Because crawling is more fun when it's windy

The frequent tramping contingent in my IT team at work (roughly 3.5 people) found ourselves discussing this story, which popped up in the Southland Times this morning and now appears on Stuff. We reached a consensus that the SAR coordinator guy who’s been quoted was off his rocker in several of his comments if he was quoted accurately. If we’re to believe him as a voice of Search and Rescue, it’s dangerous to tramp at night and it’s rude to show up late at a hut.

In summary, a group was tramping to Siberia Hut (in Mount Aspiring National Park). They arrived about 11.30pm, one girl lagged behind and showed up 30 minutes later. During this gap, the warden at the hut notified Search and Rescue when the rest of the party indicated she was missing.

The Wanaka SAR Coordinator, however, seems to have come out with some very scathing comments in the media about how the group acted. He’s stated on the record that night walking is “not a good idea”, and that the absolute basics of tramping safety were ignored by the whole party. He also strongly criticised the group for showing up late, claiming that:

“most people using huts usually end up having pretty early nights, and don’t need to be woken up by groups of people banging and crashing around and settling in after midnight. It’s just ignoring tramping etiquette.”

I can’t comment on the specific case of this group’s etiquette due to the lack of information, but I take exception to both of these claims.
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This evening I was browsing the various RSS feeds to which I subscribe, and came upon this opinion piece expressed by Rosemary McLeod in the Dominion Post a couple of weeks back. I’m not exactly sure what she’s trying to say. (To put it in perspective, this is just an opinion piece in a newspaper and it’s about as irrelevant to anything as the blog post you’re reading right now.)

I’m a great respecter of nature and its many dirty tricks, which is why you won’t find me out in it whistling.

The complete tone of her opinion seems to be that we should be paranoid about what’s about to strike, and never take a step outside. Somewhere in there, she also expresses despair about not having flush toilets in the great outdoors, and the dangers of falling off cliffs into oblivion when following signs for easy graded tourist walks, or something like that. The intended message seems to be that we should all “respect nature” as she does.

We are surrounded by so few people, and so much bush, river, mountain and beach, that it escapes our notice that all of these are potentially lethal. Every summer there’s a catalogue of deaths as a result, since we expect to casually stroll about in it as if it’s our own living room.

I mean, Wow!
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This post is my attempt to make sense of where the significant boundaries lie in the replacement 1:50000 Topo50 map series pushed out by Land Information New Zealand last September to replace the old 260 series. I can’t guarantee how much if it will be useful, but as always comments, feedback and experienced elaboration are welcome.

A couple of weeks ago, I took part in a bulk order of the new Topo50 maps, which replace the old 260 series that’s been in publication for several decades until now. I’m now the owner of 18 Topo50 maps to get me started, having picked up most of them for $3.50 each, around half the usual retail price. You can get this price (which includes GST but not postage) if you have a bulk order or 20 or more maps direct from LINZ, which makes it useful for clubs or groups of friends who know in advance what they want. I wrote about these maps last year, including more detail about why it’s actually happening and what the main changes are. The new maps have a couple of obvious differences:
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Amanda waits for the 2pm summer
sunshine whilst overlooking the
Park River, 300 metres below.

Wellington Anniversary Weekend meant an opportunity to have a slightly longer trip in the Tararuas than the usual weekend, and we used it to visit the middle part of the main range, beginning from Otaki Forks and ending at Poads Road near Levin. The forecast leading up to the weekend was uninspiring, suggesting several large splodges of rain would position themselves all over the lower North Island, especially on Saturday, but perhaps clearing a little after that. There was no forecast of strong wind and we went ahead with the plan, but somehow boasting about a lack of strong wind didn’t convince my work-mates not to laugh at me when I left to visit the Tararuas on Friday night.

Dates: 22nd – 25th Jaunary, 2010 (Wellington Anniversary Weekend)
Location: Tararua Forest Park, Otaki Forks to Poads Road.
People: Amanda, Richard, Tim and me.
Huts visited: Waitewaewae Hut (0 nights), Nichols Hut (1 night), Dracophyllum Biv (0 nights), Te Matawai Hut (1 night), South Ohau Hut (0 nights).
Route: Walk up Saddle Creek and camp on the plateau, then past Waitewaewae Hut and over Shoulder Knob to Nichols Hut for the next night. Then to Te Matawai Hut via Pukematawai, and out to Poads Road via the South Ohau River.
[Photos]
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We left a van at Otaki Forks a little after 8pm, intending to swap it with another group on their way along Oriwa Ridge. A few others had signed the intentions book so we weren’t the only people braving the rain, but most going elsewhere. The only people who’d written about going our way, up towards Waitewaewae, having left earlier in the afternoon, had abruptly scribbled out their plans for a 4 day trip and written OUT. Apparently they’d changed their mind for some reason.

