Mont Dore, New Caledonia

We had half a day spare during a work trip to New Caledonia and I’d eyed up a trip over a local hill to fill in the time. The tourist office had a bunch of pamphlets outlining tracks over the island with Mont Dore being the closest to Noumea. I managed to convince Nigel and Louisa to come with me on the trip, Nige for somewhere new to road cyle and Louisa for the walk. The Mont Dore track car park was well sign posted, being one of the ‘PR’ trails that are clearly designed to introduce trampers gently to the new environment. Nigel waived us good bye and we began to trudge uphill in the heat.

Well signposted info board

Dissapearing into the New Caledonian scrub

The track was well trodden and generally very well marked with orange and white stripes painted on rocks and trees along the way. Soon we’d risen above the ‘back yards’ of Mont Dore township and found ourselves climbing amidst low scrub and bright orange dirt. The higher we climbed the better the colours of the lagoon became. We could see many more reefs and sandbars than possible from sea level and it amazed us how shallow the lagoon appeared.

Climbing above Mont Dore township

Aiming initially for the little saddle shown



Chucky at the saddle

Heat radiated off the hard packed orange clay and we sweated buckets. Thankfully, we arrived at a little saddle after about 30mins of climbing to be greeted by a cool breeze. From the saddle we got our first views toward the interior of the island; range after range of dry forest and orange dirt.

Le Petit Mont Dore

The track followed the south-east ridge of Mont Dore, with some quite steep terrain on the slopes facing Noumea. On several occasions I side tracked a little to stand on top of small crags butting out above the face.

Summit plateau

Arriving suddenly on the gentle summit slopes, the terrain underfoot changed markedly. The plutonic rocks found on the ridge track had been replaced by orange and black volcanic ones. Though the PR did not lead directly to the summit, we made a short detour to the very top to soak in the views. Despite having to share the top with a huge set of radio dishes, the views were quite spectacular.




NC Cairns

Radio gear at the summit of Mont Dore

Descending down the North east flanks of the massif, we traipsed among large washouts and numerous slip faces. Here the mountain had been exploited for its Nickel deposits as one of New Caledonia’s first open pit mines. We gained the ‘old mining track’ and began the long series of switchbacks towards the ‘Col du Plum’ were our car had been left.

There were a couple of small sections of remnant dry forest on the descent, but mostly there was low scrub and plenty of erosion. We arrived at the car park, very satisfied with our journey and completing the ‘5hr’ track in bang on 3 hours.

Descending past the old mine