This weekend’s forecast: avalanches

It was a mint day on the Remarkables when skier Joe O’Connor heard a “boom, like a shotgun had gone off next to me”. Suddenly he was sliding out of control, a hundred metres down the mountain, landing half-buried in snow. 

O’Connor, who recounted his experience to the Mountain Safety Council, was lucky to emerge unhurt. The avalanche that swept him away last month was a medium-sized one—rated three out of five.

Now, this weekend, there’s significant avalanche danger on Mount Ruapehu, with 20 centimetres of snowfall overnight closing roads up the mountain.

What’s it like to be buried by an avalanche? How do New Zealand’s rescue teams find survivors? In 2012, a New Zealand Geographic journalist got himself buried in snow to find out. Keep reading...

A home in high places

The official advice to people in the mountain huts on Whakapapa this weekend is to stay put.

So, what’s ski club life like when you’re not skiing? Derek Grzelewski paid a visit to New Zealand’s smallest club field—which is also one of the country’s oldest. Keep reading...

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The unforgiving face

When things go wrong in the mountains, who pieces together what has happened? 

In this story from 2016, a chance discovery at the base of New Zealand’s most treacherous mountaineering ascent raised the prospect of a decades-old mystery finally being resolved. Keep reading...

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH ROLEX 

The coral high ground

When marine biologist and explorer Dr Emma Camp was growing up in urban England, the ocean was not a big part of her life. But that all changed when she went on a family holiday to the Bahamas as a child.

“My mum didn’t swim and my dad had ear problems, but he wanted to take me snorkelling. I remember thinking that above the water you can’t see anything but under the water you could see this beautiful reef. That was a pivotal moment.”

In 2016, she led a dive team in New Caledonia that discovered 20 species of coral living in murky mangrove swamps—in conditions that were previously thought to be too warm and toxic for them to survive in. In 2019, her team discovered two more highly resilient habitats in the Great Barrier Reef. And for her, these “super corals” were a glimmer of hope because they might be able to adapt to the conditions that humans were creating: rising temperatures, acidification and very low oxygen levels.

Reducing emissions and other pollutants is the best way to save the world’s coral reefs, she says, but that isn’t happening fast enough.

“This can help buy time for the reefs, so that in time we get the policy and action we need on climate change.” Keep reading...