Sunday 23 November 2025
Pouakai Circuit 2025
My previous attempts to tramp the Pouakai Circuit and see the famous view of Mt Taranaki from Pouakai Tarns were fun, but not entirely successful due to foggy weather at the tarns, so I vowed to keep trying until we got good a view there. Last week I had another attempt, but once again it was fun but foiled by the weather!
Like our 2020 trip, we stayed at Matekawa Hut on the first night (just a bit over an hour’s walk from the North Egmont car park), then walked via the Puffer to Holly Hut in about five hours, then on the third day walked over to Pouakai Hut and then out to the car park. Unfortunately the weather was very foggy and cloudy for almost all the trip. On the third day, the sun broke though while we were up on the Pouakai tops, but the fog continued to block our views horizontally. We finally got a good view of the mountain from the car after finishing the track!
Nevertheless we still had a good time. We had a lot of good hut time and played a lot of Bang!. The food and company were execellent. Three of us did the side trip from Holly Hut to Bell Falls — the track was completely waterlogged but the falls and stream were raging torrents, which was fun to see.
A couple of our group found the track hard going so instead of having them walk all the way from Pouakai Hut to Kaiauai car park (four and half hours at a good speed, with some steep up-and-down around Henry Peak), we sent them from Pouakai Hut down the Mangorei Track to the Mangorei road end. That’s only a two hour walk, and a pretty easy one at that. The rest of us walked out to the cars and drove around to Mangorei to pick them up. The walk up to Pouakai Hut from Mangorei looks like it would be a really great day walk or overnight trip. Pouakai Hut has just been rebuilt and the new hut looks amazing — bunkrooms separated from the dining area (so you can party all night without disturbing other trampers!), USB charging, spacious, big windows. I’m looking forward to staying there sometime.
And there will be a sometime, because I’m determined to keep going back until we get some kind of view at the tarns!
