Kea Point Track

Kea Point Walk - 2 hours return from the Hermitage;

45 minutes return from the White Horse Hill carpark. A superb, short walk that takes you along a broad, civilized path among tussock-covered piles of moraine. At the end of it you are confronted by the overpowering sense of destruction that Nature can wreak on the land, both by the valley glacier up to the left and by the twisted, threatening hanging glaciers on the face of Mount Sefton and the Footstool above.

Only a short distance from the luxury of the Hermitage is a deep, deep cutting created by the huge force of a glacier. Although the ice has now retreated up two valleys, it has deposited incredible stacks of crushed and ground rock that have been cut into and left with precipitous sides.

Many metres below the Kea Point viewing platform, melt-water from the glaciers has created a small lake, used by a tourist operator for kayaking. The information panels name the mountains and enhance the scene by giving geological and Maori explanations for the formation of the sights you see before you.