Are New Zealand fences mostly impassable or not?

Hello everyone, Me and my wife going to visit New Zealand in summer... oh, I mean in winter, of course. :) It may be not a particularly good choice of time for the tramping, but it is what we have. We are planning to spend a 1-2 weeks in July walking about North Island, and 1-2 weeks in early October walking about South Island. We did some research, categorized the routes and tracks, made some maps etc., but one question still bothers us. Please take a look at this map in process I've made from LINZ Topo50 (excellent!) sources - http://habreffect.ru/files/cc8/af68a419e/abel-harwoods.jpg Red lines are foot tracks, fuchsia lines are fences, black are roads. There is an Inland Track branching out from Abel Tasman coastal track, ending at the Pages Saddle, and connected to the Harwoods Hole track by a small road. However I can clearly see the road between Mount Evans and the Harwoods Hole passes a few fences and may prove to be closed. From your experience, are these fences impassable? I don't mean these particular fences, just majority of the fences on the LINZ maps. Maybe this is a private property? Or just the sheep fence? Oh. Unfortunately private borders are not plotted on the LINZ maps, so we have to guess. Sticking to the known tracks seems to be the better solution to avoid fences. However they are not always connected, there wouldnt be any buses in winter, and we both do not drive, so walking between tracks is the only option. Would appreciate your knowledge of the fences and avoiding accidental trespassing. Thanks a lot :)
A very hard question to answer. I would always try and cross at a gate and generally if the gate is leaving public land it may have a sign saying its ok to proceed or not. To complicate further October is lambing time so areas that are ok most of the year might not be then. Only help I can give is the walking access commission website http://wams.org.nz/wams/ Click Agree at the bottom of the page then you go to the maps that do scroll down to property boundaries and legitimate access ways. This is still a work in progress and not complete though. Also when you know your intended route ask about it here. Others may of done it and will have other usefull info as well
Geeves, thanks for the link. Is this data publicly available as GeoTIFF/SHAPE/LSIFF or something similar anywhere on the web? Considering the route - yes, of course. Just need to settle the visa business. Being officially unemployed, Russian and in middle 20s is like a red flag for your migration control. :)
www.koordinates.com has the DOC (department of conservation) land to download as shapefiles. But does not have the marginal strips (legal access up riverbanks), regional /district council land, LINZ (riverbeds and some others), legal roads (land dedicated as roads, but not built) or other government land. http://koordinates.com/layer/754-doc-public-conservation-land-jan-2010/
The Wams site is based on the topo maps so just like a paper map.
Hi there, you should be sweet, you will never come across a fence blocking a track, on a public/conservation land track. I would recommend checking out www.nztopomaps.com this might be a better bet. Also check out www.doc.govt.nz, this site bascically lists all of the tracks on DOC land (conservation land), I can recommend some good tramping spots in the south isl if your keen.

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Forum Tracks, routes, and huts
Started by Karellen
On 11 May 2011
Replies 5
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