If you’re spending time on the West Coast, make sure to spend some time checking out a few of these Paparoa National Park hikes and walks.
What makes Paparoa National Park special?
The variety. The park extends down to the West Coast where you’ll find nikau palms giving a tropical vibe, then on the tops of the Paparoa Range the terrain becomes more alpine. And there are plenty of caves throughout the park, which limestone underlying much of the park.
This post will detail each of the tracks I do in Paparoa National Park as I do them.
PAPAROA NATIONAL PARK HIKES & WALKS
1. Pororari River Track
2. Pororari Punakaiki Loop
3. Paparoa Track
1. PORORARI RIVER TRACK
- Distance: 7 – 7.5km
- Elevation Gain: Less than 100 metres
- Difficulty: Easy
The Pororari River Track is part of the Paparoa Great Walk. It’s an awesome walk, with the goods starting straight away as the river with steep limestone cliffs impressing from the get go.
Along the rest of the way you’ll come across a wee cave, and you might spot some small tracks leading to the river edge. If you’re keen, take a swim! The different colours of the water are fun too.
Once you reach the junction, walk the extra couple of hundred metres to the suspension bridge, the forest in this section gives Jurassic Park vibes!
The Pororari River Track
has to be one of the best short walks in Paparoa National Park.
2. PORORARI PUNAKAIKI LOOP
- Distance: 11-12km
- Elevation Gain: ~220 metres
- Difficulty: Easy to Medium
The Pororari Punakaiki Loop takes you along the Pororari River Track, but instead of turning back the way you came, you’ll veer off at the junction to complete a loop. Once you turn right, you’ll be on the last of the Paparoa Track that the mountain bikers complete.
This section is full of dense bush on a gentle gradient. It’s totally different to the earlier part of the trail. Then it opens up as you approach the Waikori Road carpark with some glimpses of views out to the ocean as you follow the Punakaiki River towards the highway.
Once on the highway, make you’re way back through Punakaiki to the starting point. There’s a path most of the way next to the highway, and you do get some great views over the beach which makes it still a nice walk.
The quality to distance ratio of the loop isn’t as great as just doing the River Trail above, but it’s always fun to do a loop and it’s still a quality hike!
3. PAPAROA TRACK
Note: I’ll need to go back and do this in a good weather window!
- Distance:52-55km
- Elevation Gain: 1500 – 1700 metres
- Difficulty: Hard
The Paparoa Track is an awesome point to point Great Walk (formed as a Great Walk in 2020) and the marquee Paparoa National Park hike. The DOC website says the track is 55km, but most trackers I’ve seem are in the 52-53km range.
I’ve only done this in horrendous weather, so haven’t seen the best views yet. But this feels like a magical track that you can do over 1 to 3 days. What I enjoyed about this track was you get most of the climbing down in the first third of the track (starting from Smoke-Ho carpark) as you make your way through the forest.
From there you ease your way back down to the coastline and you finish a short distance from Punakaiki which is also perfect.
Interestingly, it’s a shared track with bikes allowed on the trail too.
And there you go, there are more popular National Parks in New Zealand, but the Paparoa National Park hikes and walks are varied which is awesome.
And given the size of the National Park, you can get a good sampling of that variation over a week or two. Pending weather!
If you’ve got any questions about walks and hikes in Paparoa National Park leave a comment below or email jub@churnewzealand.com.
Chur.
p.s. Here’s a map of all the walks and hikes documented on Chur New Zealand. You can click the icon to see brief details, as well as a link to read more about the hike (like this post).
Hey, it’s Jub here. I’m the guy behind Chur New Zealand, helping you have the best time hiking, trekking, walking…whatever you want to call it…in NZ. I’m based in Queenstown and am always out and about exploring trails, old & new. If you have any questions, reach out.