The Port Hills & the Christchurch Gondola

Why it matters

The hills are half a volcano. Te Ara, the national encyclopedia, describes them as the eroded remnants of the northern rim of the Lyttelton volcano, running from Godley Head in the east to Gebbies Pass in the south-west. The harbour beyond them lies in what was the crater. So the crest is a rim, and walking along it you have the city on one hand and the inside of the volcano on the other.

The hills have older names. Christchurch Art Gallery gives the Māori name for the range as Te Whakatakanga-o-te-ngārehu-o-te-ahi-a-Tamatea, a name that carries the story of the fires of Tamatea. Another account gives Te Tihi-o-Kahukura for Castle Rock, one of the crags on the crest.

The path the settlers walked

The hills stood between the port and the plain, and in 1850 that was a problem. The Canterbury Association’s first settlers landed at Lyttelton in December. By one account the money for a road round by Evans Pass had run short, so a bridle path was cut in a hurry and they went over the top. Heritage New Zealand’s record has them climbing in single file with their belongings. The Bridle Path is still there, still steep, and you can walk it. At the top is a shelter put up in 1940 as a memorial to the pioneer women of Canterbury.

Harry Ell’s road

The other thing to know about is one man’s idea. Harry Ell, a Christchurch member of Parliament from 1899 to 1919, wanted a road along the whole crest, with reserves of native bush beside it and rest houses along the way. Te Ara calls him the tireless promoter of the Summit Road.

Work on the road began in 1908 and the last section was finished in 1938, four years after he died. Four of his rest houses were built, each named for a bird or an animal: the Sign of the Bellbird, the Sign of the Kiwi, the Sign of the Packhorse and the Sign of the Takahe. The council dates the last of them from 1918 to 1949. That the crest is open ground today, and not houses, is largely his doing and that of the Summit Road Society, founded by his grandson in 1948.

Earthquake and fire

The hills are not finished with. The earthquake of 22 February 2011 was centred near Lyttelton, under these hills, and Te Ara records rockfall and cliff collapse along their seaward end. The Gondola was shut for two years and reopened in March 2013. Fire followed. In February 2017 a blaze burned across the hills and destroyed nine houses; RNZ reported the death of a helicopter pilot, Steve Askin, who was fighting it. In February 2024 another burned more than 700 hectares and destroyed one home.

What it’s like

The Gondola starts in the Heathcote Valley, at the foot of the hills. Its cabins take up to four people and climb to the top of Mount Cavendish in about ten minutes. The operator gives the horizontal distance as 852 metres. At the summit station there is a café, a shop and a ride called the Christchurch Discovery Ride, which the operator describes as a reconstruction of the region’s history from millions of years ago to the present.

The view is the point. The operator lists the city, Lyttelton Harbour and the Pacific Ocean, and calls the view panoramic, right round the compass. The Adventure Park, further along the same hills, lists the Southern Alps as well. That is a great deal of Canterbury from one ridge: the plain and the city on one side, and the harbour in its crater on the other.

From the station, the operator says, walking tracks run from a fifteen-minute stroll to trails of a few hours. The crest is open country, and the council’s Crater Rim Walkway follows it. Going east, the track runs towards Evans Pass and passes gun emplacements from the Second World War. Going west it runs towards the top of the Bridle Path and on to Rāpaki and Dyers Pass.

Further west the hills change character. Above the suburb of Cashmere are Victoria Park and two of the rest houses. The Sign of the Takahe is the grand one, thirty years in the building; a city library account says it now works as a café, bar and function space. The Sign of the Kiwi, at the top of Dyers Pass, was built as a teahouse and is still a café.

At the far eastern end is Godley Head, which the Department of Conservation (DOC) calls Awaroa/Godley Head. It is a headland at the mouth of the harbour, with the remains of a coastal defence battery built in 1939. DOC ranks it among the country’s top ten coastal defence heritage sites. Two six-inch guns stood here and more than 400 people served at its peak.

What writers and artists have made of it

Canterbury’s painters have used these hills as a place to look from. Doris Lusk painted Canterbury Plains from Cashmere Hills in 1952, and Christchurch Art Gallery, which owns it, says it was viewed from the Summit Road above the city. Bill Sutton, the gallery says, explored the hills often in the 1970s and 1980s; his Nor’wester in the Port Hills shows what Te Ara describes as the swirling rotor cloud that forms when the nor’west wind blows. One painter looked out at the plain and the other up at the sky. The titles alone tell you what to look for.

