Time: 2 hours (Car park to Crater Rim Walkway 1 hour)
Distance: 3.5 km
Start: Car park outside HMNZ Steadfast Reserve, 64 - 86 Governor's Bay Road, Cass Bay
Finish: Same place - it's there and back
Date: Friday 11th July 2025
At first light, I looked out the kitchen window and saw the Port Hills shrouded in mist. "Bugger!" I thought, because today we were heading to the Steadfast Reserve (a.k.a. Cass Bay Reserve or Motukauatirahi Reserve), to walk the Steadfast Track - from harbour to Summit Road, with great views at the top. Usually.
Steadfast Reserve has an interesting history. According to the HMNZS Steadfast Reserve Landscape History & Conservation Report, the current site was developed during and after World II (1943-1961) by the South Island Royal New Zealand Navy as an armament depot. The area contains various derelict buildings including ten magazines (ammunition stores) which are brick bunkers, half built into the hillsides. The Conservation Report also mentions that magazine store #8 exploded in 1980. Jaysus.
The Christchurch City Council purchased the land in 2000 but locked the gates until 2021 (probably the 1980 explosion and the earthquakes made them a bit antsy) when local community groups kickstarted planning and planting. The Steadfast Reserve Discussion Plan has a map of actual and planned tracks. Last year we walked a lower loop amongst the bunkers (see Friday Walkies blog post here).
Today, Carolien and I drove in convoy with Sharyn (a.k.a Pamela), picking up Linda at the Bridal Path car park, then carrying on to the HMNZ Steadfast Reserve. We parked in that easy-to-miss car park, crossed the road on foot and puffed on up the hill. At first the path was an old weedy road and then it morphed into a muddy grassy track. We turned onto the poled route to the Crater Rim Walkway.
From here the track became muddier and muddier. Water was running in rivulets like a river over the mud and we were slipping and slidding about haphazardly. I thought this was kind of fun but the others were not quite so convinced. As we walked, we vented about our ailments - mostly age and beauty related (e.g. botox, fuzz, laser, patches here and there, reductions of this and that). For such discussions there is usually an allocation of five minutes per person per Friday - but today we overshot the mark by quite a bit. We justified it by allowing time to accumulate if we haven't seen each other for awhile. We passed some derelict bunkers - with interesting graffiti.
The path got less muddy, but steeper and steeper until it levelled out under some bluffy rocks. We continued on up to the Crater Rim Walkway junction for summit selfies in the fog. This is where the views are usually fabulous.
