Exploring New Zealand is a passion shared by many, but few are more dedicated than Gary Patterson, one of the country’s most experienced and prolific trail designers and track builders. In this series dedicated to private walks, he shares the delights of helping create RockRidge, an extraordinary experience set amongst glacier-formed rocks, lakes, mountain peaks and braided riverbeds.
When I got the call to help create a new private walk, I was as keen as a dog on mustering day. You see, I love designing tracks as much as walking them – it’s a journey that lasts so much longer than just a Sunday stroll.
The venture (or should that be the adventure?) began with a phone call from the high country. On the line were a couple of Canterbury station owners who asked for my help creating a track. The call had barely ended before my bags were packed and I was heading north.
RockRidge is in the Windwhistle foothills – think of it as the first range above the plains to the west of Christchurch. Here I first met Henry and Megan McElrea of Birchview, whose property, with its grand stone homestead, sits beside the carpark for Washpen Falls, a short walk hand-crafted by Henry’s father. Their neighbours, Dan and Gee Harper of Quartz Hill Station, arrived next, and together we sifted through property maps and began the process of crafting their dreams into reality.
My next steps were to explore their landscape on foot. Between them, these families own a large swathe of Rocky Ridge that sits behind the homestead. This long ridge was uplifted by faultlines, then ruptured by volcanic eruptions, resulting in a textured hillside littered with rock outcrops.
Picture a landscape where the ground cover is a carpet of golden tussocks, large tracts of beech forest hug the damper parts, and in between lies a scrubby, impenetrable wilderness that thwarts any attempt to pass.
Journey of discovery
Our work to explore this country was tough but rewarding. Some days involved steep bush-bashing, clambering around cliffs, finding hidden waterfalls and reaching rock spires that rose like periscopes out of a sea of forest green. Our trail design joined the dots between the best features we found, forming a grand loop resulting in a couple of days of walking – possible only once a track was built, of course!
Over the next couple of years, we laboured to link the gaps in the existing tracks. This is the work I love, both designing the trail and then physically building it. I spent several months on the tops, overlooking the expanse of the Canterbury Plains, using a grubber to craft a narrow pathway – my artistry. It’s like painting a raw landscape. I choose every stroke the grubber made into the earth, and how best to reveal its folds and texture. It’s psychological wizardry too, as the way a trail is formed, its flow, playfulness, and how it reveals features have a profound effect on how walkers perceive a place. Despite the hardships on my body, I loved every moment of this creative process.
Ready to share
Years have since gone by and the RockRidge track is built and ready, and I’m eager to try it before the public arrive in the New Year of 2026. It’s December when my wife and I reach Birchview. The track’s accommodation isn’t quite ready, so we pack our tent, happy to be the track’s first overnighters, and probably the last to camp, since the luxury accommodation and meals will be reserved for paying guests from here on. We head off and up. Passing behind the old woolshed and over a stream, we begin to weave between the wide tree trunks planted by Henry’s relatives generations ago. As we traverse, our first clue of something special lands before us: a massive rhyolitic boulder blown out by the volcanic eruption many millennia ago. It’s at this point that the trees part and a steep-sided gorge is revealed.
We are now in the volcanic vent, where the crescendo of birdsong and whitewater rapids fills the ravine. We sidle one wall of the vent, pass under a cavern, and climb a flight of stairs beside a drippy waterfall to reach a plateau. Here we look back, and the patchwork fabric of the Canterbury Plains stretches all the way to the ocean. This is the beautiful spot where day walkers on the Washpen Falls track turn back via the waterfall route on the other side of the valley, while we branch off onto the RockRidge adventure, which is just beginning.
Upward and onward we go, following the track as it gently rises to crest Rocky Ridge. It’s open countryside with pockets of shady ribbonwood forest to keep us cool as the day warms. The path summits Snowy Peak; at nearly 1000 metres in elevation, it’s the second-highest point on the walk. The view here is outstanding. To my left is Mount Hutt Range, the ski field still clinging to pockets of snow at this time of year, and straight ahead are the meandering braids of the Rakaia River, pointing to the headwaters of the Southern Alps that rise into the sky. To my right the ridge levels out at High Peak (968 metres), which we will summit later in the day; it’s just a smidge higher than where we now stand.
