Makara Track

[Priamo Gregory]

Makara Walkway is a 6.6 kilometre loop that begins and ends at Makara Beach. A half hour drive from Wellington city, this popular 3-4 hour walk offers fabulous views and good swimming at beaches sheltered in a southerly. This is one of three tracks in the Meridian West Wind Recreation Area.

Hike Distance3: Strava registered 7.86km and DOC has the track at 7km. We did wander around the gun emplacements a little, and went over to the big windmill which would have added to the difference. Plan for a 7-8km walk.

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The views from the top are breathtaking: 360 views, including Mana Island, Kapiti Island, the Tararua Range, Mount Taranaki, the Marlborough Sounds and the giant wind turbines from Project West Wind, which has its own network of tracks.

The WW2 era Fort Opau is at the highest point of the track, 200m above sea level, and a good place for a rest. Note that this part of the track is closed for lambing season between August and September.

No matter what course you are doing, be it Short, Medium, or Long, you must carry an Emergency Survival Bag and an Emergency Whistle, both available from Event Registration, Bivouac Stores, or any good tramping shop.

There will be no cash refunds made for this series. However, if for some reason you are unable to participate in an event then your entry fee is transferable to another XTERRA Wellington race within the current series, provided you inform event organisers a week prior to the event date. Individual Entries are transferable between individuals for a $15 transfer fee. Please apply for transfers via email request.

XTERRA Wellington is an OutdoorsMark certified event and we take your fun and your safety very seriously. We encourage you all to be responsible track users so please plan to take the following with you:

The grassy path was replaced by road and track descended to the Opau Bay where it turned back to Makara Beach along the coast. Walking on rocky beach wore us out as our feet sank into the stones at every step.

Pieces of wooden trunks which had been washed up ashore served well as a bench. So, we sat down and made short breaks couple of times during which we were just staring at waves and planning our next adventurous.

A scalable coding system was developed that sits at the bottom right of each sign. This code contains all the information including sign type, track name, distance, users, arrow direction, etc., for easy sign creation and replacement in the future.

This project has great potential beyond Makara Peak, perhaps forming the basis of a nationally recognized wayfinding system resulting in a consistent visual language across all mountain biking tracks. This student to real-world project is an example of user-centric environmental design, adding real value to a community resource.

Starting in the main car park follow all trails in their intended direction to avoid being run over by mountain bikes. Also make sure to pull aside and let bikes pass if you hear any coming up behind.

Makara Peak Mountain Bike Park is a shared use recreation reserve where walkers and runners are welcome but need to give way to mountain bikers. The park is 250 hectares with over 40km of single track, mostly all hand built by volunteers.

Makara Peak is part of the Outer Green Belt and established as a mountain bike park in 1998, prior to that it was a run down farm. Today the park is in various stages of native bush regeneration with an active volunteer pest control group and tree planting group. The upper sections of the park have low vegetation or are still in grass, offering fantastic views over Cook Strait, the South Island, and over Wellington Harbour.

See www.makarapeak.org for more info and a printable map of the whole park.

There is a signed car park with toilets, information board and water about 1km down South Karori Rd. Overflow car parking is available 50m further south.

If catching a bus take the Karori Park #3 to the end of the line then follow South Karori Rd as above.

Fabulous loop and yes, what Joe said about the trail changes! I did this in conjunction with a run down and back up Salvation which you can reach near the bike park car park - a new track called Biblical has recently been added so you could combine the two. Very runnable tracks - but best not to have earbuds in so you can hear any bikes coming behind you:)

There have been quite a few trail changes over the last few years and this could do with an edit:- North Face Link is now just North Face- JFK and Ridgeline Extension are no more, you now just follow Smokin' after North Face until it joins Big Toms Wheelie. - And then you take SWIGG the rest of the way. Starfish follows a different route down now.Finally, the last third of Sally Alley is currently closed due to a slip so you need to follow diversion round the 4WD track to get to Missing Link.

Had a fun morning running this very friendly trail with the dogs. Its a good one to do on a rainy day as youre mostly sheltered (apart from the Peak). Dogs are welcome but MUST be on leads. Im also very careful to listen out for mountain bikes and pull the dogs off the track when needed (plus I avoid weekends). Drinking fountain available in carpark.

Makara Peak Mountain Bike Park opened in 1998.[1][2] In 1998 the Wellington City Council set aside 200 hectares of retired farmland in Karori southwest of Wellington, New Zealand, for a mountain bike park. Development of it began almost immediately with volunteer work parties planting trees, removing pest animals and digging new tracks.[citation needed]

By 2014 the park had grown to 250 hectares with over 40 kilometres of hand-built single track and over 35,000 native seedlings planted. Pests such as goats, sheep, and possums had been dramatically reduced with volunteers maintaining possum traps and bait stations and mustelid traps, allowing new vegetation to flourish.[citation needed] Wellington City Council used the poison brodifacoum for possum control; 1080 was not used.[3]

The Makara Peak Mountain Bike Park was visited by 8% of the Wellington population in 2003 according to research carried out by the Wellington City Council. It has received a recreation award from the New Zealand Recreation Association and two conservation awards from the New Zealand Department of Conservation.

What better on a fine and calm Wellington day than to walk around the coast from Makara Beach to Ohiro Bay. Sarah had suggested the trip, Marie had sort of organised it, and so on a glorious Saturday at about 7:45 am we started off.

On these beaches there is sometimes a bit of a track at the base of the hillside at the top of the beach, or alternatively it can sometimes be easier to boulder-hop along larger boulders close to the sea at the bottom edge of the beach.

2) follow the walkway up the hill to the old gun emplacements and then follow down the roadway to Opau Stream (or for a more interesting alternative you can follow down the fenceline on the ridgeline above the sea immediately to the west of the roadway). This is probably the more interesting option although it does involve a climb up the hill.

The second obstacle is a few hundred metres further on at the southern end of a shingle beach (through a natural cave arch) where there are impassable cliffs at the bottom of a steep rock rib or spur. Here you need to climb up the rock rib following a steep fenceline for quite a way until you reach a point where you can cross over the rib and descend steeply back down to the beach on the southern side. (A possibly easier alternative is to keep following the fenceline all the way up the spur until you reach the farm track coming down from Quartz Hill and follow that down to Te Ikaamaru Bay. [By far the easiest way past here is to swim. TG]

If you follow the coast it is a long way on shingly beaches and pretty remote and barren. There are some serious scrambly bits around Cape Terawhiti. In particular there is one bit which is impassable at sea level and you need to ascend a rock rib onto a raised terrace and follow across that before dropping back down to the beach. [Easy enough if you know the way. TG]

From Cape Terawhiti around the southern point into Oteranga Bay you can follow around the beaches by the sea but it is a bit scrambly and there is a short section coming into Oteranga Bay which is impassable at high tide, so a better and easier option is to cut across the farm paddock on the raised terrace and follow the benched vehicle track which sidles into the bay.

Oteranga Bay (also known as Cable Bay) is a fairly bleak, windswept place in a southerly. The Cook Strait cable comes ashore here on the eastern side of the bay, and there is an access roadway behind the cable station which climbs steeply up the hillside over Mt Misery and follows the hills northwards out to South Makara Road south of Makara Village. There is an open hut in the bay belonging to Terawhiti Station, tucked hard in at the base of the hillside on the western side of the valley about five hundred metres up the valley from the beach.

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