Repairs on the summit track up Mount Maunganui are finished, and crews have now turned to the far harder job of putting the popular base track back together after the landslides that scarred the mountain in January.
Tauranga City Council confirmed on Friday that work on the summit four wheel drive track, Te Ara Motukauri, was complete and that remediation had begun on the base track that loops around the foot of the mountain, Te Ara Tūtanga. It is the clearest sign of progress since a storm tore dozens of slips down the 232 metre headland six months ago.
Mount Maunganui, known by its Māori name Mauao, is one of the most walked pieces of ground in the country. The climb to the summit and the flat loop around the base draw locals before work, holidaymakers through summer and thousands of visitors who treat the walk as the thing to do in the Bay of Plenty. Almost all of it has been shut since the slips came down, and getting people back onto the mountain has become a long recovery project rather than a quick clean up.
The damage was done on 22 January, when severe weather dropped 274 millimetres of rain on the region in 24 hours. A slip off the mountain hit the Mount Maunganui Beachside Holiday Park that morning and six people were killed. It remains one of the deadliest weather events the region has seen, and the recovery of the tracks has been carried out with that loss in the background.
A later assessment by engineers and geologists found 42 landslides across the three main walking tracks on Mauao. Of those, 24 were serious enough to need real repair work rather than a simple tidy up. The base track was the hardest hit with 31 affected areas, while the summit four wheel drive track had seven. Wooden steps on a connecting track and near the campground were destroyed. The problems ranged from debris burying whole sections of path to undercutting, over steepened slopes, lost track width and blocked drainage.
Council recovery manager Charlie Rahiri said the summit works being finished was a real step forward, but he was careful not to raise hopes of a quick reopening. The base track, he said, was a very different proposition to the summit route.
“This is not just about restoring access to tracks, recovery is about people, place and connection, and we are restoring connections with Mauao for our community,” Rahiri said.
He described the base track as “a complex and high-hazard environment because of the size and scale of the landslides”. Work there is now going into simply reaching the slips so they can be fixed. “Work is now underway to enable access to the landslides, which includes clean-up of the track and beach areas, so remediation work can start,” he said.
The council has repeatedly declined to put a date on when the public will be allowed back, and it did not offer one this week either. Rahiri said any call on reopening would be driven by the risk of further slips and the safety of the people who use the mountain.
“Any decisions about reopening tracks will be informed by an assessment of landslide risk and the safety of visitors to Mauao,” he said. Access would need to return “gradually and carefully”, with some parts of the mountain likely to stay closed while safer sections open first.
That measured tone has been consistent through the recovery. When restoration crews first began work in autumn, the council warned the job could take up to four months, and progress has since been slowed by fresh slips on already unstable ground. Engineering firm WSP has been carrying out the technical assessment of the slopes that guides which sections can be safely worked on and, eventually, walked on again.
For a mountain that usually has a steady stream of walkers on it from dawn, the quiet on Mauao has been keenly felt in Tauranga and Mount Maunganui. The base track in particular is a gentle, sea level loop used by older residents, families with prams and runners who cannot manage the steep summit climb, and its closure has taken away one of the easiest and most loved walks in the city.
The council has asked people to stay off the closed tracks while the work continues, both for their own safety and to let contractors get on with the job. Barriers and signs remain in place around the affected routes.
For now the message from the council is patience. The finished summit track shows the recovery can be done, but the harder ground around the base of the mountain will decide how long it is before the full walk is open again.
Have you been missing your walk up or around Mount Maunganui, and how long do you think the base track should take to reopen safely? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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