Dart river track. long term closure.

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Dart river track. long term closure.

Postby wayno » Wed 14 Jan, 2015 3:20 am

http://www.odt.co.nz/news/queenstown-la ... ping-track

recommended that people intending to tramp the Rees-Dart circuit this summer make other plans.

http://www.topomap.co.nz/NZTopoMap/nz19 ... lley/Otago
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Re: Dart river track. long term closure.

Postby Walk_fat boy_walk » Wed 14 Jan, 2015 9:00 am

IIRC a fair amount of work had been done on that segment of track too. This, along with the last year's washout (upstream.... sandy bluff/dredge flat area?) will have "undone" quite a bit of reasonably recent trackwork?
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Re: Dart river track. long term closure.

Postby wayno » Wed 14 Jan, 2015 9:37 am

most of the work was done around the lake, this damage is below the lake, the track is being undercut around the lake as well as the lake is still slowly increasing in size. if people do out and back trips on the rees it will double the no of people in the huts there or more people may attempt the cascade which is only safe in good weather. in wet weather its a death trap.
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Re: Dart river track. long term closure.

Postby wayno » Fri 04 Dec, 2015 2:16 pm

please read the alert, this is still in effect indefinitely until further notice

http://www.doc.govt.nz/reesdart

10 March 2015: Dart Valley Track closed between Bedford Bridge and Sandy Bluff
The Dart Valley Track between Bedford Bridge and Sandy Bluff is closed as it is impassable. The Rees-Dart circuit option is unavailable. People wanting to walk to/from the Dart Hut can still do so via the Rees Valley Track.

This is a long term alert.
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DART RIVER TRACK CLOSED INDEFINITELY

Postby wayno » Mon 25 Jan, 2016 2:49 pm

DART RIVER TRACK CLOSED INDEFINITELY.

just bumping this one to the top for the NZ forum. theres repeat threads coming up about people wanting to do the Dart River Track, you can't without a packraft.
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Re: Dart river track. long term closure.

Postby LachlanB » Sun 01 May, 2016 5:53 pm

Wayno's post needs a small update.
Currently hoped that the Dart track will be reopened in November this year if works happen over winter:
http://www.wildernessmag.co.nz/view/pag ... -november/
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Re: Dart river track. long term closure.

Postby wayno » Mon 02 May, 2016 11:58 am

LachlanB wrote:Wayno's post needs a small update.
Currently hoped that the Dart track will be reopened in November this year if works happen over winter:
http://www.wildernessmag.co.nz/view/pag ... -november/


watch out for the stampede when it does open again... they were looking at having bookings for at least the dart hut over summer.
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Re: Dart river track. long term closure.

Postby Walk_fat boy_walk » Thu 02 Mar, 2017 12:46 pm

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Re: Dart river track. long term closure.

Postby wayno » Thu 02 Mar, 2017 12:48 pm

i can hear the stampede for the huts....
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Re: Dart river track. long term closure.

Postby LachlanB » Mon 06 Mar, 2017 8:56 pm

Yeah, but it's probably a good thing that the Rees-Dart is back open. Its closure was funnelling people over Cascade saddle in search of a loop track, and that is not a friendly piece of track.

Now it's open, I guess I'm gonna have to go back to the South Island at some point and join the stampede!
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Re: Dart river track. long term closure.

Postby wayno » Mon 20 Mar, 2017 5:45 pm

relatively few people were going over cascade saddle compared to the normal no's for the rees dart, cascade saddle is a fine weather route only and racks up a lot of injuries and a few deaths in wet and icy conditions...
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Re: Dart river track. long term closure.

Postby madpom » Thu 23 Mar, 2017 6:54 am

Anecdotally Lachlan is right. Almost a majority of the fruit pickers and hitchhikers I've bumped into around central this year have been planning of walking the 'cascade saddle track' - as an alternative to Rees Dart. Very few seemed to understand the difference in difficulty or what effect the weather has on that route.
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Re: Dart river track. long term closure.

Postby LachlanB » Thu 23 Mar, 2017 2:58 pm

Anecdotes are certainly all I based my comment on. When I was in the area and talking to people about where they were going, several groups mentioned that they were thinking of using the Cascade saddle route as an alternative to the (closed) Rees-Dart. I certainly encountered one guy at Aspiring Hut who was going up there for a daywalk (at 3pm in the afternoon...), and who had no concept that it was a relatively difficult route.

Bear in mind that I'm an Aussie, so my observations were made in a comparatively short period of time while I was on holiday. It just seemed that a lot of people were entertaining the idea of a walk that was more difficult than the standard tourist walks in the area, even in the face of difficult weather conditions.
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Re: Dart river track. long term closure.

Postby roysta » Fri 24 Mar, 2017 6:28 pm

LachlanB wrote:I certainly encountered one guy at Aspiring Hut who was going up there for a daywalk (at 3pm in the afternoon...), and who had no concept that it was a relatively difficult route.

That is nothing short of total lunacy, but unfortunately, how often have we seen non-kiwis run into strife in the NZ hills because they have no understanding of NZ conditions.
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Re: Dart river track. long term closure.

Postby LachlanB » Fri 24 Mar, 2017 7:41 pm

roysta wrote:That is nothing short of total lunacy.

I know, but he was determined to go up there and wouldn't listen to either me or the hut warden telling him it was a bad idea. As the warden didn't mention any rescue operations a few days later when I passed back through Aspiring Hut, I presume he turned around at some point. If you have to have an unscheduled night in the bush with no camping equipment, there's worse places to end up than Aspiring Hut I guess...
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