New Zealand’s Great Walks
Abel Tasman Coast Track
Routinely touted as New Zealand’s most beautiful Great Walk, the Abel Tasman Coast Track is also the most popular. Located in the country’s smallest national park, this track brings together great weather, granite cliffs, golden sands and a bushy backdrop. Spot seals and birds, explore fascinating estuaries, hidden inlets and freshwater pools, study bizarre rock formations and significant trees…or simply laze around on that beach towel you packed. Water taxis and kayak trips offer endless options for maximising enjoyment.
Great Walks
Tongariro Northern Circuit
New Zealand’s oldest national park is also home to one of its most dynamic and imposing Great Walks. The Tongariro Northern Circuit loops among a trio of volcanoes that provided one of the most dramatic backdrops in Lord of the Rings, and wears dazzling lakes, steaming vents, lava bombs and craters like bling. Add in a couple of waterfalls and the country’s only desert and you get a sense of what makes this a truly great walk.
Great Walks
Lake Waikaremoana
Remote, immense and shrouded in mist, Te Urewera encompasses the North Island’s largest tract of virgin forest. The park’s highlight is Lake Waikaremoana (‘Sea of Rippling Waters’), a deep crucible of water encircled by the Lake Waikaremoana track. This tramp passes through ancient rainforest and reedy inlets, and traverses gnarly ridges, including the famous Panekiri Bluff, from where there are stupendous views of the lake and endless forested peaks and valleys.
Great Walks
Whanganui Journey
The Great Walk you can have when you’re not having a walk, the Whanganui Journey is actually a canoe or kayak trip along the Whanganui River, NZ’s longest navigable waterway. It’s a journey through sheer gorges, where the reflections can almost induce vertigo, and over short bouncy rapids. The forest is dense and the views are immense. Along the way it passes the folly-like Bridge to Nowhere, numerous bush campsites and the only DOC hut in the country that’s also used as a marae (Māori meeting house).
Great Walks
Heaphy Track
This wild and wonderful historic crossing from Golden Bay to the West Coast dishes up the most diverse scenery of any of the Great Walks, taking in dense forest, tussock-covered downs, caves, secluded valleys and beaches dusted in salt spray and fringed by nikau palms. It’s a mighty wilderness, and if time’s at a premium you can always mountain bike it (in winter and spring, at least)…
Great Walks
Kepler Track
One of three Great Walks within Fiordland National Park, the Kepler Track was built to take pressure off the Milford and Routeburn. Many trampers now say it rivals both of them. This high crossing takes you from the peaceful, beech-forested shores of Lake Te Anau and Lake Manapouri before bumping across the alpine tops of Mt Luxmore. Expect towering limestone bluffs, razor-edged ridges, vast views and crazy caves. The Kepler is a truly spectacular way to appreciate the grandeur of NZ’s largest national park.
Great Walks
Milford Track
The finest walk in the world? Somebody once thought so, and wrote as much in a London newspaper…and so the mythology of the Milford Track was born. If it’s hyperbole, it’s only by degrees, for this track is a compendium of all good mountain things: gin-clear streams, dense rainforest, an unforgettable alpine pass and Sutherland Falls; one of the highest waterfalls in the world.
Great Walks
Routeburn Track
NZ’s second-most popular Great Walk is truly a mountain spectacular. The Routeburn Track climbs high onto alpine slopes linking Fiordland and Mt Aspiring National Parks, providing seemingly endless views, though nearer-to-hand sights such as thundering waterfalls, bizarre rock formations, alpine tarns and peculiar plant life will likely capture your attention just as much. The track is regularly compared, and rated against, the Milford Track, but it is its own little piece of walking wonder.
Great Walks
Rakiura Track
Following the Foveaux Strait coast and shore of Paterson Inlet on tranquil Stewart Island, this leisurely loop offers a rewarding combination of waterside scenery, notable native trees and ferns, and historic relics of bygone days. Bird-watchers will be all atwitter, with a diverse range of species to be seen and heard. These include big-winged coastal birds such as sooty shearwaters and mollymawks, as well as little blue penguins; beaky waders such as dotterels, herons and godwits in the inlet; and forest birds such as kiwis, bellbirds, parakeets, kereru and kaka.
Great Walks
Paparoa Track
Slated to open in 2019, the Paparoa Track will become NZ’s 10th Great Walk. The 55km shared-use trail (tramping and mountain biking) will cross the West Coast’s Paparoa Range, connecting two existing tramps – the Croesus Track and the Inland Pack Track. It takes in the alpine tops of the range, thick swaths of rainforest and the limestone cliffs of the Pororari River, as well as diverting along a side trail to the site of the former Pike River Mine, where 29 miners were killed in an accident in 2010.
