West Coast Descending from the Haast Pass

HAAST PASS (563M) : West of the pass the forests are dominated by kamahi, but on the pass itself, atop a gentle rise above the headwaters of the Haast River, silver beech is the most common tree. The Haast is the lowest of the three Southern Alps passes, and, as an interpretive panel notes, it was a well-known route used by Maori. A packhorse trail over the pass was established by the 1870s, but construction of the highway between Hawea and Haast was spread across no less than 36 years between 1929 and 1965!