Mount Sunday - Edoras

Time: 1 hour and 10 minutes
Distance: 3.6 km
Start: Mount Sunday car park, Hakatere Potts Road
Finish: Same place, it's there and back
Date:  Friday 2nd October 2026

Today: a bit of a road trip with Linda to the great divide and back. This sojourn included a skirmish to the top of Mount Sunday - a roche mountonée or rock formation created by glacial advance and retreat.  In this region (Ashburton Lakes / Ō Tū Wharekai), the last retreat began about 28,000 years ago. Signs of glacial movement (i.e. roche mountonées, lakes, wetlands, kettleholes) are everywhere.

From Ōtautahi, it was a zippy 2.5 hour journey west across the motu to our destination. The Nor' Wester buffeted us across the Canterbury Plains / Kā-Pākihi-Whakatekateka-a-Waitaha as we chit-chatted about this and that.  Politics and stuff. Shortly before Mount Somers village, we had a good laugh at a political hoarding for an insubstantially named candidate.

At the Stour River car park there was a quick stop for a pee in a well-placed port-a-loo. The drive through the Ashburton Gorge is gorgeous. This is one of the entrances to the Hakatere Conservation Park. We were soon dodging camouflaged potholes along shingley Hakatere Potts Road. Past lakes Camp and Clearwater, we entered the Rangitata River valley where whirling dust dervishes swirled vertically from the riverbed. Five minutes on from Mount Potts Station is the Mount Sunday car park - today filled with a surprising number of cars (5).  

This is The Lord of the Rings country. Rohan to be exact. And Mount Sunday is the site (at least for the film) of Edoras, home to King Theoden and his muddy horsey people. Part of the directive was to remove the filmset at the end of filming - which people complained about at the time but I thought it was a great idea. This place is magnificently remote with big scenery. Continue to the end of Hakatere Potts Road, and you arrive at Erewhon (an anagram of "nowhere").

Today it was windy. Very windy. We wrapped up our ears and started walking on a well marked roughish track which crossed a few small bridges over small streams.  Then there was a fancy bridge - recently built - over a swift river. When I last walked this with my hoa rangitora some years ago, there were no bridges and feet got wet. 

People are friendlier when it is extremely windy and thus all the tourists we bypassed stopped to chitchat above the gale. Everyone warned us that it was much much much windier on top.  Hard to imagine but they were right. After about 30 minutes of walking we were standing - or trying to - on the top ourselves. A fresh-faced tourist was attempting unsucessfully to prevent his tripod from blowing off. He shouted at us and gesticulated with his phone. I couldn't hear a single word but caught the gist (I think). Linda grabbed his tripod and I grabbed his phone and he got his "selfie" with the Two-Thumb range as a picturesque back drop. 

The descent was over in a flash. At one of the bridges, a black-fronted tern / tarapirohe hovered at eye level and appeared to be approaching to check us out. Some red-chested swallows / warou landed in matagouri nearby. Back at the car we chit-chatted with a Canadian mother and daughter who were off to Mount Cook / Aoraki. 

We were now very keen to check out the Mount Potts Lodge Restaurant, Cafe and Bar. Initially I took a wrong turn (completely missing the "no lodge access" sign) and we bounced alarmingly on 4WD roads to an impassable ford.  We back-tracked and eventually got to the lodge. It was sweet and quirky with old chairs from the 30's and a wood burner. Not to mention stunning views across the valley to the Black and Brabazon mountain ranges. Fritter stacks and Morrocan lamb salads arrived and we drank filter coffees. 

Back on shingley Hakatere Potts Road we hit a few of those camouflaged potholes then rattled across the plains, chit chatting about this and that all the way back to Crikers. 

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