Rooms with a big view
Follow PAT BARRETT up Mount Fyfe as he keeps a lookout for the perfect panorama.
The warm glow of early-morning sun washes across the ragged flanks of the Seaward Kaikoura ranges. It is a dramatic spectacle from the small plateau where the Mount Fyfe Hut perches. Mount Fyfe, an outlier of the main Seaward Ranges, is a popular weekend and day-trip destination because if is so accessible to Kaikoura.
You can take varied routes to and from the summit, and I have walked many of them. This time, we took the standard vehicle route. A 4WD road links the car park at the base of Mount Fyfe, on Postmans Road, to the summit at 1602 metres, a climb of 1433 metres. This way, it takes two to three hours to reach the hut, and another one to two hours to reach the summit.
We picked a weekend with a westerly weather pattern for an easy wander in the hills. The mountain can be very windy, especially on higher exposed slopes. It can be sunny and very cold at the same time.
Access to the 4WD road and tracks is from Kaikoura via Ludstone, Red Swamp, and Postmans roads to the Hinau Reserve car park and a locked gate which bars vehicular entrance to the mountain.
You climb through dense manuka, mountain beech, and open tussock to reach the hut at Tarn Saddle. The comfortable, recently refurbished eight-bunk hut has a water tank and a good supply of wood (in short supply at 1100 metres). It takes advantage of the sweep of ocean, coast, and plain which lie to the east and south.
Kaikoura Peninsula is the centrepiece. It draws your eyes away to the ocean and horizon no matter what time of day or night.
After breakfast, we climbed the final 500 metres to the summit of Fyfe, still gaining height on the 4WD track which passes tussock, scree, and rock.
The summit view is every bit as dramatic as the hut panorama, and more encompassing.
We returned to the hut to warm up, then went down the newly cut track which descends a steep spur 100 metres south-west of the hut to the Kowhai River, then downstream for an hour or so to the car park. This return trip takes two to three hours.
The most interesting of the other options is to continue from the summit along the ridgetop over Gable and Gables End before dropping to the Kowhai Saddle, then tramping out down the valley to the road end. Other spurs descend to the east. They are Humpback, Sawyer, Razorback, Blind, Scotties, and Fenceline. All but the last of these are routes only, with no tracks. Some require bush bashing on their lower sections as well as permission from landholders to cross farmland.
*For more information see Kaikoura Walks and Climbs, Nikau Press, and map sheet O31.
Date: 21 Sep 1999, The Press, Christchurch, page 21
Captions: From the Mount Fyfe summit trig, you take in a wide sweep of coastline and mountains; A magnificent wide view from the Mount Fyfe Hut down to the Kaikoura Peninsula and the Pacific Ocean.