Wanaka's McRae family warned nine years ago the Fern Burn track near Glendhu Bay could be treacherous, and on Monday it proved so for 68-year-old Maureen Schofield, of Wanaka, who died after a fall. On Tuesday, Wanaka bureau chief Mark Price ventured up the track to get an impression of how safe it is.
The Fern Burn track near Glendhu Bay is as typical a walking track as you will find in the Wanaka region.
It starts on gently rolling farmland, it follows a mountain stream, it passes through beech forest and it climbs through tussocks into the mountains.
When the Otago Daily Times set out to walk the track in brilliant sunshine on Tuesday morning, it was easy to forget just 24 hours earlier members of the Wanaka Walkers group were dealing with the trauma of one of their number being killed on the track.
Experienced bush walker Maureen ''Mo'' Schofield died from the injuries she suffered when she fell 40m.
With little published information available about the section of track where she fell, the ODT set out to inspect it and provide potential walkers with some idea of what they might encounter there.
The Fern Burn track is the first stage of the better known Motatapu track linking Wanaka and Arrowtown.
It begins a few kilometres from Glendhu Bay on the road to Motatapu Station.
The first half hour of the track from the car park is flat and easy going.
The Department of Conservation's website says it ''meanders gently'' through shrubland and grassy flats before climbing into a forest of mountain, silver and red beech.
This is where the gorge narrows and the land becomes somewhat steeper.
The track is well marked with orange posts and signs, and although a little narrow in places, the first part through the trees as far as the Fern Burn bridge is not especially difficult or dangerous.
From then on it begins to climb more steeply, with tree roots to beware of and water seeping on to the track from side streams. In some places the track is merely a series of foot holes in soft soil.
Within five to ten minutes, walkers will be on a narrow track on the side of a steep slope.
The impression is that slipping off the track would quickly lead to
swift contact with a tree stump or sturdy sapling.
But along a couple of short sections, the tree canopy provides a false sense of security.
It is not until you stop and study these places you realise the slope below the track is too steep for any substantial vegetation.
These places are effectively steep, leaf-strewn chutes that lead straight to the rocks 40m below, and anyone leaving the track here would have no way back.
Take away the trees and there would be no doubt about the consequences of a fall.
Wanaka police SAR co-ordinator Sergeant Aaron Nicholson said on Monday Mrs Schofield slipped on the edge of the track and lost her balance, falling down the bank.
''Unfortunately, the slope was steep enough that she could not arrest her fall and she slid backwards approximately 40m before dropping over a 3m bluff on to a rocky creek bed below.''
Sgt Nicholson told the ODT later that while recovering Mrs Schofield's body he walked part of the track and there were ''a hundred places'' where someone could fall off.
''There's untold opportunities for people to fall off the track if they are not watching what they are doing or they slip or they trip themselves up.
''Some places you fall off you might break your ankle and other places you might fall and, like on this occasion, fall down to the creek bed and hit your head.''
And that, Sgt Nicholson said, made the Fern Burn track little different from many other New Zealand mountain tracks.
''The track itself is narrow and it's for experienced trampers and like any track in any place if you lost your footing on the edge of the track and slipped you could possibly have fatal consequences.''
He regarded the Wanaka Walkers group as fitting the description of ''experienced trampers'' capable of negotiating such tracks.
Heading back to the car, the ODT passed a couple with a young child picnicking in an idyllic spot next to the stream and, in retrospect, should have mentioned to them the track beyond the bridge is not really suitable for young children.
