Track construction and maintenance guidelines
Guidelines on how to construct and maintain tracks for walkers and mountain-bikers in New Zealand. Includes a guide for those in the field on how to construct and maintain tracks. Published 2008.

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Summary

These guidelines provide advice and technical information on the construction and maintenance of recreation tracks for walkers and off-road mountain bikers. The aim is to provide best practice information that is useful for all those involved in planning and carrying out work on tracks. The main audience is Department of Conservation staff, but it will useful for anyone responsible for tracks.

Standards for tracks in New Zealand are set out in the  Standards New Zealand Handbook "SNZ HB 8630:2004 - Tracks and Outdoor Visitor Structures". While these state what a track should be like to meet the needs of different users, they do not describe how that can be achieved. That is the objective of this document. It is the "how to" guide for people involved in planning for, constructing and maintaining tracks to meet the track standards.

The guidelines also come in a much shorter, pocket-sized field guide. This contains all parts of the main document likely to be useful to staff/people in the field.

Disclaimer

We are making the document/s available outside DOC to share our best practice. Any use by members of the public is at their own risk and DOC disclaims all liability in reference to that risk.

The document/s were written for DOC staff and may include DOC-specific terms and reference internal documents only accessible to DOC staff. You may need further help to do the work described and also need to get authorisation. Caveats may apply.