New Zealand’s Hump Ridge Track: The southern alps walk seen in ITV’s The Summit
The views from the top of New Zealand’s Southern Alps are stunning — but what if you could see them without all the climbing?
Ed Grenby - 10 March 2026
There’s a hard way to see New Zealand’s Southern Alps mountain range: all canvas and carabiners, rickety bridges and rope ladders, hardship and fear of imminent death, as experienced by the contestants currently toughing it out in ITV1’s The Summit, which reaches its climax this week.
Then there’s the easier way: hiking one of the region’s many lovely long-distance trails, overnighting at the simple-but-cosy dorms that dot the network of paths.
And then there’s the really easy way: the same, but with helicopters.
The Hump Ridge Track, newest of New Zealand’s government-maintained ‘Great Walks’, lies at the very southern end of those Southern Alps (on South Island, naturally). It’s a three-day tramp (to use the Kiwi term), and that skirts the coast near Tuatapere before climbing into the wilds of Fiordland National Park. And it can absolutely be done in purist fashion: pack on back, dorm bunks, sweat and stoicism. But it also comes with mod cons. Proper lodges with hot water and heating. “Premium Rooms” with double beds and private bathrooms. And, for about £65, a chopper that will whisk your bag from lodge to lodge so you can enjoy the walk unencumbered.
I did just that – and, may Wainright forgive me, something much worse too.
Day one begins in Tuatapere, where you collect your briefing and supplies before driving to the official trailhead. My guide, Nicol – a Shetland-born Scot turned Kiwi, moustachioed and cheerfully stern – wore shorts that suggested he took his walking seriously. I was relieved when he assented to driving the 20 miles to the start.
Even through a midge-spattered windscreen, the first sight of Hump Ridge is epic. Across the curve of Te Waewae Bay, the land rises sheer from the Southern Ocean, mists snagging on its flanks so that it seems to float. Māori legend casts it as an upturned waka – a great war canoe – turned to stone, which feels entirely plausible when you see it.
The opening stretch is deceptively gentle: beaches, dolphins in the surf, the path only beginning to climb once it enters the forest. Then it climbs a lot – nearly 3,000 feet before nightfall. Boardwalks and steps tame the trickier sections, though the forest itself feels anything but tamed. Roots writhe across the ground like tripwires; silver beech trees twist together in moss-draped knots; light struggles to penetrate the canopy. The only sounds are birdsong and the squelch of boot in mud.
Which makes Okaka Lodge feel like an improbable mirage. Raised on stilts above boggy ground, it has electricity, heating and hot showers. Those private rooms? Worth it for the view alone: mountains melting into hills, hills receding into plains, plains vanishing into misty distance, and a moonrise that silvered them all.
The next morning, while others shouldered their packs, I stepped out notably lighter – my luggage already airborne. Nicol persuaded me to detour to the actual summit, a half-hour side-trip of bare rock and tussock. Up there, the landscape turns stark and elemental: tiny alpine orchids tucked beneath boulders, two small lakes dull as pewter in the morning light, and wind-carved tors looming like giant faces – bleak and beautiful.
There’s also a memorial plaque to a helicopter pilot lost in a crash nearby. It’s sobering – particularly if, like me, you’ve secretly arranged to extend the whole heli-hiking concept slightly further than is strictly necessary.
Because hidden away on the Hump Ridge’s website (humpridgetrack.co.nz) is the detail that, for £130, they’ll chopper not just your bag but you too, whizzing you across any section you don’t like the look of in less time than it takes to say ‘dirty cheat’.
And as rain swept in with tropical force, turned briefly to snow, then cleared to blazing sunshine – all within a couple of hours – my guilt ebbed. The ridge walk that morning is magnificent: the path undulating along the spine of the mountain, forest giving way to open views where you can see whole weather systems marching towards you across the sea.
Then, at a clearing, the helicopter swooped in as if on a covert extraction mission. In under a minute we were banking over forest and stream valleys, setting down near the Percy Burn Viaduct, an 86-year-old wooden structure thought to be the largest of its kind still standing. It rattles alarmingly underfoot and looks as though it belongs in a sepia photograph – the last relic of an old logging era slowly being reclaimed by bush – but I needed to do some walking before my next night of ill-earned comfort, at Port Craig Lodge.
The next day was all gentle downhills and a final, flat stretch on actual beach. Would Ben Shephard and his crew of exhausted contestants on The Summit approve? Probably not. But did the ridge care how I reached its heights? Not in the slightest. And as the Southern Ocean shimmered before me, and those primevally-forested peaks rolled away towards the horizon, I didn’t much either. I gave Nicol a little wink, and walked lightly on.
