Mount Lyford

Planning and surveying support for a unique highcountry village, creating a soughtafter alpine community in North Canterbury.

Location: North Canterbury
Services: Surveying
Status: Ongoing

The Brief

In the mid-1980s, we were commissioned by the Simpson family and a construction company to help develop the unique Mt Lyford Village. Our involvement included planning and consent processes and the creation of a new zone in the Hurunui District Plan to enable log dwellings with onsite effluent disposal. Geotechnical investigations, supported by the University of Canterbury, were conducted to assess suitable development areas and fault locations.

Challenges Identified

Dense manuka scrub limited visual assessment across the site, creating challenges in determining suitable road and dwelling locations. We worked through this by applying practical and innovative surveying methods, including traversing from the roof of a bulldozer, allowing us to confirm appropriate road alignments and achieve satisfactory gradients within the high-country terrain.

What We Did

Mt Lyford Village now includes 97 surveyed allotments, supported by a water supply sourced by our client from the foot of Mt Lyford.

The ownership and maintenance of the road system became a right of way for public access, serving the village, allotments, and the Mt Lyford ski field. Although the Kaikoura earthquake in 2016 caused substantial damage to the region including to some of the log dwellings, the reliability of our geotechnical work regarding hazard areas remained uncompromised. Today, Mt Lyford Village stands as a unique and sought-after high-country environment for both holiday homes and permanent residents in Canterbury.

In addition to the village, we also created the subdivision of the ski field from the client’s farmland. This high-country project required helicopter access to cover large areas quickly and involved cadastral survey work using historical plans dating back to 1887 and 1892.

Furthermore, it was also surveyed for the rural lifestyle block subdivision, which included determining the precise boundaries of the Mason Stream. Although the stream had never been accurately depicted on a survey plan, our team used GPS technology to conduct a detailed survey, establishing the accurate stream boundary.