The business story

The Mount Richmond Forest Park usually gets little notice as an adventure destination, as if you are sitting in sunny Nelson, then your focus is usually across the Bay to Kahurangi and Abel Tasman National Parks….. However, there’s some absolute gems hidden in this rugged forest Park, one of my favourites is the Mount Richmond Alpine circuit... It’s been over 10 years since we were up on the beautiful Alpine tops gazing down on Tasman Bay, but it still sits quite strongly in the memory…. I’ll explain why.

Every year me and my partner try to tackle a new multi day tramp to see what is hiding in the back valleys of New Zealand, in 2011 our focus shifted to the Mount Richmond Alpine Range. I had been working building trails and cooking at the Wairoa Gorge Mountain Bike Park , so in my usual style I had been poring over maps of the surrounding area. The Alpine circuit immediately caught my eye; I love to be in the Alpine and this 4-5 day 59 km tramp spends most of its time weaving about at above 1000 metres

Bags were packed, drop offs arranged and we set off for what I will say is probably the hardest day of the tramp. The climb up to Starveall hut is quite long and a constant uphill grade, but it gets you to 1200m and the start of the Alpine circuit.

The Alpine wandering from there on in is quite surreal. It’s quite different to a lot of other tramps we’ve done as it hangs around at the snowline for most of it, and delves into the mineral belt a couple of times. This means you get an incredible mix of tussock lands, alpine beech forest and the strange plants that appear where the mineral belt pushes its way to the surface.

If you are looking for a good medium to hard grade tramping route in the area you will be hard pressed to find something better than the this Alpine Route

This is the first winter we haven’t gone on a epic winter discovery tramp, as we were actually basking in the sun on a bike touring through Europe!!

But it does bring to mind last years winter discovery expedition. We’d been running quite a lot of transport down to the West Coast and occasionally we would go over Rahu Saddle between Springs Junction and Reefton as it’s such a quiet and scenic road that doesn’t get a lot of traffic. Rahu saddle runs staight through the Victoria forest park. After scouring the maps we thought we could eck out a week exploring the areas backcountry and also tackling a tramp in Arthurs Park National park.

It turned out to be a very wet and cold week, however that didn’t deter us deter us, we started out with a day hike in the rain at Duffys creek, there was so much water on the track that the end clearing had actually turned into a lake!!

Next day we started another rain drenched route up to Lake Stream hut(2 bunk) for the night, it was a freezing night, and just before we nodded off another party arrived at the hut, we gave one of them our thermarests to park up on the hut floor and luckily enough the others had a tent with them.

After getting up to boots frozen solid , we hiked to the sun on the Mount Blackadder range. It was a good scamble across the tops to make it to camp that night at the top tarns at at the end of the Klondyke valley route. We spent a blustery night in the tent beside the mountain tarns before heading back down to vehicle.

I’d just like to really recommend this as a great back country route, it’s logistically easy as its a loopable circuit, and it affords great valley and mountain scenery….. and if you do it in summer it could be done in two days without frozen boots!!!

The main thing as that we are adventurers too, so we we ooze with passion for what we do!!! We started the business just prior to the outbreak of the Pandemic and we saw an opportunity to create a service for adventurers by adventurers…. It was getting pretty hard to get to some of the the less frequented but amazing adventure locations in the top of the South for New Zealand Adventurers, so we had a think about this and decided on a small model that works in with adventurers to enable them top get to these places with an affordable and flexible service.

Our per person monthly specials are the key to being able to offer lower custom transport prices to smaller adventuring parties, 9 times out of ten we can offer off spare seats on custom transport as a monthly special. Thats great… it means cheaper custom transport for adventurers… per seat prices on monthly specials to interesting locations… and the number one for us at Scottish Express… we lower the enviromental footprint of our journeys by running at capacity.

Does It work??…. see what our customers have to say….

We’ve been continuing to ensure that we are making ethical decisions for the enviroment and our customers as part of our sustainable tourism model.

We measure and offset our Carbon with EKOS New Zealand, and are happy to say that we have reduced our Carbon offset by 13% this year while increasing our sales by 63%!!!

And we don’t rest on our laurels by just offsetting carbon , we also actively reduce our enviromental burden on the globe we live on to ensure we can practice sustainable tourism well into the future.

We’ve been doing this in quite a few ways….

Well, the years winding up, and it’s been a year packed with adventures for Scottish Express. Big thanks to all those who have supported the Express this year. We’ve had great times driving people to new adventures on the monthly specials and listening to their conversations in the Landcruiser party lounge. We’ve also been pretty stoked to have a lot of adventureres from outside of the Nelson and New Zealand hit us up for custom transport and advice on adventures in the region, we’re pretty lucky to live in the adventure hotspot of Nelson and share a few of the adventure destinations not on the beaten track.

Anyway, I’m signing out…. time to pack a tramping pack ….

Just had am amazing eight day trip away taking customers on the Alps to Ocean tour, unbelievable weather and scenery. We stayed in great accommodation and enjoyed BBQ’s by the lake and great comaraderie on the trail. This is kind of trip is the Scottish Express speciality… custom transport with accommodation and activities thrown in. If you have an idea for an adventure… get in touch we’re happy to give you a hand to build an amazing adventure. Or if you want something ready to go have a look at our adventure packages for groups or our monthly specials for smaller groups and individuals