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Work has begun on a new hut on the Motatapu Track – part of Te Araroa’s route between Wanaka and Arrowtown.

 

The new hut will ease what was previously an eight-hour tramp from the Wanaka trailhead southward to Highland Creek Hut. It also opens up, for those who want a six- to eight-hour return day-walk to the hut and back,  a pretty route beside the Fernburn Stream and under a  canopy of remnant beech forest.

 

 

The 28-kilometre Motatapu Track was originally gifted to the nation by Eileen and Mutt Lange.  During negotiation with the Overseas Investment Commission in 2004 for the purchase of two adjacent pastoral lease properties, the Langes offered to support Te Araroa. The two paid for the track across their pastoral lease properties and for two huts en route.

 

The  route proved tough, and  the new hut has been placed to make one of the stages easier.  The Langes' company, Soho Properties, agreed to pay $100,000 towards the cost of the new hut, and the Otago Conservancy of the Department of Conservation, which built and  manages the track, is expected to fund the remainder of the budget through to a total of $192,000.  If the weather holds, DoC's contractors, Fulton Hogan, expect to complete by late December.

 

Te Araroa’s 48 kilometre route between Wanaka and Arrowtown uses the Otago Regional Council’s Millennium Track around the Wanaka lakeshore, then a 5-kilometre linking section through to Glendhu Bay. This section is being jointly funded by the Otago Regional Council and Queenstown Lakes District Council and is not yet complete. The track then goes up Motatapu Road for a few kilometres before joining the northern entrance to DoC's Motatapu Track and exiting three days later at the southern trailhead - the abandoned goldmining settlement of Macetown.  Te Araroa then follows existing tracks through to Arrowtown.