How to visit

Choosing your way up

There are five usual ways onto the hills. The table compares them; the detail follows.

The Gondola

The base station is at 10 Bridle Path Road in the Heathcote Valley, with free parking. An adult ticket is $45, a child aged 5 to 15 is $22, and a family of two adults and up to three children is $123. It runs from 10am to 5pm in summer and to 4pm from 1 May, and the last cabin down leaves an hour before closing. Combined tickets are sold with the city tram at $82 and with a punt on the Avon at $85.

Two services reach it without a car. Metro bus 8 runs between the airport, the city centre and Lyttelton about every 15 minutes, and stops at the Gondola during its opening hours. The operator also runs a shuttle from Cathedral Square, at Tram Stop 2, every half hour in summer from 9.30am to 3.30pm; tickets are bought on board by card. Its site does not give the fare.

The cabins take a manual wheelchair up to 600 millimetres wide, and the operator stops the line briefly for boarding. The shuttle is not wheelchair accessible.

Walking up or down

The Bridle Path runs from near the Gondola base over the saddle, 333 metres up, and down into Lyttelton. The Gondola’s operator allows about 45 minutes from the top down to either end and calls it steep. A common plan joins the two: ride up, walk the crest to the top of the path, and walk down to Heathcote or to Lyttelton, where bus 8 runs back to the city.

The council lists the other tracks on its own pages. The Rāpaki Track starts at the junction of Rāpaki Road and Centaurus Road and climbs 3.5 kilometres to the crest; the council calls it one of the most popular tracks on the hills. The Harry Ell Walkway climbs through Victoria Park from the Sign of the Takahe to the Sign of the Kiwi, with toilets at Victoria Park and at the Kiwi. The Crater Rim Walkway links them along the top: from Evans Pass to the Bridle Path is 5.3 kilometres and about three hours, and from Rāpaki to the Sign of the Kiwi is 4 kilometres and about an hour.

Driving the Summit Road

You can drive much of the crest. The council’s own route description takes Dyers Pass Road up past the Sign of the Kiwi and follows the Summit Road east to Evans Pass Road, which climbs from Sumner. DOC’s directions to Godley Head take Evans Pass Road and then the Summit Road to the car park, about 50 minutes from Cathedral Square; it describes that road as sealed but narrow, with sharp corners and steep drops.

The middle is another matter. Cyclists’ accounts say the section between the Mount Cavendish saddle and the Rāpaki Track is closed to vehicles and left to walkers and riders. We found no council statement either way. Do not plan to drive the crest from end to end without checking the council’s road notices first.

Godley Head

DOC reopened the headland on 30 August 2024 after cleaning up contaminated ground. The loop track from Taylors Mistake is 9.7 kilometres and takes about three hours; one of the battery’s underground magazines is open, with electric light. There are toilets and parking at both Godley Head and Taylors Mistake. Dogs must be on a lead. DOC warns that the headland is exposed and asks you to bring clothing for wind and rain.

The Adventure Park

Christchurch Adventure Park, on the Cashmere side, is the other mechanical way up. Its chairlift is 1.8 kilometres long, and a sightseeing ride costs $30 for an adult and $20 for anyone 17 or under, with under-tens free. It also runs a zipline tour of four lines, about two and a half hours, and hires mountain bikes for its trails. The park says the chairlift and ziplines may pause in high wind.

Making the most of it

The hills are close to the city and free, so the only real decisions are when to go and how to come down.

Nearby

The hills belong to a stay in the city. Our Christchurch guide is the base, with where to stay and where to eat. A morning on the crest pairs well with an afternoon on the flat: the Botanic Gardens and the Avon, or the rebuilt city centre, which tells the story of the earthquake that shook these hills.

Lyttelton, at the foot of the Bridle Path on the harbour side, is the natural end of a walk over the top. And the harbour you look down on from the crest is one of two. The other, an hour and a half away, is at Akaroa, inside the second of the peninsula’s volcanoes.