Where to Run in Tauranga and Mount Maunganui

Ask a Kiwi runner where to run in Tauranga and the answer used to be instant: the Mount Maunganui Base Track, the 3.4km loop around the base of Mauao, the extinct volcano that gives the beach town its name. As of writing, that answer doesn't work — the track has been closed since a fatal landslide in January 2026, and there is still no date for reopening it. This guide covers what actually happened, what's genuinely open right now, and where the local running community — parkrun, clubs, the works — has kept going regardless.

What happened to Mauao, and why the Base Track is still closed

On 22 January 2026, a storm dropped 274mm of rain on the Bay of Plenty in 24 hours — an exceptional total even for a genuinely wet region — and triggered more than 40 landslides across the 232-metre mountain. One slip hit the Mount Maunganui Beachside Holiday Park that morning and killed six people. It's the deadliest natural-hazard event the region has seen in decades, and it shaped everything about how Mauao has been used for the rest of 2026.

A geological assessment afterwards identified damage across all three main walking tracks, with the Base Track (Te Ara Tūtanga) hit hardest — 31 separate damage sites, against seven on the Summit Track (Te Ara Motukauri). Twenty-four of the 42 identified slips needed substantial remediation rather than simple clean-up: destroyed steps, blocked drainage, and track surface gone entirely in places.

None of this is a guess or a fact carried over unchecked from before the event — it's the most current picture Verus can give without being the council itself. Check Tauranga City Council's own Mauao recovery updates before building a trip around the Base Track; this page will be revised as the situation changes, but a live council page will always beat a guide for currency on an active recovery.

The Base Track itself, for when it does reopen

It's worth knowing what the fuss is about. The Base Track is a 3.4km loop, walkable in either direction, that circles the base of Mauao between the open-ocean side (Main Beach) and the sheltered harbour side (Pilot Bay) — a genuinely rare piece of geography, an extinct volcano you can run all the way around on a wide, largely flat path in about 45 minutes. Bay of Plenty's own tourism board describes the path as wide enough in most places for pushchairs, runners and groups to move side by side, which is part of why it became one of New Zealand's most-used coastal walks rather than a niche trail.

The separate Summit Track climbs from the base to Mauao's 232m top, gaining roughly 230m over a genuinely steep final push — a different, harder proposition from the flat Base Track loop, and also closed.

What's actually open right now

The closure is specifically about the mountain's own tracks — most of the wider area kept running through 2026, and some of it is genuinely worth building a session around in its own right.

• Main Beach and the Mauao end of Pilot Bay — reopened for swimming and beach walking/running since 9 February 2026, once the rāhui lifted. The mountain tracks above them stay shut.
• Moturiki Island (Leisure Island) and Hopukiore (Mt Drury) — both stayed open through the closure and both have real multisport pedigree: Moturiki's beach was the swim start for the 2025 Oceania Sprint, Mixed Relay and Para Triathlon Championships, with Hopukiore as race HQ.
• The Marine Parade Coastal Pathway — open, running along the ocean side away from the cordoned sections nearer Adams Ave.
• Papamoa Beach — roughly 16km of open sand a short drive east, firm enough at low tide to be a genuine running surface in its own right, plus a separate 6.4km inland Papamoa Walkway through a string of reserves and a 3km multi-use path along Papamoa Beach Road for a shorter, traffic-free option.
• Tauranga Domain — the city's athletics track, home to Bellevue Athletic Club (one of the region's largest junior clubs) and the base for Open Athletic's Thursday-evening run club.
• Kopurererua Valley Reserve — a boardwalk-and-gravel trail along the Kopurererua Stream, and also where Tauranga parkrun happens every Saturday.

Tauranga parkrun

New Zealand has one of the more developed parkrun scenes outside the UK and Australia — roughly 67-70 free, weekly, timed 5km events nationwide, and Tauranga is one of them. It runs every Saturday at 8am in Kopurererua Valley Reserve: a boardwalk-and-compacted-gravel out-and-back along the stream, assembling by the skate park at the bottom of 17th Avenue West. It draws around 200 runners and walkers most weeks, entirely free, with a one-off registration required before your first run. It isn't immune to the region's weather either — the event was cancelled on 24 January 2026, two days after the Mauao landslide, as the same storm system disrupted the wider city.

Running clubs to know

Verus is built for exactly this — add the dates you'll be in Tauranga and other runners already there, or arriving the same week, can find you before you land. No messaging system to navigate, just a profile and an Instagram handle, which is where an actual conversation about joining one of these sessions starts.

King and Queen of the Mountain: 79 years, paused for 2026

Mauao's own signature race predates almost everything else on this page. It began life as the 'Race to the Summit of the Mountain' on 27 December 1945 — 18 men, a 25-pound budget, and the Mellish Cup for the winner (women weren't allowed to enter for another 40 years). By its 79th running it had become a genuine local institution: start on Main Beach opposite Mt Drury, along the sand, up the historic stone steps, onto the Waikorire Track to the summit, across the top, down the 4WD track and the Oruahine Track, and back along the beach to finish.