Thread: Takapari road

Originally Posted by XR500

Takapari road was constructed in 1972-73 by the then NZ Forest Service, bulldozed in by a mates dad in his D8. It was built to permit....wait for it..... mass planting of Pinus Contorta, in a vain attempt to control erosion in all those steep gully heads. The A frame was built as a rudimentary shelter/base for the NZFS tree planters to base themselves from.

Since it was constructed on Public land by the then land manager (NZFS) it never became gazetted as a public road. So the Regional Council has never been burdened by its maintenance. It has fallen to the NZFS, then DoC to maintain it. We all know how that ends.

I used to push bike it in the late 1970's and then later hunt it from my little 2 stroke Suzuki Jimney in the mid 1980's. In the NZFS days there was always evidence of the grader having been there every year or so.

It was well constructed back in the day, heavily crowned, culverts, runoffs etc etc but sadly it has received little to no love from DoC in the past 30 years. Hence it has fallen to pieces.

4WD's will have added only a bit to the demise of Takapari road. When you are up there and experience a Spring deluge you have to see it to believe it just how much shingle gets moved in 24 hours. Add 20-30 years minimal maintenance, culverts, runoffs block up, crown not maintained and the rest is history.

As a side note my mates Dad had contracted to the NZFS for that project. When he had completed the road he asked for his dozer to be backloaded to his base in Dannevirke(??) . They told him the low loader was in use for the next month, we'll pick it up after that. He had other jobs lined up for the dozer, so just drove it North along the main range a bit, then took the best looking ridge and drove down the ridge to hit the stream a km or two downstream of Stanfield hut, and trundled down the stream to the road end. Try doing that today

You can still see that line down through the bush when you no were to look from the ridge in our place,
The road was done up around 2015 roughly from memory it was really good, now days not so much.
You posted a picture once of the suzuki up there.

Sent from my SM-S916B using Tapatalk

Yes, it was a tad chilly. 2 inches of ice on all the puddles from memory. Deer were all well down off the tops that Winter!