Offroad-Express

does anyone know if the 4wd track up by the old wind farm is still there? i havent been up there in ages and heard someone say it was destroyed when they logged all the pine trees? anyone know for sure?

north range road? is still there but not much of a 4wd track

cant remember what its called.. you go up on the woodvile side across the balance bridge and then come out on the pahiatua (sp) track. use to be a really good track.

dvk-kp wrote:cant remember what its called.. you go up on the woodvile side across the balance bridge and then come out on the pahiatua (sp) track. use to be a really good track.

Yep, it is Hall Block Road from the bottom of the Balance Road Bridge side of the range up to somewhere in the windfarm. It then becomes North Range Road the rest of the way to the ridge top meeting point with Pahiatua Track. These two roads are still public road access. Aside from a few 4WD 'teasers' on the Pahiatua Track side there is pretty much nought left from the old days except the view. The new Stage 3 part of the Tararua Wind Farm put a four lane highway up through there for the components of the windfarm to go through. Logging operations are using Forest Hill Road on the PMR side of the hills to extract their logs. The only forest vehicles I've seen using the Nth Rge Rd side are service vehicles when they were over that side logging.

ok thanks for that. its stink that its gone tho as i remember going there when i was younger and there were some big holes in there!

dvk-kp wrote:does anyone know if the 4wd track up by the old wind farm is still there? i havent been up there in ages and heard someone say it was destroyed when they logged all the pine trees? anyone know for sure?

Yea its not a very fun track any more thanks to the windfarm projects, I was working up there as part of the 3 earthworks/civil enginnering crews that were contracted to Higgins and Trust power building the roads and digging the turbine holes, The roads had to made so smooth and wide to suit the 400 Tonne crane that installed the Turbines etc, They also had to be all weather roads hence all the compacted gravel that was over layed on top of the clay roads we built.

But winter was fun as when we got rained off we all went offroading and would usually take the longer way home through the forest to Pahiatua Track etc