Playboy model angers Maori with nude photo on top of sacred Mt Taranaki

For her nearly 300,000 followers, this Playboy model's nude photo on top of a volcano must have been one of her most striking.

Jaylene Cook reached the summit of New Zealand's Mount Taranaki after an ascent she said was "by far the hardest thing I have ever done".

To mark the moment, the 25-year-old stripped down to just her woolly hat, gloves and trainers to pose for an above-clouds naked photo.

But while her Instagram followers raved about the picture, the nude shot has been less well received by the locals.

"It's like someone went into St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican and took a nude photo," Dennis Ngawhare, a spokesperson for the local Maori tribe, told the BBC.

"It's a sacred place and something like this is just very inappropriate."

For the local Maori, climbing to the top of Mount Taranaki is a rare occasion often only done for ceremonial purposes.

The volcano is considered the burial ground of the tribe's ancestors and is itself seen as an ancestor.

While Ngawhare accepts tourists are eager to scale the 2,518m (8,261ft) active volcano, he says Cook's behaviour was a step too far.

"It's only recently that we can have some input on what goes on at the mountain," the local Maori spokesman explains. "We simply ask people to please be respectful. This latest case is just another really annoying example where someone obviously didn't know how to behave here."

He added: "It's a clash between Western assumptions and indigenous values and beliefs."

Mayor of the local Stratford district, Neil Volzke, agreed the move was culturally insensitive.

"I don't think the picture itself is offensive or obscene – it is just inappropriate to take on top of Mount Taranaki because it is a place with great deal of importance for the Maori community," he told the BBC. "It's a place that should be treated with the utmost respect at all times."

Cook, herself from New Zealand, climbed the mountain on 26 April with her partner, saying it took them 12 hours in temperatures as low as -11C.

She has since defended her photo, arguing it was not "crude or explicit" and that they researched the mountain's history before starting the climb.

"It's just point of view. We believe that we were very respectful, we were picking up others people's rubbish that was left up there and we made ourselves aware of the culture," she told the Daily Mail.

Previous incidents on Mount Taranaki have annoyed the local Maori community, including when hikers had a barbecue on the summit in 2011, and graffiti was left on rocks.

The mountain gets its name from the Maori word "tara", meaning peak, and "naki", thought to stem from the Maori word for "shining" on account of the mountain's snow-covered slopes in the winter.