Otira Gorge

Image Credits: Sabrina Xavier Photographer

The Otira Gorge road had a well-established reputation as hazardous, being in places extremely narrow and passing over over steep geologically unstable hillside frequently subject to slips. Now its hazards have been significantly reduced with part of the original road having been replaced with a spectacular 440m viaduct.

Dutch born artist Petrus Van der Velden has gained a place in New Zealand art history largely has a result of his pictures of Otira Gorge in inclement conditions.

In the 19th Century travel through the Gorge was slow.
According to the Imperial Album:

THE OTIRA GORGE -

After a long haul upwards of 1000 feet from the shingle bed of the Bealey, the coach passes the dividing stake between Canterbury and Westland, on Arthur's Pass, at an altitude of over 3000 feet, and shortly afterwards the truly magnificent and colossal gorge of the Otira is unfolded before us. Looking skywards and to the rear we see the mighty Aiguilles of the Otira glacier frowning thousands of feet above us, while in front and on both sides we are surrounded by densely-wooded mountains rising to an altitude of 7000 feet. Then down from the Pass we descend into the gigantic yawning ravine. Along a narrow zigzagged roadway, which in places is hewn out of the rock-buttresses, which follow shear down to the surging river below, that struggles round and between the mighty boulders. What a wealth of foliage! Mica mica, veronica, and the scarlet blossoms of the rata; and then the silken cascades ; that seem always to have chosen the steepest places to come down for the sake of the leap ; After descending, at a lively pace, through this colossal grandeur and beauty, the coach halts at a depth of 1,500 feet at the Otira hotel.

In 1868 Civil Engineer and Surveyor James Wylde sent to his children an account of travelling from Christchurch to the West Coast by coach.