Want to visit New Zealand yourself? Check out our holidays to New Zealand:
There’s a hard way to see New Zealand’s Southern Alps mountain range: all canvas and carabiners, rickety bridges and rope ladders, hardship and fear of imminent death, as experienced by the contestants currently toughing it out in ITV1’s The Summit, which reaches its climax this week.
Then there’s the easier way: hiking one of the region’s many lovely long-distance trails, overnighting at the simple-but-cosy dorms that dot the network of paths.
And then there’s the really easy way: the same, but with helicopters.
The Hump Ridge Track, newest of New Zealand’s government-maintained ‘Great Walks’, lies at the very southern end of those Southern Alps (on South Island, naturally). It’s a three-day tramp (to use the Kiwi term), and that skirts the coast near Tuatapere before climbing into the wilds of Fiordland National Park. And it can absolutely be done in purist fashion: pack on back, dorm bunks, sweat and stoicism. But it also comes with mod cons. Proper lodges with hot water and heating. “Premium Rooms” with double beds and private bathrooms. And, for about £65, a chopper that will whisk your bag from lodge to lodge so you can enjoy the walk unencumbered.
I did just that – and, may Wainright forgive me, something much worse too.
Day one begins in Tuatapere, where you collect your briefing and supplies before driving to the official trailhead. My guide, Nicol – a Shetland-born Scot turned Kiwi, moustachioed and cheerfully stern – wore shorts that suggested he took his walking seriously. I was relieved when he assented to driving the 20 miles to the start.
Even through a midge-spattered windscreen, the first sight of Hump Ridge is epic. Across the curve of Te Waewae Bay, the land rises sheer from the Southern Ocean, mists snagging on its flanks so that it seems to float. Māori legend casts it as an upturned waka – a great war canoe – turned to stone, which feels entirely plausible when you see it.
The opening stretch is deceptively gentle: beaches, dolphins in the surf, the path only beginning to climb once it enters the forest. Then it climbs a lot – nearly 3,000 feet before nightfall. Boardwalks and steps tame the trickier sections, though the forest itself feels anything but tamed. Roots writhe across the ground like tripwires; silver beech trees twist together in moss-draped knots; light struggles to penetrate the canopy. The only sounds are birdsong and the squelch of boot in mud.
Which makes Okaka Lodge feel like an improbable mirage. Raised on stilts above boggy ground, it has electricity, heating and hot showers. Those private rooms? Worth it for the view alone: mountains melting into hills, hills receding into plains, plains vanishing into misty distance, and a moonrise that silvered them all.
The next morning, while others shouldered their packs, I stepped out notably lighter – my luggage already airborne. Nicol persuaded me to detour to the actual summit, a half-hour side-trip of bare rock and tussock. Up there, the landscape turns stark and elemental: tiny alpine orchids tucked beneath boulders, two small lakes dull as pewter in the morning light, and wind-carved tors looming like giant faces – bleak and beautiful.
There’s also a memorial plaque to a helicopter pilot lost in a crash nearby. It’s sobering – particularly if, like me, you’ve secretly arranged to extend the whole heli-hiking concept slightly further than is strictly necessary.
Because hidden away on the Hump Ridge’s website (humpridgetrack.co.nz) is the detail that, for £130, they’ll chopper not just your bag but you too, whizzing you across any section you don’t like the look of in less time than it takes to say ‘dirty cheat’.
And as rain swept in with tropical force, turned briefly to snow, then cleared to blazing sunshine – all within a couple of hours – my guilt ebbed. The ridge walk that morning is magnificent: the path undulating along the spine of the mountain, forest giving way to open views where you can see whole weather systems marching towards you across the sea.
Then, at a clearing, the helicopter swooped in as if on a covert extraction mission. In under a minute we were banking over forest and stream valleys, setting down near the Percy Burn Viaduct, an 86-year-old wooden structure thought to be the largest of its kind still standing. It rattles alarmingly underfoot and looks as though it belongs in a sepia photograph – the last relic of an old logging era slowly being reclaimed by bush – but I needed to do some walking before my next night of ill-earned comfort, at Port Craig Lodge.
The next day was all gentle downhills and a final, flat stretch on actual beach. Would Ben Shephard and his crew of exhausted contestants on The Summit approve? Probably not. But did the ridge care how I reached its heights? Not in the slightest. And as the Southern Ocean shimmered before me, and those primevally-forested peaks rolled away towards the horizon, I didn’t much either. I gave Nicol a little wink, and walked lightly on.
Want to visit New Zealand yourself? Check out our holidays to New Zealand: