You’ve hurt yourself in the mountains, and you’ll never make it out on your own. What happens next?
A helicopter flies over the Kakapo Lake area of the Cameron Mountains as it heads towards the drop-off point for geologist Ian Turnbull. He will spend a week recording and sampling the rocks inland from Fiordland’s West Cape as part of a project to produce new geological maps of the whole country
Unpredictable and treacherous, New Zealand's harbour bars are the mariner's dread.
The tourism potential of Fiordland's Milford Sound was recognised in the late 1800s. The problem was getting there. Pushing a road across the Main Divide was feasible, but between the headwaters of the Hollyford and Cleddau valleys was an almost-sheer 500 metre granite wall. The Homer Tunnel, 20 years in the making, provided the solution, and today visitors emerging from the Cleddau portal descend a sealed slalom that offers few clues as to the difficulty of building or maintaining a road in such precipitous country.
A snap cold spell transforms a waterfall on Wye Creek, near Queenstown, into an icicle cascade, and beckons a special breed of adventurer-the ice climber-to its cold clutches. New formations like this one are difficult and dangerous to climb: the ice, not yet matured by extended cooling, is brittle, and it is not uncommon for chunks weighing up to half a tonne to shear off and crash to the ground. Allan Uren, one of the country's leading exponents of the sport, abseils down to look for a climbable route.
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