Windy Tops

Tag: kaimanawas

  • Limited access to the East Taupo Lands Block in the Kaimanawas

    It’s great to see in the March 2014 (#195) Federated Mountain Clubs Bulletin that FMC has managed to negotiate some limited access, at least for FMC affiliates, to the East Taupo Lands Block that’s located in the middle of the Kaimanawa Range.

    Some years ago, I wrote about some frustrations with the property line divisions in the Kaimanawas. For the uninitiated, the range has a size-able block of private land cut out of the middle of it, which effectively divides the east of the park from the west. I appreciate that the private land and how it’s operated is a consequence of more complex issues, but the straight-line boundaries between that and the Kaimanawa Forest Park which surrounds it are a combination of straight-edged squares and triangles that pay little attention to the mountainous geography. They create a buffer zone of public land in some places where it;s less practical than it could otherwise be to access that public land without crossing borders of private land.

    For example, as can be seen on the Walking Access Mapping System, there’s ridge south of Waipakihi Hut, which looks as if it could be very nice to explore towards spot-height .1660, but the route is blocked by the metaphoric brick wall of a 200 metre stretch of private land. It exists thanks to the lazily plotted corner of a triangle that happens to just reach over the top of that ridge.

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    Waipakihi Hut, backgrounded by its border with the East Taupo Land Block.

    At the time I wrote my earlier rant, Air Charter Taupo was then leasing the block of land to use for premium hunting and fishing access. On the side, the company allowed for a restricted system of permits for trampers to cross the block from one side of the park to the other, along a specific route, as long as a permit was paid for and as long as no overnight camping occurred. This access was unfortunately lost when Air Charter Taupo lost its lease in 2011. Once that happened, the East Taupo Lands Trust, which controls the land on behalf of its owners, decided not to retain the access permit system for trampers and instead focus solely on the premium hunting and fishing.

    The latest news, however, is that Federated Mountain Clubs has been negotiating with Helisika (current leasee of the block) and has been able to arrange for its affiliated club members and individual supporters to have access.

    Overall, this is an excellent outcome under the circumstances, and I appreciate the commitment from those involved in both FMC and Helisika.
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  • Drive-by idiots with bright lights and loaded firearms in the Kaimanawas

    Some things can really make you angry. On Friday night I was bivvying out at a Department of Conservation road-side camp-site in the Kawekas, anticipating a great long weekend (which we had, more to come later). Having come up from Wellington we arrived a little before midnight, and were completely ignorant that this was happening just a short distance away at a similar camp-site over the range in the Kaimanawas.

    We eventually heard about the shooting via sketchy gossip on the mountain radio service on Sunday morning. Early reports suggested that a hunter had shot a woman cleaning her teeth at a river outside a hut. Later a rumour came through that not only had the shooter failed to identify what he was shooting at, the hut’s chimney was even visible from the position of the shooter, which should have made it obviously silly to be shooting near there at all. This translated into angry sarcastic chit-chat on the radio. By last night when I’d arrived home, more correct information had begun to emerge about just how reckless and stupid these guys were. Unfortunately they’re not alone, they just happened to be the ones to hurt someone.

    Want a picture? Because this one from the Herald on Sunday (pdf) more or less sums it up. Eventually the courts will reveal the facts of the case and if there’s reason to do so I’ll take this back, but right now it seems that what happened here really is disgusting.
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  • Legally winding through the Kaimanawa Range

    Last weekend I was on a trip with the Wellington Tongue & Meats to Kaimanawa Forest Park. I was going to post my thoughts about the whole private land thing as part of the trip report. My thoughts ended up being quite long, however, so I thought I might post them separately. (The report regarding the trip which inspired this is also available.) This post is mostly a collection of background material that I’ve looked up to do with getting access to the area of the park that we visited near the Urchin road-end, which may be useful in some way to others planning something similar, and is completely open for discussion since I haven’t been looking at this for long.

    A very brief background of this post is that the Kaimanawa Range itself has a big hole of private land cut out of the middle of it, much of which is mountanous and generally looks interesting. Public regions around the outside are administered by the New Zealand Department of Conservation. The majority of the land is Maori land (according to Map 6 of the maps included in the park management plan), and much of that land is leased to third parties. On our particular trip, parts of the private land located near where we wanted to go are leased by Air Charter Taupo, which exclusively flies hunters into the region for a price.

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