Clambering around Clay Cliffs

We spotted a sign along our drive from Mt. Cook to Queenstown for the Clay Cliffs and took a ten kilometer side trip to check them out. It was a very non-US experience. We headed down a dirt road for a few kilometers and then came to a gate in the road next to a farm. A sign on the gate let us know that the farm owner gave us permission to go through the gate onto his land, providing we kept the gate shut, didn’t shoot anything, and didn’t camp overnight. It also requested that we later stop by a place in town to pay $5 towards the road maintenance fund. As we made our way up the dirt road a few kilometers further, we went through one more gate and parked before the road turned into a 4WD only section. From there we walked the rest of the way to the cliffs, politely saying hello to the sheep crossing our path, and found a tiny crumbly trail up into an alley with cliffs rising on all sides. There was a bit of a path for us to use to look around, but it was clear that no one spent any time maintaining a path or caring where visitors explored. And it might not have mattered if they had, the cliffs and “path” were extremely crumbly – a bit difficult to navigate in jandals (kiwi for flip flops). Check out how cool the cliffs were in the photos below!