Bushwalk Australia

Hi Folks,

I'm beginning to do some planning for a trip to NZ and wanted to collect some thoughts from folk in the know.

I was looking at the Routeburn (Feb) but it looks a little short, so I wanted to add the Caples and Mavora track on to draw it out.

Has anyone done the Caples or Mavora? How is the trail? Transport looks horrible to get at the trail terminus... any thoughts?


Still in the planning stages so any constructive feedback would be most welcome. Thank you

theres a shuttle for the mavora road turnoff at the southern end, i dont know exactly where the turn off is, so ask tracknet. the nearest turnoff is a couple of k's from the end of the mavora, but if its at the main highway, that is 30k's away, theres a less frequent bus to the end of the mavora track. there wont be much traffic on the road to the highway. what there is will be mainly people going camping with full vehicles

http://www.tracknet.net/tracknet/te-ara ... -southland

tracknet is great, talk to them, they do operate outside of scheduled routes and times.

Another option is to loop around both the Caples and Greenstone. This sorts out the transport. Otherwise tracknet seemed to be picking up at the start of the Greenstone regularly. While tracknet are good, they do need a few bookings to run some trips.

There also operators servicing the Around the Mountains Great Ride that go into Mavora Lakes so may be worth an enquiry.

I've done the Caples Greenstone. Both are beautiful valleys and well worth visiting. The huts can get pretty full - but you'll be use to that after doing the Routeburn.

What time do the huts on Greenstone/Caples tracks fill up? Trying to work out whether to bother taking our camping mattresses with us.

sim1oz wrote:What time do the huts on Greenstone/Caples tracks fill up? Trying to work out whether to bother taking our mattresses with us.

hang on i'll just duck out and check... whats the weather today? whats the weather tomorrow? and the day after?

Ok, point taken! we are tramping Routeburn/Greenstone/Caples mid-feb so it will be peak season madness unless the weather is atrocious. Is mid-week quieter than weekends? or no difference because it is all tourists?

sim1oz wrote:Ok, point taken! we are tramping Routeburn/Greenstone/Caples mid-feb so it will be peak season madness unless the weather is atrocious. Is mid-week quieter than weekends? or no difference because it is all tourists?

its mainly foreigners, they dont give a stuff what day it is and they often dont read forecasts looking at their gear... you name it, they wear it or don't wear it... lets go to the wettest place at low level with jeans.... yeah great idea... lets put our sleeping bag outside our day pack sized pack... an umbrella will take care of the rain...
i was in fiordland last week, there was snow, there was a S@%$ load of snow below the bushline... it blew, i don know how strong, it broke my wind metre, estimates were about 160k the walls bulged in, a hut i was in shook like a train half the night. it eased a bit and i had to go out in it in full winter storm gear, I lost the feeling in my face, my hands got cold through insulated gloves.... but it does that a lot of summers

@wayno, Reminds me of our summer walk in Tassie a few years ago Our gear worked out well there so we'll pack for summer snow storms again. We are taking a shelter with us, which we always do on overnighters, but I was thinking how nice it would be to cut some weight from our packs - all 450g of it. It will be a new experience walking with the masses. We usually look for out of the way places and solitude...

wx can do anything, http://m.metservice.com/mountain/mtn