Seven hours hard-out in the wilds of Taranaki

Let’s not confuse the Forgotten Highway with the much more challenging Whangamomona Track. The former can be driven in an urban SUV, the latter is not for the faint-hearted nor the inexperienced. Over Christmas, regular NZ4WD contributor Kelsi Miller joined mates on a fully-equipped exploration of the tough track.'

For our group, it’s been a bucket list mission for a while: to conquer the Whangamomona Track. We hit it in the holiday break and found a one day challenge that has just stirred our appetite for more.
After driving along the Forgotten World Highway for the first time, we then set out to start the track which follows the river valley, sidling along a sheer cliff which drops 200m down to the water for the entire 17kms. There are rocks and slips along the way and there’s not a lot of room for traffic.
After seven hours of battling our four vehicles through the slips, tunnels, mud holes and narrow tracks, we reached the other end of the track which was the furthest from civilisation you could get (somewhere in the middle of the Whanganui National Park).
The closest town was Hawera, 90 minutes away.
Reaching the end was one of those high-five and sigh of relief sort of moments.
A word to the wise: this track is no joke and shouldn’t be taken lightly. We had a big reality check hit us after seeing a truck on its roof at the bottom of the river 200m down. It had been there a fair while and wasn’t going to get recovered any time soon.
We tackled it in the dry, with reasonable levels of grip. If this track was wet from the rain it would have been a totally different story!
Enthusiasts planning on tackling the Track should make sure they stop in at the Whangamomona tavern for refreshments and also to put some money towards the annual track maintenance programme.
We intend returning to this nail biting and eye-opening track again, but for now, we are enjoying the photos and memories of this epic adventure.