The West Coast Wilderness Trail covers 135km of stunning scenery between Ross and Greymouth.
The West Coast Wilderness Trail covers 135km of stunning scenery between Ross and Greymouth.
Joanna Wane spends four days riding the West Coast’s Wilderness Trail and finds the weather — and the wildlife — is full of surprises.
Nobody warns you about the danger of being ambushed by bandits on the Wilderness Trail, so far from civilisation that you’re out of cellphone range. I guess they don’t call it the “wild West Coast” for nothing.
On day three I’d nearly been taken out by a weka that dashed across my path on an eerie stretch of trail skirting the Kapitea Reservoir. The air felt hypnotically still, with not a breath of wind on the water, as our bikes crunched through the gravel. If that wayward weka hadn’t shown a last-minute turn of speed, it would have lost a tail feather under my front wheel.
The next day, I’m steaming along a lovely tree-lined track with not a soul in sight when I hear something rustling in the undergrowth. Suddenly, a jet-black wild boar bursts from the bush on the starboard side of the trail. By the time I recover my composure enough to register it’s just a fat piglet, I can only pray its furious mother isn’t in hot pursuit.
Looking over my shoulder, I shout a warning to my travel companion, who is nowhere to be seen. I’ve brought Phil along as navigator, photographer, bodyguard and personal mechanic. A fully fledged Mamil (middle-aged man in Lycra), he knocked off the entire Wilderness Trail in one go riding the Tour Aotearoa a couple of years ago. Just when I need him, it turns out he’s stopped for a pee.
Sections of the trail run along old railway or tram lines constructed during the West Coast's gold-rush days.
A few hours later, we roll into Greymouth, the endpoint for cyclists who, like us, start in Ross and head north. In four days, we’ve covered about 150km, including the odd side trip. So I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself until we get chatting with a German couple who are biking the entire length of New Zealand — the old-fashioned way.
About half of the 8000 people who cycle the Wilderness Trail each year do it, like me, on an e-bike. Last summer, one of them was an 86-year-old retired judge. Mostly rated an easy, grade 2 ride, it’s accessible to pretty much anyone who’s reasonably fit and feels comfortable pedalling a two-wheeler. “We can’t do anything about your butt,” says Lauren, from Hokitika-based tour operator Kiwi Journeys, as she fits me up with a bike. “But we do have gel seats.”
What’s particularly appealing about the trail, though, is that it’s not all about the bike. Most days, you’re only in the saddle for two or three hours and some of the best experiences — cruising at dusk through a regenerating whitebait sanctuary where kōtuku feed from the banks; walking the treetops on a 1.2km loop high above the forest floor; gazing down, mesmerised, at the glacier-fed turquoise water of the Hokitika Gorge; watching a sound and light show with “talking engines” at the Westland Industrial Heritage Park — are officially off-piste.
A new 2km-loop walking track has opened in the Hokitika Gorge, a highly recommended side trip.
The trail is open all year, thanks to mostly hard-packed surfaces that are well-maintained and built to withstand rough weather. In winter, the misty valleys and snow-capped mountains would look spectacular; so would the waterfalls. If it doesn’t rain for two weeks on the West Coast, someone joked, they call it a drought. We struck it lucky with three days of spring sunshine and one of light drizzle. Not even my raincoat got wet.
We also travelled light, carrying pannier bags packed with food, a personal locator beacon, the charging cord for my bike, a repair kit and some extra clothes. Kiwi Journeys transported the rest of our gear to pre-booked accommodation each night and shuttled us back to Hokitika Airport from Greymouth in time to catch a late-afternoon flight home.
Day one had begun at the Ross Beach Top 10 Holiday Park, where lined and insulated shipping containers have been transformed into cleverly designed boutique “pods” a stone’s throw from the water. Ours had a micro-kitchen, a queen bed, an en suite and luxe dressing gowns. During the night, the sound of the roaring surf was so loud it felt as if the sea was about to come crashing through the open window.
The trail crosses a number of historic bridges and there's water everywhere — from rivers and lakes to old water races and, on the final leg into Greymouth, the open sea.
When British couple Sue and Andy Stile first came to New Zealand, they toured around in a second-hand van, tossing a dice every now and then to decide which way to turn. Eventually washing up in Ross, they’ve been managing the holiday park since it opened in 2017. The other night, they were sitting on the deck at sunset watching penguins emerge from the waves and scurry up the beach to their nests. “Do people swim here?” I ask, over dinner from the campground pizza oven. “The Germans do,” says Andy, with a laugh.
