A big group of 22 trampers left Christchurch at about 7 am. After dropping off all passengers at Porter’s Pass car park, we repositioned most cars at Ghost Creek car park. It’s a wee car park on SH73 just after a bridge over the Ghost Creek. If you’re following the same route, it makes sense to do the car shuffle first, but if you only have one car available, hitchhiking is a good option too, as it’s a reasonably busy road and cars have to slow down before the bridge – so it’s a pretty good spot to hitch.

Upon arriving back at Porter’s Pass, we started climbing towards Foggy Peak. To me, it’s one of the biggest slogs in Canterbury – easy to navigate in good weather, but I’ve heard of some groups getting confused when descending from Foggy in the dark. From Foggy Peak, the route follows wide, undulating ridges before it finally starts climbing sharply up to the top of Castle Hill Peak.

From the top of Castle Hill Peak, a noticeably less-trodden route continues on to pt1941. From there, a steep descent leads towards The Gap. There is a vague track that’s not too hard to follow: just stay on or close to the ridge and you’ll be fine. Just before The Gap, there are two options: follow the crest of the ridge all the way to the high point of The Gap and descend from there, or drop about 50 vertical metres roughly 100 m before The Gap onto a vague track. The second option is easier. Both options can be seen in one of my photos. Either way, the descent route into The Gap is from the northwest (the left-hand side when approaching from pt1941).

The Gap itself is an absolutely stunning place for a good lunch stop. This surreal spot is hard to capture on camera because the bluffs don’t allow you to step back much, and the walls are too high for an average wide lens. From The Gap, we backtracked to pt1941 and then headed northwest down a wide ridge that eventually led us to a scree slope down to Ghost Creek. The top-notch scree was easy to run all the way down. From Ghost Creek, it’s about an hour back to the cars. As this was Rachel’s special farewell trip, we ended up doing Cave Stream on the way back.

Stats: 14.1 km, 8h (chilled pace in a big group), 1630m ascent. Route on NZ Topo Map (GPX download below)

Participants: Michal Klajban (leader, scribe, GPX), Rachel Hunt, Rachel Perkinson, Daniel Gillies, Kaveh Mazloomi, Cage Cardon, Zack Williams, Hannah Murphy, Fengmin Chen, Xiaoqiu Jiang, Simon Barr, Kate Stedman, Justin Loh, Lisa McArthur, Vanessa Smith, Safka Dowding, Alan Ross, Simon Brown, Mark Nicholls, Jodie Greaves, Jonathan Carr

Tramped on 11th April 2026.

Photos

Map

Download file: GPX-hikingisgood-com-nz-2026-The_Gap_Ghost_Stream.gpx