The Pike River mine re-entry team has gone through the 170 metre barrier in the drift for the first time since 2011.
Pike River Recovery Agency chief operating officer Dinghy Pattinson said the last time he was on the other side of the barrier was when he was part of the Mines Rescue team in 2011, after 29 men working in the mine died after an explosion at the West Coast site in 2010.
"So today was pretty significant for me."
Going past the barrier indicated the next phase of re-entry to go up the rest of the 2.3 kilometre drift.
"We’ve got a big job to undertake over coming months, and we wanted to get through if it was safe to do so before our Christmas closedown," Mr Pattinson said.
"We’ll shut and secure the door now for a couple of weeks – it will give us more time to monitor the underground environment – before starting to remove the barrier in the new year."
He said the initial scan did not show anything unexpected.
Ealier this month, WorkSafe granted the re-entry team permission to move further up the mine's drift.
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