The perfect week in Whanganui National Park
How do you spend a week in this small park? With a pack, bike and canoe Kathy Ombler has no trouble finding secret gorges, isolated huts, cycle trails and tramping...
Kathy Ombler
Hillary Step now a ramp?
The vertical pitch close to the summit of Mt Everest, traditionally known as The Hillary Step and the last, major challenge for climbers en route to the summit, has changed....
Let the kids play in the mountains
Let the kids play their way in the mountains; the future of our mountains depends on it. That was the plea from Adventure Consultant’s Guy Cotter, at the recent Sustainable...
A sustainable future for the outdoors?
What might the outdoor experience look like in 25 years? At the recent Sustainable Summits Conference at Aoraki/Mt Cook, outdoors people from around the world came to share ideas and...
Marbled mountains and southern dunes
Two national parks have been established since Wilderness first rolled off the press. By Kathy Ombler Nelson’s Kahurangi, with its marbled mountains, massive wilderness and now our second largest national...
A perfect week in Kahurangi National Park
Explore the four corners of NZ’s second-largest national park. To readers who know Kahurangi well, this ‘perfect week’ will be notable as much for what isn’t included. Such is the...
That Crossing – what to do?
Ideas for managing the busy Tongariro Alpine Crossing may pave the way for new management approaches in other high-use areas, writes Kathy Ombler It traverses a sacred taonga, a volcanic...
A perfect week in Fiordland National Park
Fiordland is massive; 1.2 million hectares of glaciated mountains, lakes, fiords, rivers and forests, our largest national park and an essential part of Te Wāhipounamu World Heritage Area. Yes, places...
Te Araroa Trail walkers contribute too
National Parks, Te Araroa Trail
Fifty people cramming into a 16-bed hut, toilet waste spread around a pristine lake, freeloaders – we’ve heard the gripes. When it comes to discussing pressures on the conservation estate,...
The parks, they are a changin'
As burgeoning tourism puts pressures on our conservation estate, Kathy Ombler compares visitor services in US national parks to New Zealand, and looks at what options DOC might consider to...
DOC's $76m boost to fund new Great Walks and tourist tracks
Two new Great Walks, new day walks and short walks, and an upgraded online booking system that could facilitate differential pricing for Great Walks are all on the conservation shopping...
Sleep in, then walk the TAC
The Tongariro Alpine Crossing will be better managed this summer, although it’s unlikely there will be any major management changes in place. DOC’s regional director of operations, Allan Munn, said...
That's Tongariro, to us
Conservation, Features, National Parks
As another season on the bucket-list Tongariro Alpine Crossing looms, Kathy Ombler asked Te Ngaehe Wanikau, spokesman for local hapu Ngāti Hikairo, for an iwi perspective of the mountain, and...
The contender
Features, Great Walks, National Parks
Taranaki’s Pouakai Crossing has been hailed as ‘the next Tongariro Alpine Crossing’ and an opportunity to boost the regional economy. But with increased use comes increased challenges in this fragile national park environment. Last...
Pouakai Crossing detour in place for Easter
A section of Mt Taranaki’s Holly Hut Track is expected to stay closed for some time, following a massive slip as a result of Cyclone Gita which hit the area...
Weathering change in Westland
Wherever he looks, DOC South Westland operations manager Wayne Costello is faced with a challenge. In the front country, the glamour glaciers hog the attention of thousands of camper-vanning, helicoptering...
Closing the ZIP on possums
In a remote South Westland valley, a peanut butter-loving rat springs a trap that radios a signal to a satellite that bounces to a laptop in a bivvy in the...
Record breaking season on Everest
Budget Everest operators are cashing in on the world’s highest climb, but at a huge risk. By Kathy Ombler Good weather contributed to a record breaking season on Everest this...
Pay to play
At the Fox Glacier Guiding base the (slightly) older women clad in Kiwi classic shorts over long johns stood out among the queues of puffer-jacketed, heli-hiking tourists. Our guides said...
A great memorial
Paparoa Track, Features, Great Walks
By all accounts the Paparoa Track and Pike29 Memorial Track is significant. It’s the first new Great Walk since 1993 and it’s the first to have two connected tracks sit...
Paddling in the past
Whanganui River Journey, Features, Great Walks
In 2017, the Whanganui became the first river in the world to be granted legal personhood. The legal entity, known as Te Awa Tupua, recognises the river as an indivisible...
Park and ride proposed for Franz Josef
A park and ride is on the cards for Franz Josef Glacier and could be in place by next summer. Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage told the Tourism Aotearoa Summit the...