The first section of the Wilderness Trail was opened in 2013 and, in the way of the Otago Central Rail Trail, it’s revitalised communities like Kumara that thrived during the gold rush and have been slowly diminishing into near ghost towns ever since. The tracks those pioneering miners carved through the West Coast form much of the cycling route, which also runs along old railway lines and logging tramways. A lovely section along the historic Kaniere Water Race was hand-dug in 1875.
Talk to anyone who’s done the trail and a night at West Coast Scenic Waterways will be one of the highlights of their trip. I almost flew straight past the blackboard sign at the edge of the track welcoming us by name, a few kilometres inland from Hokitika. That’s the trouble with e-bikes. Sometimes you’re just going too damn fast.
The writer at West Coast Scenic Waterways, where owner Gavin Hopper (right) is transforming an old bus into a cafe on the side of the trail below their bed & breakfast accommodation, a few kilometres inland from Hokitika. Photo / Phil Taylor
I was busy admiring a huge dragonfly sculpture when a head popped out the window of a bus parked up at one side. Gavin Hopper and wife Cindy took a leap of faith by going into the tourism business to support the bike trail, which crosses their land. It’s fair to say they’re not afraid of a challenge: when they bought the 40ha property, it was a pig farm with bare, muddy fields and a dilapidated homestead.
The couple’s B&B accommodation now includes a wood-fired hot tub and gourmet home-cooked meals based on a paddock-to-plate approach, drawing from their orchard and expanding vege gardens as they reclaim the soil from old gold tailings. Work on the bus refit is still in progress but, with a bit of luck, by the end of summer, it will have opened as Foragers cafe, selling coffee, fresh fruit juices and wilderness berry icecream.
Last year, a new seam of gold 10m below the previous dredging depth was found running through their property, but you don’t need to look far to find real treasure here. Just below the house, a historic bridge takes cyclists riding the trail across Mahinapua Creek, a regenerating wetland that flows into Lake Mahinapua, where Mt Cook and Mt Tasman loom on the horizon.
Cruising the Mahinapua Creek, a regenerating whitebait sanctuary, with the Southern Alps looming on the horizon.
When the Hoppers first came here, an invasive weed was choking the creek. Now, the waterway is slowly coming back to life as a regenerating whitebait habitat. Cindy calls it the Okavango Delta of New Zealand — the couple migrated from South Africa 20 years ago — and describes Gavin as a “wetland sponge”. A great raconteur, he skippers eco-adventure cruises on the Mahinapua from their wharf, sharing stories of both the natural and human history of this stunning landscape.
In the early 1900s, West Coasters supplied kōtuku (white heron) feathers to the fashionable milliners of London, driving the species to the point of near extinction. So it was a breathtaking experience to see two of these rare and graceful birds in flight, and pass within a few metres of another. Gavin’s regular boat trips help clear the waterway by chopping through the weed and the wake drives whitebait towards the edge of the creek, where one of the resident kōtuku lies in wait.
On the third day, there’s a slightly daunting zig-zag trail up to Cowboy Paradise, a replica Wild West town that’s seen better days, then an exhilarating descent through native bush to Kumara. Gold was discovered here in 1864, triggering one of New Zealand’s last great gold rushes. In its heyday, the town had 50 hotels before it began slowly withering away.
The most challenging part of the trail is a zig-zag uphill section on the third day — rewarded by a thrilling descent through native bush on the other side.
In 2012, Kerrie Fitzgibbon almost single-handedly saved Kumara from obsolescence when she restored the Theatre Royal Hotel, an 1876 heritage building, to cater for cyclists on the Wilderness Trail. Since then, she and husband Mark have transformed the town, with a suite of boutique accommodation options, including the old Bank of New Zealand and the former home of the local undertaker, which is now a backpackers’ lodge.
Serendipitously, we arrived just in time for the Theatre Royal’s 10th-anniversary party, a raucous evening of live music and special themed cocktails. It was also the Women’s Rugby World Cup final, so we gatecrashed one of the replica miner’s cottages out the back of the hotel to watch the game with four Cantabrian fellow cyclists we’d met on the trail who were booked in for the night.
I’d had two Cosmopolitans at the hotel bar and wanted to hug everyone — and that was before the game. A final day of riding — and that rampaging wild boar — still lay ahead of us. But the indomitable spirit of the Black Ferns and of the town that refused to die aligned that night in a way that was pure gold. And back at the hotel, the band played on.
Kiwi Journeys partners with local operators to run self-guided Wilderness Trail packages, including bike hire, accommodation and luggage transfers. kiwijourneys.co.nz
