Lake Chalice Track

Near Renwick in Marlborough, Lake Chalice Track runs 2.4 km.

Lake Chalice sits in a bush hollow in the south-eastern corner of Mount Richmond Forest Park, dammed behind an old landslide and a bit over a kilometre and a half long, and this is the walk in to it. From the Lake Chalice carpark at the end of Staircase Road the track runs about 2.4 km west to the standard 8-bunk hut on the lake’s north-eastern shore. DOC allows 1 hour for it and calls it 2.6 km, which is close enough to the line we hold, and Dre and Hazel made the hour. Read the profile before you go: it is 396 m of drop on the way in and every metre of it is climb on the way out, so the walk back up to the car is the real work of the day. The dog rule here is the park rule and it is not optional. Mount Richmond Forest Park is a dogs-by-permit area from end to end, and DOC’s wording is “Dogs with a DOC permit only. Contact closest DOC office to get a permit.” For this end of the park that office is the Wairau / Renwick one, and the permit is the hunting-dog class, so sort it before you drive out rather than at the road end. Dogs do not go inside DOC huts either, so bring a way to secure yours outside. Getting there is the long part of the day. Staircase Road turns off Northbank Road on the north side of the Wairau, a fair drive of gravel west of Renwick, and it ends at the signposted Lake Chalice carpark where the track starts. From the hut the Goulter River Track carries on around the lake and down the Goulter, and the Old Man Route climbs north towards Old Man and Mid Goulter Hut, so this is a doorway into the middle of the park rather than a dead end. Dre and Hazel put this one in, along with the Chalice Loop at 2.5 hours. We have not drawn the loop: the mapping runs out roughly 800 m short of closing the circuit back at the hut, and we would rather leave that blank than invent a line you would then be trusting on the ground.

Graded moderate, it stays flat overall, and takes about 28 min 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 Dre & Hazel suggested it, and we checked it against the source above.