Wai-iti Reserve and the Tunnicliff Road Climb
Wakefield · Nelson-Tasman
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. Tasman District Council’s own wording: “In any public place not specified in Schedule 1, 3, 4 or 5, the owner of any dog, or person being in possession of any dog, shall keep that dog under control at all times. (Tasman District Council, Dog Control Policy and Bylaw, clause 17.1, adopted December 2024 and in force from 31 March 2025.) Wai-iti Recreation Reserve is named in no schedule of that bylaw, while plenty of other Tasman recreation reserves are listed individually, so clause 17.1 is the rule that covers it: under control, which is not the same as on a lead. Two limits from the same bylaw do bite here. Schedule 5(b)(ii) prohibits dogs on Tasman’s Great Taste Trail from the south side of Quail Valley Road Bridge to the entrance to 437 Wakefield-Kohatu Highway, and that address is the reserve gate, so the trail heading south-west from the reserve is a no-dogs section. Schedule 4 keeps dogs out of all council sports fields and within 10 metres of playground equipment and picnic tables, district wide, which matters in a reserve people come to for picnics”. Evidence: the rule-setter’s own published wording. How we check dog rules.
Good to know
Dogs are allowed here. Watch for ground-nesting birds and stock, and read the signs at the gate.
About Wai-iti Reserve and the Tunnicliff Road Climb
Near Wakefield in Nelson-Tasman, Wai-iti Reserve and the Tunnicliff Road Climb runs 2.5 km.
A grassy reserve in the Wai-iti valley about 7 km south of Wakefield, and a gravel forestry road climbing straight out the back of it. The reserve is the flat bit: picnic tables, room to camp, and the open sky that Inge came for. The walk is Tunnicliff Road, which leaves the reserve's southern edge and climbs 2.5 km through Tunnicliff Forest from 108 m to 234 m, so it is about 5 km and a couple of hours if you walk to the top and back the same way. It is a formed vehicle track rather than a foot track, wide and even underfoot, which makes it an easy one to walk a dog on and an honest one in the wet. Inge, who camps here with Pip, tells us this was the first Dark Sky Park in the country, and that it is the sort of place you come for a picnic and stay the night. She also gave us the fair warning: last time she camped there they had felled the trees. This is a working forestry block, so the view changes with the harvest, some of the climb is through cutover rather than standing pines, and logging trucks use the road on working days. Take the top half as a view over the valley rather than a walk in the forest, and keep clear of any machinery. The dog rule takes a bit of explaining, because the reserve and the cycle trail beside it are not the same. Tasman District Council names dozens of specific reserves in the schedules of its dog bylaw, and Wai-iti is not one of them, so the reserve falls to clause 17.1: your dog must be under control at all times. That is an off-lead rule, not a lead rule, and control is the condition attached to it. The trail is the exception you need to know about. Schedule 5 makes Tasman's Great Taste Trail a leash control area in general, but it then prohibits dogs outright on the section running from the south side of Quail Valley Road Bridge to the entrance to 437 Wakefield-Kohatu Highway, and that entrance is the reserve itself. So the Great Taste Trail heading south-west from here is closed to dogs altogether. The route mapped on this page deliberately goes the other way, up the south-east fork of Tunnicliff Road, which stays about 250 m clear of the prohibited trail at its nearest. One more from the same bylaw, easy to trip over in a picnic reserve: Schedule 4 keeps dogs 10 metres away from playground equipment and picnic tables anywhere in the district, and off council sports fields entirely.
Graded easy, it climbs about 132 m overall, and takes about 42 min to walk.
Dogs are welcome here. This walk is on the map because Inge & Pip suggested it, and we checked it against the source above.