Instagram-mania damaging Pouakai wetland
Fragile red tussock and subalpine herb fields are being trampled as ‘Instagram-mania’ heads uphill to Taranaki’s Pouakai Tarns, leaving local DOC staff concerned. Senior Ranger, Dave Rogers, says measures will...
Inland solitude
Take a tent, they said. Abel Tasman is so busy at this time of year. Not on the Inland Track. Two nights, three days, and not a (human) soul was...
Pride on the Paparoa Track
Paparoa Track, Features, Great Walks
The rainfall of no name A hanging garden of ferns and roots and air shows a fallen master once stood here, With beech of red and silver, Nothofagus is the...
Ice, ice, baby
“I like the way you’re looking at the ice before putting your axe in. People waste a lot of energy just bashing around wildly.” Did guide Adrian Camm have any...
The best of friends
Maryann Ewers co-founded the Friends of Flora conservation group to help bring birdsong back to Kahurangi National Park. Kathy Ombler bumped into her at Whariwharangi Hut and took the opportunity...
Mountain bikers a threat to rare city snail
The future of one of New Zealand’s rarest native snails is hanging in the balance on Te Ahumairangi Hill, in Wellington’s Town Belt, just a stone’s throw from Premier House....
Bikers stymie walkers on Paparoa Great Walk
Five months before it opened, Moonlight Hut on the Paparoa Track Great Walk was already 99.5 per cent full for the season – through until April 30. However, for the...
Safety rails for Old Ghost Road
New barrier fences lining bluffs on the Old Ghost Road are not a knee jerk reaction, or mollycoddling people in the great outdoors, says Phil Rossiter, chair of the Mokihinui-Lyell...
Pioneering a new kind of trail
On the West Coast, mountain biking is going off. Riders are pedalling into the three big wilderness trails already in the region, while, months before it even opened, bookings were...
Paparoa Track Great Walk opens
Paparoa Track, Walkshorts, Web exclusive, Great Walks
The Paparoa Track is officially open. And in a turnaround from other Great Walk statistics, 90 per cent of those booked for Paparoa’s first season are New Zealanders. Speaking at...
Popular, palatial and brand new
What a stunning spot to introduce first-timers and the kids to a night in a tramping hut. And what a hut! There’s been a Powell Hut here for 80 years...
Paparoa Great Walk named NZ’s top ride
In their latest, 10th edition of Classic New Zealand Mountain Bike Rides, the Kennett brothers rated the Paparoa Track as number one out of their top 10 rides in New...
Paparoa Track Great Walk to fully reopen in March, partially close again in May
Work is on schedule to fully open the new Paparoa Track in March, however, DOC is about to announce a further, partial closure from May, to allow for upgrades at...
More than a track
Even before it opened, the Paparoa Track had star billing as New Zealand’s only purpose-built, dual-use Great Walk: for walking and mountain biking. It’s set in a special landscape; traversing...
Spare a thought for DOC
Covid-19, Web exclusive, Wild Comment
Kathy Ombler pens a letter to the hard-working staff at the Department of Conservation As the country settles into the second half of the lockdown, spare a thought for DOC...
A brave new wall
Felix Galloway just broke his personal speed record for a 12-metre climb. “Write it down, 59.88 seconds,” he urges, pointing to the notes I’m writing. Very soon he’s back with...
Abel Tasman Coast Track: Walk, swim, repeat
“Aqua (water colour). Bellbird. Canuka?” My daughter and I grinned, but had to concede kānuka starts with a K. We were playing ‘the alphabet game’, you know, find something starting...
Catcher on the Skyline
A pest-trapping volunteer goes to extensive lengths to improve the Wellington bush for birds and people. Throughout New Zealand, community predator control groups are backed by volunteer organisers managing logistics...
Good progress for Paparoa Great Spots
It’s not just Great Walk trampers and bikers coming to Blackball, great spotted kiwi are also joining the party. “There weren’t any roroa down here 10 years ago, we didn’t...
How does the Paparoa Track stack up?
Paparoa Track, Web exclusive, Great Walks
Paparoa has set a new benchmark for backcountry tracks. Bikers can’t help but grin as they ‘flow’ along the carefully cambered, gentle grade. The design encompassed a whole new approach...
West Coast builds another cycle trail
A new, family-friendly cycle trail has opened in Westport. It’s the first leg of a 55km coastal trail that locals believe will attract a wider range of people than the...
New tracks and upgrades for Fox township
With the glacier in retreat, new tracks and upgrades are designed to show visitors more of the region than the ice. After an extensive upgrade, the historic Lake Gault Track...