mere Kuru te Kati by Gottfried Lindauer, next to a portrait of Te Rangitopeora by the same artist, and, in less dignified terms, an item of the stuffed-animal kitsch that is also a feature of the Ōtira pub.
Here is a video I made inside:
I truly enjoyed hanging out at the Ōtira Stagecoach Hotel.
One thing that astounded me was the number of huts in this area.
A lot of people go to the Carroll Hut just past Ōtira. That’s a three-hour hike above the Ōtira River to Kelly Saddle, which the hut sits alongside.
And then there are the historic walks, and to the Bridal Veil Falls and then over to Jack’s Hut. And the chimney-like Dobson Memorial at the actual Arthur’s Pass summit.
(I have a bit to say about who Dobson was, a bit further below. Suffice to say that his first name was Arthur.)
Near Athur’s Pass township, I did the Mount Bealey Track. These are all within an hour to an hour and a half.
And you can go up to the Ōtira Viaduct Lookout, which as one website reminds us is also known as Death Corner, where you can get a great view of the Ōtira Viaduct and see kea.
I was sitting there admiring the viaduct when my rubber-soled sandal was attacked by kea, which have no fear of human beings whatsoever and a peculiar obsession with rubber. Several kea gathered on a railing to wait their turn to have a go at my sandals. Kea are notorious for stripping the rubber from car windscreens and wipers and generally trashing campsites. They are also ranked as among the most intelligent birds in the world if not the most intelligent, so it’s a kind of mischievousness, I think.
Here’s one of the kea on the railing, displaying its red underwings.
Kea are fairly carnivorous, unlike most other parrots, and used to have a reputation for attacking live sheep. The farmers used to shoot kea in large numbers, though the modern scientific thinking is that such attacks are unusual and likely to have been vastly outnumbered by sightings of kea pecking at a carcass. On the odd occasion, even now, a kea that has developed a taste for live sheep has been legally shot by government rangers, though kea have, otherwise, been absolutely protected since 1986.
In flight, they do look a bit like eagles, which are known to go after lambs in Scotland and a few other places.
So maybe the kea were trying to eat my toes — now there’s a sobering thought.
Still, in spite of all the trouble they cause, it’s hard to dislike them!
Kea are rare overall, in part because their chicks and even adult kea are taken by feral cats and other introduced pests and predators. But because they are sociable and like to hang around people, doubtless on the lookout for scraps as well, kea are still a fairly common sight in the mountains. This is a paradox that masks their actual rarity.
I would like to walk to Carrington Hut, five hours up the Waimakariri River. And from there, to cross the Taipoiti River and do the the Three Passes Route, of Harman Pass, Whitehorn Pass and Browning Pass/Noti Raureka.
This route, so alpine that it’s recommended only to do it in summer, involves crossing a permanent ice-field with crevasses at the Whitehorn Pass. What an amazing hike that would be; though only if your skills are up to it of course! The DOC page on the Three Passes Route is full of tips on how to do it as safely as possible.
The name Arthur’s Pass refers to Arthur Dobson, the explorer who supposedly discovered it: though it goes without saying that the Māori generally knew of all the larger features of the interior, including its useful mountain passes.
In the case of the pass that would be called Arthur’s, Dobson and his party were told where to go (in a friendly manner) by a rangatira (chief) named Tarapuhi.
Though it formed part of a traditional trail, the pass presented engineering difficulties for anyone who proposed to build a road or a railway. Indeed, its advocates were lampooned by those who favoured other routes, such as Browning Pass.
The difficulties and expense were so great that there was no railway until 1923, when a rail tunnel through the summit of the pass between Arthur’s Pass township on the Canterbury side and Ōtira on the West Coast side was completed. At more than 8.5 km (5.3 miles), the Ōtira tunnel was one of the longest in the world at the time. People on one side of the mountains would peer down the tunnel to get an idea of weather conditions on the other side!
As for the road, though it was built earlier, it clung to the side of the mountains over the same stretch and was regularly wiped out by landslides. Indeed, the skeptics had the last laugh in a way, when, after about 130 years the government gave up on trying to repair the worst section and replaced it with the 440-metre long Ōtira Viaduct.
The viaduct is not the only engineering marvel in the area. The 8.5 km Ōtira Tunnel, which celebrated its 100th anniversary on 4 August 2023. The tunnel was very expensive and took fifteen years to hew out of the rock, from 1908 to 1923.
Here’s a pan my friend Chris did around the railway station.
And here’s a video slightly under two minutes long, showing the excursion train of the day emerging from the western portal of the tunnel.
There was also a lot of interesting artwork, perhaps commissioned for the centenary.
As well as surviving (or replica) tunnelers’ huts and lots of information panels.
Next week, I will be doing a post about a midwinter trip to the Mackenzie Basin, or Te Manahuna, possibly ill-advised as it has a reputation for being the coldest place in New Zealand short of actual mountaintops, but productive of great photos anyway!
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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