By Justin Atkinson, 07 November 2025
Te-Papa-Kura-o-Taranaki is a beautiful national park. Taranaki Maunga heads up a breathtaking landscape, and the area has many well-visited spots like Dawson Falls, Lake Dive, the Pouākai tarns, and huts like Syme and Holly. These are all located on the east side of the mountain.
In comparison, the western slopes of Taranaki Maunga are less visited. They can be walked as part of the 52km Around the Mountain circuit, but it's worth doing a trip solely dedicated to the west side.
A quartet of VUWTC trampers departed Kelburn campus for Kahui road end, a quartet of hours from Wellington. There are lots of small towns on the way that are worth checking out, like Sanson and its Ministry of Books, and Hāwera with its cool clock tower.
Reaching Taranaki, we began to worry that the Maunga has disappeared. All we could see were grey skies. Even at the road end, the mountain was missing in action. A herd of cows welcomed us to the start of Kahui track. Kahui Hut is a chill 2-3hr walk along a well-maintained track. Boardwalks protected us from a legion of mud, and pest traps were a common sight. The forest was green and luscious. The Maunga eventually loomed into view, its peak dusted with snow. We arrived at Kahui Hut with sunlight to spare. Kahui has 6 bunks, and we were joined by two nice French tourists from Nice!
After a cider or two, we set about auditing the hut. The Federated Mountain Clubs run an annual event called "Love our Huts", where awesome volunteers clean and report on the health of Aotearoa's precious outdoor huts. Look out for stickers from these volunteers on your hut stays. We cleaned the surfaces and mattresses, got friendly with cobwebs, wrote notes on the condition of the hut for FMC and the Department of Conservation, and climbed up a sketchy ladder to scale the high hut walls.
The hut was starting to become one with mother nature, with grass and weeds submerging the foundations. This is a problem because rot and mould could spread to the structure. With cultural and ecological considerations in mind, we used secateurs to minimally trim the overgrowth.
After a peaceful night, we woke to even better views of the mountain. Next stop: Waiaua Gorge Hut. Normally you can walk 4hr around the mountain, but the direct track is closed due to treefalls and slips. That path would have been an adventure, but we thought it best to return to the car and drive 15min south to Ihaia track. This involves walking along farmland for one kilometre before entering the bush.
This detour was worth it for three reasons. One, we got amazing views of the mountain you don't get on Kahui road. Second, we found out that Thomas could summon a herd of cows. 30 of them followed only him as we walked along the fence of their large enclosure. Third, we were good samaritans. Halfway along the GREEN farmland a guy heading to the carpark asked if we'd seen his keys on a GREEN lanyard. We said no, but we kept our eyes peeled. Thomas eventually spotted the keys deep into the bush. Big shoutout here: Thomas then jogged the 1.5hr return walk to the carpark in 50min. The guy had been picked up by his mum and left his number on his car, but luckily they lived nearby. Thankfully we had plenty of sun left!
Waiaua Gorge Hut is a 2.5-4hr walk from the car. This includes a permanent detour around a washed out section of track. This treefall-ridden detour had plenty of boggy track and pesky vines that slipped and tripped us at every turn, so we did some trimming to make it more walkable.
The final section to the hut follows a river with nice swimming holes. The riverbank was overgrown with weeds, so again out came the secateurs and loppers. We found the 18 bunker to be completely empty. Our best view of the Manga was here. We saved our hut audit for the next day and had a chill evening playing cards.
Our final day was a biggie. 45min walk due east is Brames Falls, a 190m waterfall. You kick off with a 30m steel ladder, which has a cage to stop you falling (better than the Maungahuka ladder in the Tararuas)! We highly recommend these falls as they're stunning (you can also reach them via a long long walk due west from Lake Dive).
Returning to the hut we found it still empty, and returned several hours walk back to Thomas's herd of friendly cows. I tracked our progress by counting down the sequentially ordered pest trap numbers. One had caught a rat, which we reported to the local monitoring group of Opunake High School! We were treated to visible views of the mountain all the way out of Taranaki.
Whanganui KFC review:
It was a long but enjoyable drive back to Welly. Looking for a nice dinner spot, Whanganui seemed a good shout. Some went to Burger King. Others went to KFC where Thomas tried to order off the secret menu. The order was locked in, but then all systems went down. KFC still took orders manually, but refused to fulfill Thomas's paid order or to acknowledge the existence of the secret menu.
Despite having a 2.5hr evening drive ahead of us, we stuck around an hour to discover Thomas's mysterious burger. Was it worth the wait? That's a secret, better travel to Whanganui to find out... (or read Alan Ye's Feilding KFC review for a different option)!
Bonus photo of a bucket named after Ash:
