North Mavora Lake - Carey's Hut return

Mavora is a great spot to take your favourite furry four-legged training partner - dogs are welcome in Mavora Lakes Conservation Area so long as under control (or leashed in the camping areas). Mavora Lakes are two beautiful lakes surrounded by mountains, the smaller South Lake and larger North Lake. Mavora Lakes can be linked to the Greenstone track via a 50km track with huts along the way. This run is an out-and-back starting at Mavora and running in to the first hut along this track - Carey's Hut - and then returning to Mavora Lakes.

As noted above, start wherever you like along Mavora Lakes Road depending on how long you want to run. If you start from South Lake camping area it's 25.6km return. If you do this, the first part of your run will be along a gravel road. If you do have your dog friend with you, either leash them or have them under control as (depending on the time of year) the area can be popular with campers, anglers, 4WDers etc so there can be a bit of traffic on the road.

You start the track proper at the end of Mavora Lakes Road, and you will then be running up the east side of North Mavora Lake. Navigation is easy - keep the lake to your left on the way up, and the right on your way down! The track is a 4WD track, parts of which are more runnable than others - stony in places, paddocks in others, a few stream crossings. Don't expect to set any land speed records. I went shortly after some rain so there were some massive puddles totally covering the track in places which occasionally required a bit of going slightly off track to dodge round them (or wading through!). This might be totally different if you went in summer after a dry spell. If you think you might be doing some puddle-dodging, then you might be grateful to be wearing leggings to protect your legs from scratchy matagouri. There's a couple of spells where the 4WD track just takes you along the pebbly beach - not too bad to run on especially if you can run in the 4WD vehicle tracks. I turned around at Carey's Hut but you could continue past there if you wanted a longer run. I read on the DOC page that the track forks and gets a bit trickier after that, so would pay to do a bit of research beforehand if you thought you would want to go further.