A 5.5km walk between North Beach and Lapaho hugs the coastal cliffs on the sides of the Twelve Apostles Mountains and is popular with Greymouth locals for both walking and mountain biking.
The Department of Conservation of New Zealand has closed the track at the end of Cobden “due to impassable slippage.”
It remains open from the edge of Rapaho, but the northern part has also experienced heavy slippage in the last 12 months after heavy rains.
Darrell Howarth, acting area manager at DOC Greymouth, said at a meeting of the West Coast Conservation Commission that the agency had commissioned a geoengineering report with an option to stabilize slips.
“That’s not great news. All three options have their own risks,” says Haworth.
The length of the slip was about 20m, but the risk area can be much larger.
The DOC has now agreed to a project panel that evaluates the following course of action before undertaking work, estimated at up to $ 500,000.
Point Elizabeth is one of several West Coast DOC trucks endangered after a heavy rain explosion in the last few months.
Mark Davis, director of the western South Island, said the Heaphy Truck’s “Great Walks” were closed in February due to the “significant loss of infrastructure” that caused the bridge to be wiped out by the floods.
Closed earlier this year, such as the Paparoa truck’s “Great Walks” and the Old Ghost Road, this means that visitors were aware of the “risk of reputation” to the West Coast as their destination.
“It was pretty unpleasant,” Davis said.
On the Heaphy Truck, three bridges, the Heaphy River, the Gunner River, and the Pit Creek, were extensively damaged or destroyed.
Davies said the department had successfully bid under the Cyclone Dobi budget package for Heaphy’s repairs, which were expected to take a long time.
The repair package included a climate change assessment of the damaged section of the truck, for example, to locate and locate a new bridge across the Heaphy River.
“There are also challenges with the availability of contractors and supplies … at this time, we can’t comment through experience when the truck will open,” Davis said.
He said Heaphy was an important financial contributor to both the Karamea and Golden Bay communities at this time of the year.
The agency also worked closely with the Backcountry Trust, which operates the Old Ghost Road, which was hit by a storm between Raiel and Seddonville.
“I survived the Cyclone Dovi in February, but did not survive the two meteorological events of April and early May.”
Davis said a series of “extreme thunderstorms” in May had a dramatic impact on all the streams crossing in the DOC management section of the first 16km truck in the Raiel Valley.
The full repair costs are not yet known, but the Trust was funded by a national cycleway project for extreme weather, Davis said.
Meanwhile, Haworth said the slip that closed the Paparoa truck between the northern end of the cliff and the Pororari hut in April did not move again after the repair.
The truck resumed in the second week of May, but could be closed again elsewhere after bad weather.
The condition of the Pike 29 truck, which had not yet opened, was “exceptional”, but while the Carwans truck in Inangawa was closed, the department was closed or damaged by many other closures or storms, including the Cole Creek Falls truck in Lunanga. Was managing the repairs. It will take some time due to the damage of the storm.
-Blendon McMahon
Local democracy reporter