Escarpment

Aban­doned rail­way sta­tions. Pre­car­i­ous swing­bridges over pre­cip­i­tous chasms. Hid­den val­leys full of lush for­est. Rem­nants of ancient kāin­ga.

Those might not be what you’d expect from the recent­ly-opened Paekakari­ki Escarp­ment track. I cer­tain­ly expect­ed rugged land­scapes and mag­nif­i­cent views, and you get those in abun­dance, but there’s much more here to be dis­cov­ered than you might imag­ine from pass­ing by on the train or coastal high­way.

For such a diverse and often dra­mat­ic track, it’s remark­ably easy to reach from the city. The best access is by train, since each end is a short walk from a sta­tion on the Kāpi­ti line. There’s some infor­ma­tion on the Te Araroa site, but unfor­tu­nate­ly no map yet, so I made one on Google Maps show­ing the track, with access from rail­way sta­tions at either end (I’ll add it to Open­StreetMap when I get the chance).

If you start from Pukerua Bay sta­tion, the eas­i­est way is to cross the tracks, take a short­cut through the play­ground to Sea Vista Dr, cut across the grass at Muri reserve, then fol­low the Te Araroa signs east along the rail­way cor­ri­dor. This first stretch is less pic­turesque than the main track, being sand­wiched between the main trunk line and pri­vate land stud­ded with KEEP OUT signs, but if you’re the sort of weirdo who appre­ci­ates edge­lands land­scapes and crum­bling infra­struc­ture, there’s plen­ty to keep you inter­est­ed. The recent­ly decom­mis­sioned Muri Sta­tion still bears a cheer­ful mur­al, but encroach­ing graf­fi­ti and bro­ken win­dows lend it an eerie out-of-time aura. Fur­ther along, an ivy-encrust­ed con­crete shel­ter shows signs of unof­fi­cial adap­tive reuse: some­one installed a large gas bar­be­cue with­in its spalling walls, and that too is now suc­cumb­ing to rust and creep­ers.

Once the rail­way reach­es the tun­nels, the walk­ing track rapid­ly ascends. I thought I was being clever by tak­ing the “down­hill” route, but the track jags sharply up and down so much that even in this direc­tion the total ascent is near­ly 500m, com­pared to 580m in the south­bound direc­tion (for com­par­i­son, Mt Kaukau is 445m above sea lev­el). It’s not a hard­core tramp­ing track, but it’s no walk in the park either, with unfor­giv­ing sets of ver­tig­i­nous steps that are an acro­phobe’s worst night­mare. On a clear, still day the end­less views and crys­talline waters below will take away what breath you have left. In a howl­ing northerly…well, you’d have to be a lot braver than me to attempt it.

I expect­ed the land­scape to be mag­nif­i­cent though large­ly bar­ren: crum­bling greywacke and rank grass inter­spersed with gorse, harakeke and tight clumps of windswept mingimin­gi. Cer­tain­ly, these species dom­i­nat­ed the exposed bluffs, but as the path ducked into ravines I found brief, wel­come shade in patch­es of regen­er­at­ing māhoe and kawakawa. It was an even more pleas­ant sur­prise when the track began to snake inland into cool, dark hang­ing val­leys, invis­i­ble from the coast below, full of fruit­ing koheko­he. This rel­a­tive of trop­i­cal mahogany used to dom­i­nate the west­ern hills from Karori to Kāpi­ti , and in pro­tect­ed areas you still find dense stands: some­times gnarled and twist­ed from the ele­ments; some­times tall and proud. They have the unusu­al habit of cau­li­flo­ry, where the flow­ers and fruits spring direct­ly from the trunks, and right now many of them are in full fruit.

The north­ern­most sec­tion stays rel­a­tive­ly close to sea lev­el, and is a mosa­ic of open coun­try (dusty trails scent­ed by sun-bruised fen­nel) and patch­es of regen­er­at­ing for­est, much of the lat­ter thanks to the vol­un­teers of the Ngā Ururoa project. But the plant­i­ng start­ed much ear­li­er: groves of glossy kara­ka and papery-leaved whau, this far south of their nat­ur­al range, are like­ly to have been plant­ed by south­ward-migrat­ing iwi, used for food and wood respec­tive­ly. In the pho­to below, the dark veg­e­ta­tion in the mid­dle dis­tance is all that remains of Pari Pari kāin­ga. The ter­raced gar­dens of this Te Āti­awa vil­lage are long gone, lost to ero­sion and to the rail­way con­struc­tion that also demol­ished the once-famous arch­way on this head­land.

The last few kilo­me­tres are easy going, though some of it is along­side SH1. Don’t both­er try­ing to cross over to the Fish­er­mans Table: press on to Paekakari­ki itself, where there are some decent cafés (anoth­er rea­son to take the north­bound route).