A lot of the land/forest up there used to be burned off periodically right up as far as the treeline to enable sheep and cattle grazing. IN the first photo looking back toward Lake Taylor you can see remnants of forest left in the valleys but most of the hill/mountainsides (especially sunny north facing ones) burned right up to the snowline. Such burning off is now more or less banned and farming is concentrated more in the river valleys and basins which are less prone to erosion. But from roughly Lake Sumner westward there is more forest (and less farming or residue of farming) and as you can see in the canoe photo the forest comes right down to the south facing side of lake Sumner. It does the same on Lake Katrine on the south facing (shady) side of the lake as they never bothered to or could burn that off. The Harpers pass tramping track which carries on west from Lake Sumner following the Hurunui up and then over the pass and down into the Hurunui catchment is increasingly forested as you go up in altitude and once over the other side I believe there is no farming until you met the road (Arthurs Pass) again. I think its about 3-5 days tramp from Lake Sumner the Arthurs Pass state highway and maybe half or more of this will be through bush or above the snow/treeline. The first day looks to be mostly along the Hurunui river where it is still grazed. Looking at the photo showing the canoe at head of lake Sumner most of the south facing north side of Lake Sumner looks to be forest all the way down. There is a track that goes through the hills you can see in this photo that starts at a road works camp on the Lewis Pass highway a few valleys north and I think nearly all of that route is forested- that is also part of the Te Araroa trail that traverses the full length of New Zealand...it can take 4-6 months to complete- maybe more!