The Hollyford Track

IT was autumn when, fresh from the summer tramping season, I decided to hike the beautiful Hollyford Track in Fiordland National Park. It was an epic four-day journey with a pre-booked jetboat ride back along the lengthy finger lake known as Lake McKerrow, or Whakatipu Waitai, to shorten the return trip.

I tramped the nine kilometres up from the end of the Lower Hollyford Road to the beautiful Hidden Falls, a walk of about two to three hours, and went on the nearby Pyke River swing bridge, the longest swingbridge in the National Park.

I spent the night at the Hidden Falls Hut, and woke early to see a beautiful low-lying fog blanketing the valley – what a majestic sight for only my second day on the Hollyford!

Following the path of a long-gone glacier, the Hollyford Valley cuts its way through the Darran Mountain area and out to the Tasman Sea,showing much of New Zealand’s natural beauty in one walk.

Unlike nearby tracks which close occasionally or are deemed unsafe through autumn, winter, spring or even early summer due to avalanche risks, landslides and the like, the Hollyford Track is a low altitude ‘flat walk’ and can be walked all year round in good weather, though it can become impassable and dangerous in wet weather.

Like many other tracks in the Fiordland National Park, the Hollyford Track was first used by Māori as a trail for extracting pounamu (greenstone). The Hollyford Valley was also an important mahinga kai (food gathering site).

The Hollyford River which runs down the valley has an official Māori name, the Whakatipu Kā Tuka. It flows in and out of Lake McKerrow, also known as Whakatipu Waitai.

A waka (canoe) building site was also established around Lake Alabaster, or Wāwāhi Waka as it is also officially known in Māori.

Later on, the Hollyford Valley was farmed by European settlers, including a well-known identity named Davey Gunn. In their book Tramping: A New Zealand History, Shaun Barnett and Chris Maclean record that:

“Gunn had grown up on a farm in central Otago, and in 1926 first rode over the Greenstone Track to the Hollyford Valley where he would spend much of the rest of his life. He initially ran cattle in the area, based at Martins Bay, but during the mid-1930s decided to branch out into tourism. Gunn built several huts which he charged out to trampers at 12s 6d per day and provided guides at an additional £1 a day. In 1936, he led his first party of 12 trampers over the Hollyford Track. To avoid the notorious Demon Trail around Lake McKerrow, Gunn took them across the lake in his launch, and elsewhere provided horses for those who wanted to ride. . . . ”

Gunn’s legacy can be seen on the trail at the excellent Martins Bay, Hidden Falls and Deadman’s huts which he built, along with Gunn’s Camp further up the valley, which I was to visit after I had tramped the Hollyford.

At Hidden Falls Hut it was the ‘Roar’ (deer mating season) – so named because you could hear all the stags roaring to attract the does. There were plenty of hunters out in the Hollyford Valley at the time, and I had heard stories of irresponsible ones shooting deer on the track just outside the hut and sending stray bullets whizzing past trampers. But I had only good experiences of hunters during my walk and found most of them to be very considerate.

I left Hidden Falls and tramped around ten kilometres to the fork where the track splits off into the Demon Trail towards Martins Bay, or the Pyke-Big Bay Route which heads through to Olivine Hut.

I dumped my pack at the fork and took a detour up the beginning of the Big Bay Route to see Lake Alabaster/Wāwāhi Waka and theAlabaster Hut. It was rustic and quaint but looked lovely.

I also checked out the privately-owned Pyke River Lodge, exclusively for the use of guided walkers, which offers trampers gourmet food and all the comforts of home.

I saw Conservation Point and then went back to pick up my pack and carry on to McKerrow Island Hut on the southern end of Lake McKerrow/Whakatipu Waitai, near the start of the Demon Trail, a lengthy hike along the steep and muddy side of the lake which gets quite difficult in places. I spent my second night on the Hollyford at McKerrow Island Hut and met a tramper who was fishing in the lake because he’d run out of food!

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I enjoyed my time at this beautiful hut and the next day headed towards Hokuri Hut, which was around fourteen kilometres away. An hour and a half into the walk I stopped off at Demon Trail Hut for a short break when I saw some kākā, a forest relative of the better-known kea. After this hut, the track got very steep and full of knotted tree roots, which is why it’s called the Demon Trail. Amazingly, in the old days, cattle were run along it. It must have been even worse for that purpose than as a tramping track today.

It was cloudy above the Demon Trail and I could imagine that when it rained the track would become incredibly slippery. The track was also intercut with many creeks that flow into Lake McKerrow from the mountains above, all with walkwires so that trampers that can cross them safely, save for one which apparently only floods in extreme conditions. But I find that walkwires are a bit scary to use. This only adds to the demonic qualities of the trail.

I stayed in the Hokuri Hut that night and went to explore nearby Jamestown, on Martins Bay. This fascinating place was established in the late 1860s. While the creator of the town, the Otago provincial Superintendent James Macandrew (after whom it was named) thought that the new town might ultimately spread for miles around, the land was inhospitable, and the first settlers struggled to make ends meet. Despite a road being promised to them, no road was ever built, and the town was effectively cut off from the outside world when the shipping service to the bay stopped in the 1870s.

The settlers were also beset by pestilential insects: “As soon as the sandflies retire at dark, the mosquitos advance upon their victims.” (Otago Witness, 4 January 1873, p. 16).

Martins Bay Hut is a thirteen-kilometre hike from Hokuri Hut.

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I mentioned Gunn’s Camp. This was a great camping spot up the Hollyford Road, with a whole lot of cabins that were installed in the 1930s for people building a road that was supposed to connect Milford to the main West Coast highway. The road was never completed, but the camp endured for eighty years, taken over by the Gunns, until it was largely destroyed in the great flood of February 2020. There is a legacy website on gunnscamp.org.nz. Here are a couple of a photos that I took just after the flood, in which you can see that the toe of a great landslide of debris has knocked over a fuel pump, among other more serious forms of damage.

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Finally, there's a page about the Hollyford Track from Destination Fiordland, which includes a great aerial photograph of the southern part of the track and the two lakes!

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