News and media

Breast Hill Track opens

• 01 Apr 2011

The hut is new. The track is new. The views aren’t new, but were previously seen only by moas, Maori, musterers and their mutts.

The new access onto Breast Hill (1578m) provides any tramper or overnight walker with wide views from Mt Aspiring, to Lake Hawea, and across the Hawea and Wanaka Basins.

Te Araroa Trust and Te Araroa Otago Trust sought this route over nine years. It was secured finally by Crown Tenure Review, and DOC then took over construction of both the track and the new hut. As well as a day, or overnight walk of about five hours to the Pakituhi Hut, the Otago Conservancy has built it into a 30 km loop track using Timaru Creek.

And then there’s Te Araroa. The New Zealand trail was already in place north of here, coming over Mt Martha Saddle (1680 m) to Top Timaru Hut, and onward down Timaru Creek for 12 kilometres. Now the new track takes Te Araroa upward from the creek to Stody’s Hut, then onto the Breast Hill ridgeline for a five-hour tramp to Breast Hill, and Pakituhi Hut.

It’s a Te Araroa highlight. To the west, the alps dwindle to the rounded peaks of fiordland, but with one last scintillating pinnacle – Mt Aspiring. 

                                                                     ^{Looking down on Lake Hawea from Breast Hill                                                Pic - Mike Pullar}  

Closer in, Breast Hill drops away steeply to Lake Hawea township and the huge spaces of the Hawea and Wanaka Basins beyond.  

The full track is 54 km long and is a 3 to 4-day tramp from Birchwood Road in the north, to Timaru River Road on the shores of Lake Hawea. 

“The Breast Hill route was nearly lost”, according to Te Araroa Trust’s South Island Project Manager Michael Pullar. “There are a range of interests that compete in tenure review and it became clear the bureaucratic tide was against us in the Lake Hawea Station review. This was until Dunedin based MP, David Parker got involved. David, who was then the Minister of Land Information, quickly recognised the significance of the route the Trusts were seeking and made it clear he wouldn’t approve a proposal that didn’t accommodate it. Things resolved in the Trusts’ favour fairly quickly after that.”

Once the route was secured, DOC’s Wanaka Area Manager, Paul Hellebrekers, swung into action to project manage construction of the hut and track. He was also instrumental in the fund raising effort that secured the funds to pay for Pakituhi Hut.

Te Araroa CEO Geoff Chapple first tramped the Breast Hill ridgeline in 2002, by permission of Lake Hawea Station owner Tom Rowley. “I knew then that this could be a sovereign track – one of the very best. It overlooks that distinctive margin where the glaciers of the last ice age stopped, pushing up the moraines around Hawea and Wanaka and melting back.  For Te Araroa walkers headed south, there could be no better entry onto Otago.”