Wilmot Pass

After touring the Manapouri Power Station, our bus took us over Wilmot Pass between Lake Manapouri and Doubtful Sound. This is the same bus that took us down into the power station:

Wilmot Pass Road is 14 miles long and reaches an elevation of 2,200 feet. The gradient on the west side is 1 in 5. This dirt road connects to no other road. (So how did the bus get there? By barge across Lake Manapouri.) The road was built in the 1960s expressly for the construction of the Manapouri Power Station. Heavy equipment to build the power station, including the generators, were shipped by sea to Deep Cove on the eastern end of Doubtful Sound and then trucked over this road to the West Arm of Lake Manapouri.

The bus driver stopped several times to let us get out and take pictures:

The vegetation was temperate rain forest:

The dominant tree was the silver beech. This tree, like most native New Zealand trees, is an evergreen tree, even though it is deciduous:

We saw many beautiful waterfalls. I wish I could remember their names. This one was on the south side of the road, about midway:

And this one was on the north side of the road closer to Deep Cove:

Our destination—Doubtful Sound: