Montana Heritage Trail, Auckland

9 Dec

The Montana Heritage Trail is a forested loop hike in the Cascade Kauri (Te Piringa) area of the Waitākere Ranges Regional Park. It is about 30 minutes from downtown Auckland. The highest elevation is around 320-340 meters.

The loop involves Upper Kauri Track, Long Road Track, Fence Line Track, and Lower Piringa Track. There is also an optional short out-and-back side-trip along the top of Waitākere Reservoir’s dam. The reservoir is a major reason the regional park exists.

The short pink line just above Waitākere Reservoir shows the side-trip along the top of Waitākere Dam.
Screenshots of the NZ topographic map are licensed as CC BY 4.0 by Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand (LINZ).

These tracks were reopened after some sort of soil decontamination aimed at preventing kauri dieback, which is when kauri trees die due to a microorganism in soil. (Other tracks in the area remain closed.) Please cleanse your boots and trekking poles of soil before hiking here.

Time

AllTrails users report an average of 3 hours 14 minutes. The park authorities estimate 4 hours 30 minutes.

My friends and I took around 3.5 hours on the counter-clockwise loop, including around 20 minutes of rest.

Route

AllTrails reports 457m of elevation gain over 9.3km, while Wilderness Magazine reports 342m of elevation gain over 10km.

Natasha, Sasha, Bogdan, Anna and I drove to Cascade Kauri parking lot at the southern end of Falls Rd. There are toilets, a water fountain, and space for 30-40 cars. A short path downhill leads to a boot-cleaning station, which is meant to prevent kauri dieback (see above), and a bridge. Across the bridge is a fork between Upper Kauri Track (right) and Lower Te Piringa Track (left/straight).

We decided to start by ascending Upper Kauri Track (i.e. counter-clockwise), so we would finish the largest section of stairs first. After hundreds of wooden steps, the ridge became less steep. This was the section of the walk with the most kauri trees. There was a picnic table.

At a junction, we turned left on Long Road Track, eventually reaching the high point of the walk near the junction with Simla Track. We turned left, taking Fence Line Track down to Waitākere Reservoir. The first viewpoint over the water had a bench, where we watched a pukeko swim into the reeds.

At the northern edge of the reservoir, some of us walked out over the top of Waitākere Dam, before returning. Wilderness Magazine reports that there are toilets at the end of the dam, but I didn’t check. Finally, we descended a lot more wooden stairs to Te Piringa Track. This track took us near Waitākere River, and I saw my first mosquito of the hike.

If 1 is an easy track, and 4 is using hands and feet on exposed rocks, I give these tracks a 1 throughout.