Over time, FMC is building these pages to show you the classic trips you can do in these Wilderness Areas as well as understand their history, values and how to protect them.
Classic trips
- Olivine Ice Plateau 9-12 Days. The classic trip in the range is to visit the namesake Olivine Ice Plateau. 9-12 days. Google will reveal dozens of amazing trip reports virtually each one involving some sort of epic: floods/starvation/exhaustion/challenge. Maybe this is the most well known of all NZ Wilderness Area trips.
- Olivine Range Traverse. In 2016 Penzy Dinsdale, Lydia McLean and Katherine Sarcich were given a grant by the Federated Mountain Clubs (FMC) to carry out an ‘All Women’ traverse of the Olivine Range in New Zealand. This video captures their attempt.
- Packrafting the Waiatoto River, 5-6 days via Pearson Saddle. See the Waiatoto route guide on www.packraftingtrips.nz
Learn more
- Learn about the historical and legal context of Wilderness Areas in NZ on www.fmc.org.nz
- Download a free, high resolution PDF map of the Olivine Wilderness Area by Geographx. These maps were funded by FMC are available for use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Sharealike licence.
- View the boundaries of all NZ’s Wilderness Areas and public conservation land on Topo50 maps using FMC’s Wilderness Area Mapping Tool
If you have suggestions for classic trips in this Wilderness Area, and/or photos which we can publish to accompany them, please contact us.
