UKH

Dear Community! I am soon headed towards Queenstown and thus I am looking for a guide book. I am also in search for books or maps that includes ridges with grades/routes, whether or not that ridge is a scramble/hike or proper climbing.

https://imgur.com/a/UiK9YAz

A map like this where the triangles with colors indicate scrambling or climbing for instance would be super good!

Thank you for suggestions

Hello Osunde,

The New Zealand Alpine Club have guide books covering the various areas of the Southern Alps.  They're hard to find for sale in the UK, but book shops, mountaineering shops (Small Planet in Queenstown) and the DOC information centres (Department of Conservation) have them for sale.  I have the whole set and would be happy to scan bits and bobs if you like.

Is there a particular grade you're looking for?  Let me know if it's adventurous tramping and multi-day trips, scrambling or more technical climbing and I might be able to recommend something.  

The DOC offices also stock topo maps at 1:50,000.  They're good but a bit lacking in detail compared with UK OS maps.  If I was a rich man, I'd pay for the OS to map New Zealand.  You can access the whole of NZ mapped here - https://www.topomap.co.nz  Just zoom in and start dreaming.

Cheeers, Jamie

We did the whole NZ thing maybe 4 years back. We had a large list of peaks with plenty of back up ideas. The weather was rather Scottish so other than a couple of long distance tramping tracks, we only bagged one summit that wasn't even on the list. Mount Earnslaw eluded us due to flash floods in the night where all river crossings we out of the question. 3 days of rain on our climbing section cancelled out our plans to scramble and multipitch Bruce Peak.

I used the online map above for most of the planning and laminated sections I needed. We have a map of the mountains near Glenorchy which is about 45 mins from Queens town where there are many mid size mountains with some great scrambles on them. This was the area we ended up bagging a couple of unplanned  summits. I'm happy to post you that map for free.

Personally I'd suggest doing much research but also being able to switch objectives quite quickly to avoid dead days. Best of luck.

There's a fair bit of information if you fossic around on here...  https://climbnz.org.nz/

Thanks for this, I'm thinking/dreaming about a trip to NZ in a year or two. What are the grades used on this site? Eg, what would V 3+ equate to in Scotland or Chamonix?

Probably the Mt Cook alpine grading system, combination of a seriousness grade (I, II, III etc.) and a technical grade (1, 2, 3, etc.)

https://firstlightguiding.com/international-grade-comparison/

The Mt Cook grading system (I think) was originally roughly comparable to Scottish winter grades.  Gavin's website (see mcawle's post) gives a pretty good idea.  I'd add that often in NZ the crux of an alpine route is getting to the start of it with enough remaining good weather, daylight and motivation to complete it.