Winter Tramping

Looks good. What are the landowners like for giving access permission to all that private land?

My understanding is that most of that country is Crown Leasehold, lease owned by Mutt Lang and under the Mahu Whenua Open Space Covenant. When you look at this [Mahu Whenua map](https://qeiinationaltrust.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Mahu-Whenua-Walking-Tracks-Arrowtown-to-Advance-Peak-Track-and-Polnoon-Trail-via-Macetown-Historic-Reserve.pdf) that ridge is on the edge of either the Mahu Whenua Open Space Covenant or the Stack Conservation Area. I assume its public access to the top of Mt Roy and along to Mt Alpha on the Spots Creek Track, and from then on the ridge is the boundary of the Open Space Covenant area so OK as long as you've got one foot on the western side. I might be wrong... Edited to add: This map from DOC shows the [Stack Conservation Area](https://www.doc.govt.nz/globalassets/documents/parks-and-recreation/hunting/otago/ot-rec-huntingmaps-the-stack-conservation-area.pdf) covering all the high country from Roys Peak to Middle Peak, then after that you're on the edge of the Mahu Whenua Open Covenant area.

Not sure about that assumption. There are signs on the boundary of that Mahu whenua open space covenant with The Stack CA stating private land, no access. Additionally there was a complaint from Motutapu/Soho Station to Te Araroa Trust about Te Araroa walkers straying off the track into that area due to confusing representation of that land ownership / tracks on TA maps. Which all leads me to fall back to my default assumption that unless indicated otherwise only the designated tracks have public access. It would be good to find out ... have emailed the question to the QE2 rep.

Thanks, I'm curious to see what you come up with. My understanding was that the Motatapu and Soho Creek Valleys, and the obvious route along the FWD road through there were definitely out of bounds, except for the annual race, but the back/high country of the Mahu Whenua area were open access. For example, the Mountain Turk Club have permission to put their Turks along the Mts Motatapu-Hyde-St Just-Vanguard Peak ridge and it seems OK to access all that high area and the area from Crown Peak to Mt Sale and beyond for ski touring and the like. >There are signs on the boundary of that Mahu whenua open space covenant with The Stack CA stating private land, no access. Signs stating that the The Stack CA side of the boundary is private land, or that the Mahu Whenua side is private land?

Signs on the boundary where you would enter the private covenanted land from The Stack CA stating 'private land, no access'. They were probably 5-10 yrs old, so may be outdated if the access arrangements have changed. Lets see what QE2 come back with. I do recall talking to the local QE2 rep a couple of years back and he was very happy to have just got public access to the Poldoon - part of the same covenanted area. But whilst I'd assumed at the time that he meant unrestricted access, he could have just been referring to access via the single defined track shown on that map. If the signs were on the other way round I would have reported them to DOC and got them removed. Or removed them myself.

Reply received from QE2 rep. Key points below (I didn't ask for permission to post the response publicly so will not copy the entire message): "... public access as of right is restricted to the tracks marked on the QEII maps (which can be found on the QEII website)." He goes on to say that he's aware that many take a liberal attitude to access, especially along the new turk route, but that users should "... contact Russell Hamilton (R dot r dot h at xtra dot co dot nz) if in any doubt. " He also recommends taking a silky and dealing to any wildings found along the routes!

Our first trip after lockdown was to Pfeiffer Biv but it was obvious that several other people had the same idea so we ended up camping in the first approach basin. There were 33 people up above the bushline there that weekend. With the shorter winter days we haven't been driving too far so all our other trips have been on the Canterbury side of the main divide. Frank and I got up Mt Enys a month or so ago and I wrote up the trip on this site. https://tramper.nz/17120/mt-enys-finally-/ We're hoping to return there tomorrow for an overnight trip to do some track clearing and dealing to big exotic broom bushes we spotted. If our flat battery problem allows us to get there. We have done 2 trips over Mt Thomas into Pinchgut Hut in light snow.It's a beautiful traverse to a cosy hut with good company this time of year from hunters (and their gorgeous doggies). We checked out the new hut near the Casey/Poulter junction and went out via Binser Saddle, having a look at the paint job that Craig Benbow did 3 years ago on Turnbull Biv. I updated info on Casey Hut on various pages of this site. It is due to open officially on Aug. 22. We went into the Poulter valley twice to do track work on the Poulter Gorge bypass track near Worsley Biv. The valley was chokka on Queens Birthday weekend but empty on the next 2 trips. We got down to Salmon Ck via Black Hill and did another weekend of track work on the track we've opened up on that route. When it's raining further west, we've been maintaining our fitness with trips around Mts Herbert and Bradley but the north side is currently closed for lambing. We normally go down to Stewart Is. in the autumn but with the lockdown, had to shelve that idea until late Spring this year.