Look at the map and this point lands deep in Fiordland, on the wet western side of the Southern Alps, nowhere near the Haast Pass road the ride is named for. No road reaches it. It sits in the rainforest and rock between the Hollyford and the Darran Mountains, in some of the wettest country on earth, where Milford Sound collects around six metres of rain in a typical year. Waterfalls appear on every cliff after a downpour and vanish the day after.
The genuine Haast Pass is a different thing, and a lovely one. At 563 metres it is one of the lowest crossings of the Southern Alps, linking Wanaka and the Otago lakes to the West Coast through beech forest and past a succession of waterfalls, the Fantail and the Thunder Creek falls being the best known. The road follows the Makarora and then the Haast rivers down to the coast, passing blue pools and river flats where the water runs the colour of milk and pale jade. The highway was only completed in the 1960s, so for generations the West Coast had to be reached by sea or mountain track.
For the rider, Haast is wonderfully easy by alpine standards: wide, smooth, with long relaxed bends and little traffic. What bites is the weather. West of the main divide it can rain for days, the sandflies are fierce at every stop, and low cloud will hide the peaks you came for. Ride it on a settled forecast and keep the rain gear on top of the pannier. Towns are far apart. There is fuel at Wanaka, and at Haast on the coast, but the long stretch between is empty, so fill up before you leave and treat any pump on the way as a bonus rather than a plan.
The old Maori route over the pass was a greenstone trail, for pounamu is found on the West Coast and was carried east in small, treasured pieces. Early European explorers like Julius von Haast, after whom the pass is named, spent a good deal of effort finding what the Maori already knew.
As for this particular spot, treat it as a reminder of the scale of the country. The Fiordland ranges stand to the south-west, impenetrable and unlogged, and a rider looking at them from the road is looking at one of the great wildernesses of the Southern Hemisphere.