State Highway 3 through the Awakino Gorge reopens to traffic today for the first time since a severe storm two weeks ago dropped more than 30 slips onto the road, including a 16,000 cubic metre mass of mud and rock that buried a hundred-metre section midway through the gorge. The reopening will be on a single lane only, under escorted convoys, and the New Zealand Transport Agency is warning that further closures are highly likely whenever the next bad weather rolls through.
The Awakino Gorge link, between New Plymouth and Te Kūiti, is the main artery for freight and passenger traffic between Taranaki and the King Country. With it cut, north-bound trucks and travellers from New Plymouth have been forced onto a long detour via Stratford and inland — adding hours to deliveries, sending hospital patients on gruelling road trips for surgery, and choking off custom for the small towns along the gorge route, especially Mōkau on the northern side.
The damage in the gorge has been severe. A team from RNZ driving into the work site this week described embankments scoured down to bare earth and the Awakino River below choked with debris and uprooted trees. As well as the 30-plus slips that came down on top of the road, NZTA contractors found 10 significant underslips — sections where the storm has undermined the carriageway from below, leaving the surface intact but standing on weakened ground.
Stabilising the largest slip has been the most technical part of the job. Downers regional manager Wade Donovan said the whole road had been completely blocked off by the slip from the embankment above, and contractors had been forced to drive steel pipes through the road bed to anchor a safe left lane through the worst-damaged section.
“This whole road has been completely blocked off by the slip from the embankment above,” Donovan said. The faultline running through the road meant simply clearing the spoil and reopening was not an option. The pipes give heavy vehicles, in particular, somewhere to drive that is not sliding sideways into the river.
Excavator operator Matthew Hareb has spent the past fortnight working from a perch about 20 metres up the slip face. Coming back down with the machine has been an exercise in patience.
“It’s quite a technical slip. There’s a lot of broken shell rock up there, so it’s moving all the time on you. You have to keep your wits about you the whole time while you’re operating up there,” he told RNZ. “It’s not a rush job, you gotta take your time and work the slip to make your way down.”
Hareb was one of the first to reach the gorge on the day of the storm, working through 30 smaller slips before confronting the main one. “Lots and lots of water, mud everywhere, just thousands and thousands of cubic metres of broken rock, mud, trees, just lining a hundred metre section of road,” he said.
NZTA incident controller Kendra Ludeke confirmed the road would reopen for escorted convoy use on Saturday afternoon — but cautioned that the gorge was now in a more fragile state than it had been before the storm and that future rain events could shut it again with little notice.
“It is highly likely that when we have more rain events or weather events, this site may close at short notice to ensure the safety of our people using this road,” Ludeke said. The question of whether the road simply gets patched up after each event, or whether NZTA looks at a new alignment around the most slip-prone sections, was not hers to make, she said.
That uncertainty is hitting hard at the small businesses along the route. Scott Harrison, owner of Mōkau’s Blue Aster Market, told RNZ that what was usually a single day’s takings had been spread out over a full week while the gorge was closed. Coastal traffic on the way north stops in Mōkau for fish and chips, ice creams and toilet breaks. With the gorge shut, the village had effectively been cut out of the route altogether.
“We’re really excited that we’re gonna get some traffic through,” Harrison said. But he was also clear that another emergency repair, however welcome, was not the same as a plan. “For the last year at least, with all the closures and things, there doesn’t seem to be any sort of long-term plan.”
The point is one Mōkau and Awakino businesses have been making for months. The gorge has now closed multiple times over the past summer and autumn for storms, slips, and remedial work, and the spaces between closures have grown shorter. Each closure leaves the same string of small businesses waiting for the convoy escorts to start, and patients on the Taranaki side waiting for an appointment date that does not collide with the next weather warning.
For drivers from today onward, the reopening will not feel like business as usual. Convoys will be marshalled through the worst section by NZTA escort vehicles, with both directions held alternately so traffic can move past the single lane safely. Heavy vehicles, in particular, will be running on the steel-piped left lane that Donovan’s team has built across the slip face. Motorists are being asked to allow extra time, follow the escort drivers, and not stop for photographs in the active work zone — operators are still working on the slip above the road, and any loose material moving down can carry far further than it looks.
NZTA is also reminding drivers that the gorge is one of several stretches of State Highway 3 still in repair from this autumn’s storms. The agency’s short-term focus has been on getting any kind of single-lane connection restored before winter sets in properly, with longer-term decisions about realignment, slope reinforcement or alternative routes deferred to its next round of programme planning.
Have you been affected by the Awakino Gorge closure over the past fortnight, whether running a business in Mōkau, taking a hospital appointment from Taranaki, or moving freight through the King Country? Tell us about your experience in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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