To Waikareiti and back

DAY’S END: The sun goes down over Lake Waikareiti. Picture by Kay Bayley

Back in February, just a few days before Cyclone Gabrielle struck, the Gisborne Canoe and Tramping Club hiked to Lake Waikareiti in Te Urewera. Gillian Ward writes abut the overnight excursion. The damage inflicted by the cyclone led to the closure of tracks and huts in Te Urewera for the rest of the season.

Lake Waikareiti has been said to be the most beautiful lake in Aotearoa, and who would argue? A Gisborne Canoe and Tramping Club group walked to Sandy Bay Hut at Lake Waikareiti and back the following day, in early February.

While the larger Lake Waikaremoana is a landslide-dammed lake, formed about 2000 years ago when a landslide dammed Waikaretaheke River, Lake Waikareiti is a “landslide pond”. A separate much larger landslide occurred on the northeast side of Lake Waikaremoana about 15,000 years ago, and Lake Waikareiti is the largest of the ponds filling hollows within this landslide debris. There are six islands in the lake, which are really mounds from the old landslide debris, and one, Rahui, encloses its own lake.

The walk begins near the bridge over Aniwaniwa Stream at Aniwaniwa. A well-graded wide track leads to the day shelter at the southern end of Lake Waikareiti, near the lake outlet. We reached the shelter after about an hour of walking, and after gaining about 300m altitude. The shelter was opened in May 2014, built in a delightful location.

Several aluminium rowboats are stored just above lake level at the day shelter. The rowboats can be hired from the Te Urewera Visitor Centre at Aniwaniwa for a day trip, fishing, or for transport to Sandy Bay Hut for an overnight stay. They are high-sided boats which can carry five people with gear, and have two sets of rowlocks.

These days, a personal locator beacon comes with the dinghy, oars, and a lifejacket. Kayaks or outboard motors are generally not permitted to be carried to Lake Waikareiti because it is one of the few lakes in Aotearoa New Zealand without introduced lake weed.

For an overnight stay, choose a settled couple of days because a southwesterly blowing up the lake can create hazardous conditions to row back to the Waikareiti day shelter. Sometimes, when this has happened, people have left their rowboat at Sandy Bay to be retrieved later, and have walked out via the track. Rowing is a great option to transport a family of young children for an overnight stay, or to just enjoy rowing around the lake edge for an hour or two.

From the day shelter, the track around the lake edge is a well-marked tramping track, and easy to follow. Initially it follows the lake edge, then climbs over low ridges further away from the edge. Small sandy beaches overhung by trees provide attractive rest stops. It seemed to be a perfect time of year for numerous toadstools and fungi and we delighted in noticing these — so many unusual colours, including the blue toadstool which features on the Aotearoa New Zealand $50 note. The werewere-kōkako, or Entoloma hochstetteri, gets its name from an old Tūhoe story, in which the kōkako rubs its wattle on the toadstool, taking on its colour.

We also enjoyed the moss and fern-covered stream banks, and lichen and moss-covered fallen logs, the dramatic buttresses of the tall red beech trees, and the tufted neinei (Dracophyllum latifolium), which look like trees from a Dr Seuss book. We heard and saw kākā, kākāriki, tītipounamu (rifleman), pōpokotea (whitehead), tūī, korimako (bellbird), riroriro (grey warbler), miromiro (tomtit), pīwakawaka (fantail), and toutouwai (North Island robin), and heard koekoeā (long-tailed cuckoo) high in the canopy.

At Lake Waikareiti’s northeastern end, Sandy Bay is a shallow bay with white sand. Beech and broadleaved trees overhang the water, with flax and grasses fringing the lake edge.

Our group became well spread out with some taking about three-and-a-half hours to walk to Sandy Bay Hut from the day shelter, and others closer to five hours, because of botanising and photographing on the way. It was a warm and humid day and we all enjoyed swimming in the lake when we arrived at the hut.

The Wai 894: Te Urewera Waitangi Tribunal Report notes the cultural and spiritual values and hapū connections with Lake Waikareiti, a taonga of Tūhoe, Ngāti Ruapani and Ngāti Kahungunu.

While both Lake Waikaremoana and Lake Waikareiti provided important seasonal food sources, there were fewer kāinga and pā around Lake Waikareiti, probably because of its higher altitude and harsher climate, although it was used as a place of refuge.

Lake Waikareiti and its associated wetlands were important for hunting wild duck, for the associated plants and berries that attracted birds such as kākā, which were valued for their decorative feathers as well as for food, and for harvesting wetland plants such as rushes. Particular bush areas were set aside for feeding and snaring valued birds, which could then be traded or gifted to other communities.

The importance of these places meant that cultivations and permanent settlements were not generally established near them to avoid disturbance. Instead, temporary camps and cultivations were more common in these areas to ensure the resources were maintained and protected.

Lake Waikareiti also provided useful transport routes to many resource areas including bird hunting and berry gathering areas, and traditional forest trails led east from Waikareiti for trading and maintaining hapū connections.

It was a warm, calm evening at Sandy Bay and although some in the group had brought card games to share, it turned out that we preferred to watch the lake and the sunset after cooking our various dinners, rather than play cards.

It was still calm in the morning, and not too cold for an early morning dip in the lake. The return walk to Aniwaniwa was just as interesting, because we found we noticed different things walking in the opposite direction.

Prior to Te Urewera Act, the Lake Waikareiti area of Te Urewera National Park was identified as having some of the most important biodiversity values within the park and was one of the highest priorities for conservation management in the Department of Conservation’s Central North Island Region.

Now, as Tūhoe Te Uru Taumatua develop their plans for Te Urewera, which will include the management of the natural resources of Lake Waikareiti and may include providing for manuhiri, we hope that Sandy Bay Hut and the track to it will be allowed to remain.

With fewer wāhi tapu sites here than elsewhere in Te Urewera, and if resources were provided to educate manuhiri to reduce the risk of people inadvertently violating sacred areas, perhaps walking to the lake and staying overnight in a hut there, and rowing on Lake Waikareiti, could continue.