The Pouakai Crossing is a 19km day walk across the northern flank of Taranaki Maunga, crossing the Dieffenbach Cliffs, the active Boomerang Slip and the fragile Ahukawakawa wetland before finishing at the Poūakai Tarns, famous for their mirror reflections of the mountain on a still day. It’s frequently rated alongside, and by some walkers above, the Tongariro Alpine Crossing for scenery, with a fraction of the foot traffic.
The Old Ghost Road follows a gold miners’ dray road surveyed in 1886 but never finished, abandoned after the 1929 Murchison earthquake buried much of the route. A volunteer trust revived it from 2008, finally opening the full 85km track in 2015 between the ghost town of Lyell and Seddonville on the West Coast, taking in beech forest, alpine tussock tops and the Mōkihinui Gorge, with comfortable huts a deliberate step up from typical backcountry tramping.
The Gillespie Pass Circuit links the Young and Wilkin valleys over an alpine pass at 1600m, with the famous Siberia Hut and Siberia Flat reached by jet boat from Makarora. River crossings on the circuit are genuinely serious and have claimed lives in recent years, which keeps numbers down, but it’s regularly named by experienced trampers as a match for the Routeburn for scenery, without the crowds.
