Road frontage has been tidied up a bit since your last visit Russell, still exit SH1 @ same point but gate is ~70m west toward Gore, and gradient a bit more vehicle friendly! With a wet winter you would have had to wash van anyway! When it freezes the ABS in the Subaru gets a real workout on way down, actually had to use handbrake & spin it once as I was running out of options.
Funny story'now'. When I built shed I hired compressor & rock drills from local building co, They loaned me MF 135 to tow it up to site as it was mounted on 4 wheel trailer with turntable front axle. at weeks end when returning it all turned to custard as soon as I pointed the rig down hill and weight of compressor & trailer took over, you know things are turning bad when one wheel is rotating backward on a tractor, Option I took was to shift into high gear and open up throttle, that got me thru the hairpin in trees and it was all straight downhill with run off thru fence at bottom, as last resort I dropped the front end loader bucket and lifted the front wheels off ground, stopped about 2 feet from fence! Drove very sedately back into builders yard in town.... foreman walks over and first thing he said was how did I get on coming down driveway..... I said Id prefer not to answer that Question!... then he pointed out the huge concrete block they usually fit to the 3 point linkage when towing the unit..... Great I said, Ill remember that if I ever need it again!!!!