This is a long day with few options to buy food or water along the way, so make sure you have everything you need before you leave Hokitika along the Hokitika River on Kaniere Tram Road. Turn left into Lake Kaniere Road and follow the Kaniere River to Lake Kaniere Scenic Reserve turn off from where the trail meanders beautifully along the historic hand dug Kaniere Water Race for 10km to Lake Kaniere.

It’s damp and cool in the bush, near the race channelled in the ground that once supplied water for gold sluicing operations and to the power house, generating electricity. And it is dark. The dense canopy admits very little light, just patches of it reflecting off the water. Then again, for a few moments the sun flows through a gap in the foliage, flooding the track with light. It’s easy to get distracted as light and shadow alternate and the trail narrows, bends, and twists right next to the canal. Please take care here and dismount and walk if you feel uncomfortable riding your bike on the narrow path.

We came upon an elderly lady who had gone off trail, toppled head-first into the race, had bleeding cuts on her arms and head, and stood in freezing water for fifteen minutes before finally we came along and helped her out of the ditch and back to Lake Kaniere Road and recovered her bike.

Past Lake Kaniere, you continue up the Arahura River as it meanders through hills cloaked in native bush and grasslands peppered with wildflowers and tussock in a wide riverbed of white pebbles. The river looked wild and natural to me, but was once extensively sluiced and dredged during gold-working operations. It is still a prized source of pounamu (greenstone) and a beautiful sight from a higher elevation as the trail commences a string of gentle switchbacks that leisurely zigzag up the mountainside to Kawhaka Pass at 317m.

When you pass Cowboy Paradise, a sort of replica Wild West town with a terrible reputation and stripper poles if the talk is to be believed, you’re almost there. Cowboy Paradise is actually in a great location for an overnight stay, half-way between Hokitika and Kumara, but in light of devastating reviews (“Don’t stay here. I was relieved to be leaving without being murdered and buried in the mountain.” or “What a terrible place if you are anything other than a white heterosexual male who likes to eat off filthy tablecloths and walk on grime in their rooms.”) few people willingly spend the night in what looks more like a scrap metal yard than guest accommodation.

The pass itself is unremarkable, but the last 28km leg to the former goldmining town of Kumara is a treat, mostly downhill, tracing old stage coach roads, water races, logging trams, and pack track through ancient Podocarp forest down the Kawhaka Valley and passing by the Kumara and Kapitea reservoirs into town.