Head to Carpark opposite Ridge Road Track on Anawhata Road. This track starts off on a gravel driveway and is a bit of a dog leg (ie: straight, left then right) which is well sign posted.
It’s not long before the gravel gives way to orangey brown mud on a still fairly wide track (well enough for quad bike vehicles anyway). After about 10 minutes or so we come across the Brownes Track on the left. This track is the most over grown signposted track that we’ve come across so far. You have to keep your eyes peeled for the way through and jhead steadily downwards. After about ¼ hour we reach the bottom of the track at the beginnings of the narrow Anawhata Stream.
Down here it’s quite dim, jungle like & very overgrown. There isn’t really any defined track down here so we make our way through the stream over rocks where possible but mostly wading through. Every now & then there is a flatish part of the bank where you can see that it has been walked on. This place is really over grown & we’re constantly swerving, ducking climbing over & under fallen dead tree & fern branches whilst also keeping an eye on your feet wading through the stream. It kind of gives off the vibe of what I’ve seen from movies of the army patrols in Vietnam.
With such little sunlight all the sides of the banks are nice & green – covered in moss. There are quite a few turns of the stream & at a couple of points at a 45 degree angles. After an hour or so we decided to stop for a warming cuppa tea & golden crunch cookies sitting on one of these triangular banks with the stream babbling away on 2 sides of us. This stream is fairly similar for the first hour so before you get a few rapidy things, thenthe wading gets a tad deeper (about waist deep) more frequently. We came across one point where it was more or less a compulsory swim at one of the wee waterfalls, as it was much easier going through the water than making our way through the relentlessly over grown bush.
We also cross the remains of a dam, there are quite a few of these around the Waitaks. We also came to a pretty big & stunning waterfall. This was a bit of a challenging obstacle as well. To the right was thickly over grown with cutty grass, but to the left there was more space to make our way down & around the waterfall. From here there’s are few big rocks to climb over,the stream is a tad more open & you can enjoy more sunbeams . This made a great spot for another warming cuppa & lunch .
There deeper pools are quite frequent from here too. After about 3 ¾ hours on the Anawhata Stream we finally come to the last pool where the Pig Wallow stream meets up with in apicturesque scene with a wee waterfall to the right. Also at this point we reach the RGB Track going both left & right & up in each direction. We take the RGB Track on the right . This track is pretty steep & nice & muddy. It doesn’t take long to warm up on here & we also gain height pretty quickly. After about close to 20 minutes we reach the top and then it’s pretty flat for the rest of the way. About 30 minutes from starting this track we reach the junction of the Ridge Road Track going both left & right.
We head right. This track like the part that we started out on, wide & orangey brown – except it was a lot muddier than the other end we started on. This track starts to slope downwards & after a few minutes we pass the Tramping hut on the right. This track undulates at pretty easier gradients and there is plenty more mud. After about 45 minutes we pass by the junction of the Brownes Track (now on our right). From here we back track another 10 minutes or so back to the car.