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One of my favourite parts of New Zealand is the Lewis Pass / Maruia Valley area in the middle of the northern half of the Southern Alps.
You get there by way means of State Highway (SH) 7, which runs through the area. One of the best multi-day hikes that you can do in the vicinity of the Lewis Pass is the St James Walkway, named after the former St James Station upon which most of the walkway’s sixty-six kilometres is located.
By New Zealand standards the St James Walkway is a comparatively easy tramp, though there is a lot of exposure to Alpine weather. Most of the distance is tramped on river flats, but nowhere is below five hundred metres of elevation and the highest point, the Anne Saddle, is over eleven hundred metres up. There are eight huts along the way plus a roadside shelter and a short side trip to a ninth hut, the Magdalen Hut.
Here are some photos from a hike of the St James Walkway that I went on with the Auckland Tramping Club and their custom-made bus, 'Big Blue'.
There are numerous other tramps off to the side of SH 7 in the Lewis Pass / Maruia Valley area, such as the Lake Daniell tramp, Lake Christabel, the Lewis Tops Track which begins on the western side of SH 7 from a spot near the northern road-end of the St James Walkway, and others.
From the Ada Pass down to its northern road-end on SH 7, the St James Walkway follows the Right Branch of the Maruia River. The Right Branch of the Maruia River flows down a lengthy gorge named Kopi o Kaitangata ('Cannibal Gorge', as it is also known in English, a name shared by one of the huts on the St James Walkway), for gruesome reasons which are explained in the Te Ara / online encyclopaedia of New Zealand page on the Maruia Valley, linked above.
The gorge and the pass are very close together, and in fact Kopi o Kaitangata seems to be the nearest the Lewis Pass comes to having a name in Māori. Though having said that, the status of the name Kopi o Kaitangata has been openly disputed since 2015, with an official letter on behalf of the Ngāti Tūmatakōkiri iwi (tribe) stating that the gorge was simply known as Maruia in early times, a name which means 'shady'. Certainly Maruia would be the more harmless choice if an alternative, official, Māori name for the Lewis Pass was sought.
Whatever we call the gorge it flows through, the Maruia River Right Branch then joins another branch and becomes the Maruia River, flowing west along SH 6 and then turning right just before Springs Junction to flow north in the lower, wider Maruia Valley. State Highway 65 downhill parallel to the Maruia River to SH 6 near Murchison. Attractions in the lower Maruia Valley include the Maruia Falls, formed by the 1929 Murchison Earthquake. These falls are quite highly rated on Tripadvisor.)
The Maruia Valley is also famous as the place where a key document of the modern conservation era, the Maruia Declaration, was first signed in 1975. Circulated as an ultimately successful petition against the logging of native forests, it gained 340,000 signatures by 1977, which at the time meant that over one New Zealander in ten signed it and a still higher proportion of adults.
Finally, you can relax at Maruia Hot Springs and pub in the tiny township of Maruia Springs on State Highway 7, a few kilometres west of the northern end of the St James Walkway!
There used to be some natural hot springs too, at a location called Sylvia Flats close to the state highway, but they were buried by a landslide in 2017 and I'm not sure if they've come back to life since.
New Zealand Department of Conservation (DOC) page on the Lewis Pass Scenic Reserve
DOC page on the St James Walkway
If you liked the post above, check out my new book about the South Island! It's available for purchase from this website.
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