EVENT
Walkers see the new Manawatu Tararua Highway taking shape
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everal hundred folk took up the by the river. chance in May to take a scenic Over the millions of years as the walk over the Tararua Ranges Ranges were uplifted, the Manawatu as part of the the Woodville Lions River progressively maintained its Club’s “Walk the New Highroute. Unfortunately the way” fundraiser following the Gorge is not stable. route of the Te Ahu a Turanga Rather than cutting Manawatū Tararua Highway. through the landscape, the It was not a walk along the new Te Ahu a Turanga actual path of the new road Manawatū Tararua Highbut the route of the walk inway (mostly) makes its way corporated some highway over it. I assume that as the sections under construction, ranges continue to rise up newly formed machinery ac- By Bob Hodgson so will the new road! cess roads, some farm tracks, We drove over Saddle Road to sections of existing Meridian Wind Hope Road where we checked-in, Farm service roads and even a steep signed health and safety statements tramping track down and up a and were directed to the queue for muddy gully and a pine plantation. the bus to take us back to the start Whereas the existing Gorge Road of the route near the bottom of the utilises the gorge that was cut out Saddle Road at the Ashhurst end.
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12 Walking New Zealand, issue no 280 - 2021
We did not start from the vicinity of the Gorge Walk car park as this would have required us to cross the Manawatu River a bridge only now under construction. It was Sunday so there was no work in progress and all of the machinery was parked up. Our first impression was of the scale of the project with its a wide initial access road, the site-park full of large, expensive earth moving machines and numerous dump trucks. We left the bus and started to ascend, the plot below shows the profile of the walk, of about 13km. The completed road is to have a maximum gradient of 1 in 10, parts of our exploratory walk were much steeper. The weather for the day was mixed with a few light showers. At the high points the wind chill was extreme. The route of our walk is shown on the map below in green with red
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