We descend from the viewpoint and work our way down to Quartz Hill Station at Middle Saddle, now in tussock country: a scenic backblock that Dan and Gee stock with red deer, a few scattering as we pass through golden grasses and rocky outcrops, the incredible view of the plains stretching away to the east.
A creek crossing drops us into beech forest, which delivers us hard against a seemingly impenetrable cliff face, and here the walk turns almost biblical. It’s as if Moses has parted the bluff: a crevice just wide enough for a sneaky ascent, the wiggly track squeezing up the chute past a single tree. It’s here that I ponder the miracle of how this old man tōtara has taken hold here alone all these years. I’m stoked we managed to find a route up here for the walk. It’s an art form! We emerge through a short, scrubby opening onto the top of the cliff, a geological wonder and a natural place to stop for food. A line of cliffs catches our eyes here, tracing back to where we’ve come from and on to where we’re going: the volcanic dyke, formed where the faultline ruptured and a vein of hot rock upwelled and hardened. Think of it like an overly toasted southern cheese roll, where the bread splits and the hot cheese oozes out along the crack, a savoury analogy, and a fitting one for us Southerners given that it’s lunchtime.
Onwards we explore, and after a final climb, we reach a stone parapet on top of High Peak. It’s a marvellous shelter I’m proud to have built, one I hope will remain for generations of walkers to enjoy. Shaped like a spiral shell to protect us from the wind, it gives us the grandest view so far. We put our packs down and rest on the stone seats protruding from the wall, our eyes peeking over the capstones to catch the golden glistening afternoon light off the Rakaia River braids.
The next post-lunch stretch is epic! This kilometre of trail took a month to hand-build. It’s a narrow path along the ridgeline, filled with natural stone pavers and retaining walls we placed that whimsically rocks like a cradle between the range’s hillocks. It is playful, was fun to build, and a joy now to wander. We descend as I over-enthusiastically share every facet of the build with my wife; I’m lucky she’s a patient listener and nods her head at the right times (I don’t see her eyes rolling as I talk to the back of her head!).
The trail soon steepens as we finish the drop to Velocity Saddle, so named because there were days I would be blown off my feet and had to take shelter while working on this exposed spot. Next month walkers will finish their first day’s walk here and be taken to the Quartz Hill Quarters, but today, being pre-opening, we find a sheltered spot behind one of several mammoth rock monoliths and settle in for the evening.
In the morning sun we pack up the tent and head along Rocky Ridge. Walkers can shorten the day here via Periscope Rock and Hanging Falls, which we do, though it’s scenic either way, and the full loop starts by scaling the monolith we slept against. The trail climbs through groves of hillside scrub before making a grand traverse of the range; I never tire of this stretch, on top of the world for over an hour. Eventually the range gives way to a descent toward Boundary Stream, a pretty waterway good for a dip on a hot day, and then a brief climb pops us out above a gorge where dense beech forest bristles with rock outcrops, a fine spot to rest and pick out the family of faces known as ‘The Brothers’.
The middle of the day brings us into a bush walk: several streams to cross before the trail opens onto a glade beneath the morning’s monoliths, their scale only now apparent, with lunch on a hillock looking down over Rockwood Forest. Back through beech forest we rejoin the shortcut junction, returning via Middle Saddle onto the Birchview property. Finally, we meet up with the day walkers through the Washpen Falls gorge and waterfall on a pretty walkway of bush that carries us to the road end to finish off the loop.
The grand finale
After catching up with the host families, we drive out with the ridgeline shrinking in the rearview mirror, two days of walking now etched in memory, the same way years of grubbing and stonework have etched this landscape. It’s a strange kind of closure: the trail is finished, but for me it will always be a living thing, from every line determined to every stone set on the summit of High Peak. For me, RockRidge is about exploring a landscape, working a track, and spending time with my wife in nature’s playground. I’m sure I’ll return to RockRidge, where they say, ‘The High Country Is Calling.’
Private Walks NZ
Private Walks NZ offers information on the collection of our country’s premier walking experiences. With 25+ multi-day journeys on offer, there is a walk for every fitness level and budget. Visit our website at privatewalks.nz, which has our free mobile app, information about of our beautiful new book and an introduction to each of New Zealand’s finest private walking experiences.
RockRidge officially opened to the public in February 2026, offering 31km of track across two properties (Quartz Hill Station and Birchview), and an all-inclusive 2-day experience with an enticing range of accommodation and menu options. Rockridge.nz
