Separating the Toaroha and Kokatahi Valleys, the Toaroha Range offers a traverse of tussock, snow and gravel tops. Currently the Pinnacle Bivouac access track onto the northern range is overgrowing, but the range itself offers generally good travel to Zit Saddle and beyond.
Pinnacle Biv
The standard approach onto the northern end of the Toaroha Range begins up the Kokatahi Valley, leaving the valley track at a sign in a cutty grass clearing, five minutes before Boo Boo Hut. The marked route up to and beyond here is getting somewhat overgrown in places, but DOC is expecting to recut it by 2012. A short way beyond the first tussock clearings, but below Pt 1085 metres, the marked route jumps from one spur south to another spur. There are poles and tape through this section but the route is still easy to miss, especially coming down. Pinnacle Bivouac (two person) is old and basic, but weatherproof.
Adventure Biv and Top Kokatahi Hut
See the description for Zit Saddle.
Yeats Ridge
The track down Yeats Ridge is regularly maintained by polytech students on the West Coast and provides another option on to and off the range. Descending off the range from the north, traverse over or sidle north-west under Pt 1694 metres, reaching Yeats Ridge at about the 1540-metre contour. A couple of knobs can be sidled on their northern sides, leading to a partial track through open scrub to a clearing east of Yeats Hut (DOC, four bunks).
Crystal Bivvy
From Crystal Bivvy, Permolat volunteers have cut and remarked the route down to the Toaroha Valley (2009). It begins at the bush edge north-west of the bivvy and descends to the main valley track at the top of a rise on the true left of Pretty Creek.
Places
in association with the Canterbury Mountaineering Club