Doom Track from Butchers Flat Campsite
Canvastown · Marlborough
This walk was suggested by the community and checked against the authority quoted above before it was published. The route line comes from official track data. DOC’s own wording: “Dogs with a DOC permit only. (DOC, Butchers Flat Campsite page, which files the campsite under Mount Richmond Forest Park.) The whole walk is inside the Mount Richmond Forest Park conservation area, and DOC codes the park as a hunting permit block, so the permit to ask for is the hunting dog one. DOC’s general rule for the rest of the park is the same: "It is an offence for dogs to visit any other conservation land area, shore or foreshore even briefly, unless DOC has provided written approval."”. Evidence: the rule-setter’s own published wording. How we check dog rules.
Good to know
A DOC dog permit is required before any dog walks here. DOC codes this land for the hunting-dog permit, so it is not a casual dog walk. Ask the DOC office before planning to bring a dog.
Opens your email app, addressed to [email protected]. You can also call DOC on 0800 275 362.
About Doom Track from Butchers Flat Campsite
This long walk follows 6.5 km, near Canvastown in Marlborough.
Butchers Flat sits at the end of Butchers Flat Road up the Wakamarina Valley, about 20 minutes from Canvastown, and it is one of those DOC campsites that is really a trailhead with a lawn attached. Doom Track is the walk most people come for. It is about 6.5 km each way from the campsite, near enough 13 km there and back, with a bit over 200 m of climbing in it, and it is a tramping track rather than a walking track, so give it most of a day. The first 1.2 km is an old 4WD formation climbing gently south from the camping area, easy going and a good warm up. It narrows into a foot track for another kilometre or so through beech, and then you are on Doom Track proper, which sidles and climbs around the head of Doom Creek. This is the part Melissa described exactly right: bush the whole way, several stream crossings, and rocky sections where you will want your hands. After rain the creek crossings are the thing that decides whether you go on, so look at them early rather than at the far end. A dog needs a DOC permit here, and it is worth sorting before you drive up. DOC’s own page for Butchers Flat Campsite says plainly "Dogs with a DOC permit only", and the whole route sits inside the Mount Richmond Forest Park conservation area, which DOC manages as a hunting permit block. The nearest DOC office for the permit is the one that looks after Mount Richmond Forest Park, and the permit covers the campsite and the track together. One honest note on the map line. DOC’s own published geometry for Doom Track is a default one it generated by script and has flagged for review, so we have drawn the walk from the OpenStreetMap survey instead, which follows the same route with three times the detail and shares DOC’s start and end points. It is good enough to plan by, but in bush like this the markers on the ground are the thing to follow, not the line on your phone.
It sits at the moderate end and gains roughly 217 m, and takes about 1 hr 39 to walk.
A DOC dog permit is required before any dog walks here. Arrange it with the managing DOC office ahead of your trip. This walk is on the map because Melissa & Indiana suggested it, and we checked it against the source above.