Lower Arahura Hut – Newton Range Biv – Styx River

The task was simple yet not easy: walk in to Lower Arahura Hut on 31st December, leave our backpacks there, cut a steep track from the hut to Newton Range until we ran out of daylight, return to the hut to sleep, ignore the New Year’s celebrations, wake up early, head back on the same track, and keep cutting until the afternoon. Then, we would walk back to the hut, and finally, walk out to the civilisation of 2025.

On the afternoon of 30th December, it was still just me and Igreta on the trip list. I was pretty motivated to go even by myself, and I admit I wasn’t 100% sure about Igreta. The gentle-looking woman had only just joined the club and didn’t have much tramping experience. She mentioned that she’d slept in a hut only once and had never crossed a river (not even on a swing bridge). I knew she was pretty fit from running, so I was keen for her to come along – so much more can be done when there are two of us rather than one! The night before departure, Alan Ross called me and said he was keen to come, but only if we camped on the tops. That idea made total sense – the forecast was pretty good, and because I wanted to focus on clearing the top section of the track, it would save us from going up and down. There are some decent tarns on Newton Range at around pt1264, so why not? The only downside was that we’d have to drag our heavy packs up more than 1000 vertical metres on a steep slope – not ideal for Igreta’s first overnighter! Well, let’s try and see how we go.

The three of us left Christchurch at 5:40 AM – fairly early to accommodate a rather lengthy drive of nearly 4 hours. We arrived at the Arahura car park around 9:30 AM. After getting out of the car, we made sure that Igreta left some of her stuff behind – like a decent-sized, heavy pillow. If I’d known she had tomatoes and oranges in her pack, along with delicious but heavy baby food, and that she’d be dragging them for the next 11 hours, I might have tried to talk her out of it. Oh well, sweet morning naivety.

The track to Lower Arahura Hut was in good condition. It’s a fully maintained track by DOC with beautiful, proud orange markers evenly spaced on visible features – very easy to follow. We flew over the track in 2.5 h with no problem. Igreta crossed her first swing bridge, and it wasn’t without a tear or two (happiness, perhaps?). From Lower Arahura Hut, we began our track clearance mission. The track in the lower sections was okay, and we mostly ignored the new growth as we wanted to focus on the upper parts. It made total sense at a time because the lower sections could be cleared by someone based at the hut at another time. The track was pretty good and not too steep, but somewhere between the 780-850 m contour, shit hit the fan, and the track became almost vertical. It took us by surprise somewhat, and when we finally reached slopes of regular steepness, we looked at each other, and it was clear no one liked the idea of going back. It took us another hour or so to verbalise it.

We did some decent track cutting up to the 1070 m contour of both flax and scrub. Then, we sat down and had a discussion about what to do next. If we didn’t want to go down the same track, we’d have to drop to the other side to Styx River. That made sense – it would be longer, but I’d just done most of the route in July 2024, and it was pretty straightforward to follow with no tricky sections. We decided to climb up to the ridge and follow it to Newton Range Biv. The issue was how to retrieve our car, but we figured we’d figure it out later. It wasn’t a safety issue anyway, just annoying. Between the 1070-1250 m contours, the track was pretty overgrown and I felt bad not cutting it. Between about 1250-1320 m, the track disappeared and went through alpine low scrub and vegetation. This part has no markers or cuttings, and without GPS, it would be hopeless to follow on the way down. On the way up, it was just an ascent towards the ridge, but finding the entrance to the track would be hard for someone on the way down without GPS (feel free to download mine and use it).

Once on the tops, we followed the crest of the ridge to Newton Range Biv. It took us two hours. There’s a rough track cut through the scrub with no markers, but following the cuts in the scrub was pretty straightforward. We wandered off a few times but found the track almost immediately a few meters above or below us. There’s a steep pitch where someone installed a thin rope, but it wasn’t too bad, and I didn’t use the rope downclimbing. Somewhere along the way, I realised that Blair, with Jess and her dog Molly, our tramping club friends, might be at Newton Range Biv, which meant the potential for a ride back to our car at Lower Arahura car park. That gave us hope. We kept going, and once we finally stood on top of pt1190, we indeed saw a couple of folks at Newton Range Biv with a dog. That must be them!

When we finally got close enough to Blair, he pointed out, “When I saw a group of three on top of that hill making stupid noises, I knew immediately who those jokers were!” Good to see you too, Blair! Igreta and Alan decided to sleep in the biv, while I camped near it. There is virtually no dry space near the biv; it’s all pretty swampy. Oh well… at least it’s flat.

The next morning, we dropped down to Styx River via the connecting track that we had given some maintenance to. At Styx River, we followed the TR for quite some time before crossing. The crossing was waist-deep and was a pretty exciting experience for Igreta, who – again – shed a tear of happiness (what else?) at the end of it. As an experienced tramper who’d already followed Styx River route twice before, I reassured her that it was the only crossing we’d have to do. It turned out that this information was about 500 % incorrect, as we ended up crossing again about five times. Oops! For next time, just follow the true right (TR) of the Styx River to the crossing at BV19 5547 4962, or even a few hundred metres further down the river on its TR. If you stay on the TR too long, you’ll encounter giant vertical cliffs where the river is too fast and deep to cross, even at normal flow. Of course, the safest option is to go via Mid Styx Hut, but it adds quite a bit of height gain, and the descent to Tyndall Creek is pretty steep, with some near-vertical pitches.

Once we reached Tyndall Creek, we joined the DOC track and flew over it all the way to Styx River car park. Jess and Molly were kind enough to give us a ride back to the Lower Arahura car park. Phew!

Alan and I agreed that the first day wasn’t quite a Moderate trip, as I had modestly graded it – and it wasn’t even Mod/Hard. Considering the terrain, elevation gain, and overnight packs, it was a regular Hard trip. Igreta did amazingly well, and I’d never have imagined that a tramping novice could do this well on such a hardcore trip.

Stats

Lower Arahura carpark – Lower Arahura Hut – Newton Range Biv: 17.9 km, 10 h 30 min (with a lot of track cutting), 1730 m ascent. The route on NZ Topo Map (download below).

Newton Range Biv – Styx River – Styx River carpark: 15.3 km, 6 h 45 min (with some track cutting), 255 m ascent. The route on NZ Topo Map (download below).

Participants: Michal Klajban (leader, scribe, GPX), Igreta Sinanaj, Alan Ross
Tramped on 31st December 2024 – 1st January 2025.