South Massif with Mount Humboldt in the background
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New Caledonian mountains
New Caledonian mountains are hardly known since all tourism oriented images are about white beaches and blue lagoon. They have forgotten them. How beautiful is however their wilderness.
From North to South "la chaîne" (the ranges) are the backbone of the long island of "Grande terre". The main ridge is generally closer to the East Coast. Nearly as long as the Pyrénées in France, few roads or tracks cross it. These mountains are wild, untouched, and mysterious. Nobody lives there but for a few beautiful melanesian villages. On the West Coast ultrabasic massifs or "massifs miniers" reach often heights of 1000 metres and sometimes 1500 m above low basalt hills. They are devoid of inhabitants but are places of nickel mining.
Never very high, hardly more than 1600 metres in maximum elevation, these mountains are rugged with tough slopes. With a variety of shapes and vegetation, they are worlds of bush and red soils in ultrabasic massifs, primeval rain forest on heights and along creeks, savanna with niaoulis in the driest parts and even naked white hills in the North. Paths from ancient times are not marked (but for a few in the South and one GR1). The hiker is free there but he must know his way and how to live with his own means.
They are silent mountains, only can be heard its crystal rivers water falls and sometimes the " whoohoo" of a Notou (an endemic large pidgeon - this link gives access to the dictionary in French) or the run of a deer into the bush. Rarer still is the Cagou "bark" (the Cagou is an endemic flyless bird) which can be heard mostly in the "Riviere bleue" reserve in the South.
