Mount Te Kinga

About

Mount Te Kinga (Māori: Tekimoka) is a mountain on the West Coast of New Zealand's South Island within the western foothills of the Southern Alps / Kā Tiritiri o te Moana. The mountain is on the south-eastern shore of Lake Brunner and is not a part of a larger mountain range, being separated from the Hohonu Range to the west by the Ōrangipuku River and from the Alexander Range to the southeast by the Poerua River. Numerous small creeks flow from Te Kinga, all of which end up eventually flowing into the nearby Lake Brunner. Despite being surrounded by former wetlands which have been converted into dairy farms, Te Kinga has been largely untouched. Almost the entire mountain is covered by native forest, with the lower reaches containing large old-growth podocarp trees, including tōtara, rimu, kahikatea and miro. As the altitude increases the vegetation gradually shifts, including larger amounts of species such as kaikawaka, neinei and southern rātā. From an altitude of about 1,000 metres (3, 300 ft), the vegetation thins out and gradually shifts to pink pine, followed by the scree slopes and tussock cover typical of alpine environments in New Zealand. The summit can be accessed via an eight-hour tramp from Cashmere Bay of Lake Brunner, along the mountain's northern ridge. This track increases in difficulty along its length, with the first portion to a lookout graded as an easy tram

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Photography via Wikimedia Commons.