Oparara Wilderness Trail Run

21/04/2023

For the last few years, McCallum’s Mill Road, the access road to the Oparara Basin has been developed through a $5.7 million Provincial Growth Fund project. The locally initiated project was to make a safer travel route up and down to and improve the iconic visitor experiences at the Oparara Basin. While we have anticipated works would have been well completed by now, the area continues to suffer further damage through various weather events.
In its current form, we are unable to safely use road buses on McCallum’s Mill Road to get our 20K walkers and 20K runners to the start line at the basin. We have not been able to confirm when the works will finish. While it is still suitable for the 36K runners on foot, we believe the most memorable experience of the Oparara Wilderness Trail Run is centred around the section between the Oparara Basin down to the end of the Fenian Track.
We have spent the last few weeks exploring alternative routes and other options to ensure the event could operate in 2023 but have been unable to meet the majority of our anticipated event outcomes that combine to make it a quality and memorable experience. Since Covid, we have also experienced increased difficulty in getting sufficient volunteers from the community to help run our events.
Due to those 2 key factors, we have made the decision to not operate the 2023 Oparara Wilderness Trail Run and will now focus forward on next year’s event instead. For 2024, we plan to incorporate some new enhancements and a few neat route changes to help bring the most out of our race participants visitor experience.
While it is unfortunate for the Karamea community and our loyal competitors that we have had to postpone our event this year, we look forward to seeing everybody back in earnest in 2024.
Buller Gorge Marathon Trust Board

02/07/2022

Big thanks to Development West Coast and Pulse Energy for supporting this brilliant video review of this years event. Tastefully put together by Nomad Audio & Video Check it out and tag your mates to share it around.

28/06/2022

This embodies the very spirit of our event. Young local Julian Guppy on his way to third place in the 2022 20km run amongst a raft of far more seasoned competitors. Another shining star in our Matariki weekend. Ka pai to mahi Julian.

04/06/2022

Come share the inaugural Matariki Māori New Year celebration holiday weekend with us in beautiful Karamea. Registrations close at midnight June 19th. Register now at: https://eventplus.net/OWT22

23/03/2022

Oparara is on! The recently announced updates to the red settings allow us to operate our event pretty much as normal. Come share the inaugural Matariki Māori New Year celebration holiday weekend with us in beautiful Karamea. Registrations are now open, numbers are limited. Register now at: https://eventplus.net/OWT22

04/11/2021

We are now all up and running for registrations for our next (2022) event in Karamea at Matariki weekend. 3 classes - 20K walk, 20K run and 36K run. Join us mid next year for a post-covid celebration like no other in our newest public holiday. Ka mau te wehi! Get registered here: https://eventplus.net/OWT22 Mā te wā.

12/08/2021

The The Haast Half 2021 is a FREE grass-roots (mostly off-road) half marathon that a local (Holly Burnett) has organised for Sat 27-November.

A heap of people have already signed up and we're going to help with race timing and race bibs. South Westland has been hit pretty hard by the results of COVID and this is going to be a fantastic way to inject some tangible feel-good vibes into the small town of Haast.

So, get some mates together for a road-trip and a neat little run that you won't forget!

Look out for the Oparara Wilderness Trail Run entries opening next month as well - and you can support two great little communities at either end of the fabulous West Coast, New Zealand

02/07/2021

We have our date for 2022!!

Saturday 25th June (Matariki Weekend)

After consultation with the Karamea Community, feedback from our survey and discussions with the weather gods. June/July is usually dominated by clear, blue-sky days and, if you know Karamea, it doesn't get terribly cold.

There are also changes to our departure times, (extra sleep time!), the amount of time you'll wait at the starts will drop dramatically, and we will slightly shift race starts. This will allow more people to drive from surrounding accommodation - as this was identified as a problem.

Entries opening in early August and strictly limited to 350 across all three events (33k run, 20k run and 20k walk). Keep an eye on our page for updates - we think 2022 will be a sellout!

01/06/2021

We have a winner for our Free Old Ghost Road Entry!

Congrats to Hilary Bristowe

26/05/2021

Our partner event (the Old Ghost Ultra) had a free entry up for grabs at our prize giving. Unfortunately, the winner has had to withdraw. So... if you ran in any of our events in 2021 (we will check) tag yourself into this post and we will draw a new winner for a FREE/Guaranteed entry into OGU2022 on Monday!

26/04/2021

Hi, we've created a short survey and would appreciate your feedback.

Aside from marking the intersections and getting the electric fences turned off (our apologies for that - both were marked down as being done) any suggestions you may have to improve the event are most welcome and will help us shape the 2022 event.

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