If you are looking for new places to adventure a stone’s throw away from Nelson, New Zealand then Mount Richmond Forest park should come up on your Radar. Most people have firm eyes on the Abel Tasman, Kahurangi National park and the Nelson lakes when they are planning their adventures. The 165,000 hectares of Mount Richmond Forest Park is often forgotten about, and people miss out on some great adventures that are literally walking distance from Nelson city.
On this occasion we were looking to explore Top valley which resides on the Marlborough side of the Richmond Range and is accessed by driving up the North Bank road.
We had a pretty loosely defined plan when we set off for the 2 and half hour drive to reach Top valley, our main aim was to have a general explore and possibly lower the feral goat population with the rifle we had packed on board . We drove up in the afternoon and set up camp in the vehicle at the Forks
Top house valley itself has some quite interesting history as gold was discovered here in 1899, at first they pulled alluvial gold out of the river and then a gold bearing quartz reef was found and subsequent mining operations proceeded..On some of the older maps there is reference to a scheelite mine in the valley, scheelite is the primary ore for producing tungsten. You can still visit some of these historical sites
There’s great camping spots in the valley at Jubilee flats and the Forks, and a short 45min walk from the forks gets you to the historic Whitehead clearing which also makes for a great camp spot.
There’s very little information on the walks and campsites on the doc website, which is a shame as it’s a great place to go camping with children, as the walks are quite easy to access and the forks walk has some cool waterfalls, and beautiful vistas of the river.
We spent the day exploring both the forks and the riverside walk, reducing the Goat population by three and finding some amazing fungi on our travels.
After a long day exploring the valleys we jumped back in the Landcruiser engaged 4wd and crossed the river to drive up at Richmond saddle road to camp at the start of the Richmond saddle hut track. As a side note, I would recommend a 4wd to access this track, as the rivers crossing has soft sand in it.
After the fierce wind we had been experiencing in the last couple of days it was pleasant to awake to a very calm morning. We quickly packed up our packs to set out reasonably early , the days are short this time of year and our plan was to reach Richmond saddle hut, drop our bags and then summit Mount Richmond.
The Walk up was pleasant for us, but quite fatal for another two goats. The first half is ridge travel in the forest with quite a few opportunities for scrambling up rocky outcrops to get vistas north and south along the range.
About half way up you divert from the ridge and sidle along the rocky side of point 1393 through some pretty cool alpine beech forest. After about 3 1/2 hours walking we arrived at Richmond saddle hut.
The eight bunk Richmond Saddle hut has a pretty amazing location, it sits at about 1200 metres in a small saddle with vistas to the north of Tasman bay and a giant ghoulish beech forest looming behind the hut, directly above the hut are the rocky flanks of Mount Richmond itself, an imposing wall of rubble and rock 560m above the hut.
We rested our legs, grabbed a bite to eat and ascertained that the other 4 sleeping bags laid out in the hut were a family that was heading up and over Mount Richmond to discover the site of NZ’s first fatal commercial plane crash. In 1942 a Lockheed Electra 10A crashed into the slopes of mount Richmond with no survivors. The neighboring peaks in the area Mount Fell and Mount Johnston are both named after victims of the crash.
From the Hut it’s a solid hour up to the top of Mount Richmond. And by solid I mean really quite steep. After about 45 mins battling rocks and large scree you meet the main ridge and from there it’s a comparatively gentle walk to the Ridge.
Mount Richmond summit is a great place to come to get a bird eye perspective of the Richmond range, as it sits roughly in the middle of Mount Richmond forest park. The crisp winter day had remained calm all day and we stopped for a good 45 mins to take in the majestic views that the summit afforded. We met the family that were staying at the hut as they returned from visiting the plane wreckage, and chatted for a bit at the summit before we descended.
Our trip down was quite slow as we paused many times to take in the setting sun hitting the folds of the hills and mountains. We made to the hut to see a glorious sunset over Tasman bay, before preparing some sustenance and slipping into our sleeping bags
So that pretty much sums up our King’s Birthday Weekend trip. I’d thoroughly recommend all parts of it. With younger children there’s plenty to see and do while camping in Top valley itself, and the walk up to Richmond hut was reasonably easy going, it’s just the climb up to Mount Richmond itself that’s really steep.
If we did it again we’d probably stay 2 nights at Richmond saddle hut, the alpine pastures beyond Mount Richmond are quite expensive and worth exploring. Also it would have been great to have more time to visit the plane wreckage.
There’s two other routes to get to Mount Richmond. There’s alternative access from the Marlborough side on Te Rou road and if you are really looking for an adventure you can get up from Middy hut on the Pelorus, if you started from Nelson this would end up being a 3 to 4 day west to east traverse of the park( we did this many years ago)
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