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In a trip report last week, I wrote about a certain recipe for something called “Mt Doom — a Chocolate Volcanic Cake“. It’s based around staple ingredients such as 1 cup of drinking chocolate, a whole cup of chocolate chips, half a cup of strawberry jam, an unspecified amount of greek yoghurt (to counter the jam, I think), a little chilli powder to taste, one entire litre of “gooey raspberry ripple ice-cream”, and 3 token cups of couscous just to make the entire thing healthy. This recipe was published on page 18 of FMC Bulletin 178 (from November 2009), and its submitter claims it will serve “12 hungry trampers”. Reading the recipe over and over whilst lying in a tent, stuck behind a swollen river for 2 extra nights on a food budget, it’s unclear just how 12 people will be satisfied. It was in such circumstances that I decided I’d make the whole thing when I got back, and I’d appreciate it.

Time goes on and appetites change. Two or three small town pub meals later, I’d lost my appetite for this gooey chocolate, strawberry and raspberry wonder-cake, or at the very least eating the entire thing. I still wanted to see how it’d come out, however, and eventually decided to divide all ingredients by three.

It’s a simple recipe. The couscous gets mixed with twice as much water, the drinking chocolate, chilli powder and eventually the chocolate chips, creating chocolate-flavoured couscous. Once it’s cooled, the idea is drop the ice-cream into a (large) bowl, then tip the couscous mixture over the top. After this, the jam and yoghurt gets smothered over the top to make it look more volcano-like. (I refused to buy the raspberry swirl ice-cream because it was far too expensive, so bought some kind of triple chocolate ice cream instead.)

After a first effort, this was the result.

Several amateur insights occur following this cooking expedition:
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Lately I’ve been following a story in the news about two stranded kayakers who were rescued, sent a bill, and are refusing to pay. I guess I’ve been finding the whole concept of being sent a bill for a search and rescue operation difficult to grasp, because standard practice in New Zealand is that they’re supposed to be free, specifically so people should not be discouraged from requesting help when they’re in trouble. Perhaps someone in the know can comment, but I suppose this is different because neither the New Zealand Police nor the Search and Rescue Coordination Centre were notified or involved in the search. What bothers me most about this story is that until now, I’d generally been under the impression that rescues were free, even as written into law.

The gist of the situation is that on 3rd December 2009 the Shotover River was flooded, but the kayakers (reportedly experienced) went anyway despite having been warned against it, and despite the local tourist rafting and jet boat operators refusing to operate. The kayakers had a mis-hap, losing one of the kayaks and with one of them breaking a finger. The empty kayak was spotted down-river, and on the reasonable assumption that someone could be in serious trouble, authorities of the Queenstown Lakes District Council sent a helicopter to investigate. The two kayakers were discovered on opposite banks of the river, and reportedly “very pleased to see the helicopter”. The harbourmaster of the council later sent a bill to recover the $4,000 cost, and now plans to go to small claims court to get it back.

Most of the media (the Herald and Stuff are representative) report the story from a perspective that the kayakers were warned, shouldn’t have gone, and wasted everyone’s time. The kayakers themselves (un-named as best as I can tell) claim that they weren’t in serious trouble, never requested a rescue, and don’t see why they should have to pay for it. With a quick search I’ve noticed that several people have blogged thoughts about this story in various places (some with following discussions), notably Michelle over at Love in a Tent, David at Paddling Instructor, and also Kerry L at Kayak & Kayaking.

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The Mokihinui River, near the south-west side of Kahurangi National Park, has a large catchment. Our new years’ walk along the river was inspired by recent plans of Meridian Energy to build an 85 metre dam, which would flood the river with an artificial 14 kilometre lake for the purposes of electricity export from the region. This would be at the expense of a unique landscape that can only be formed by a wild river, and of the flora and fauna that inhabits the region. A recent unofficial statement suggested that the current government is unlikely to allow this to occur, although Energy Minister Gerry Brownlee has since complained that his comment was taken out of context and he’s not interfering. The official commission doesn’t expect to reach a decision until February 2010, and nothing’s certain in the current climate. This is why we wanted to go out and see the Mokihinui River, because its future seems quite uncertain.

Sue crosses one of
many side creeks.

Dates: 31st December, 2009 – 5th January 2010 (one day late)
Location: Mokihinui River, Mokihinui Forks Ecological Area and Lyell Range-Radiant Range Conservation Area (south-east of Kahurangi National Park).
People: Steve, Allen, Sue, Dmitry, Mark, Robert and me.
Huts visited: Mokihinui Forks Hut (0 nights).
Route: Start at Lyell, walk up the gold mining route to the head of the south branch of the Mokihinui River, follow the river to Mohihinui Forks Hut, then out along the route on the river’s true left to Seddonville.
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New Zealand’s Department of Conservation has decided not to establish a track along Oriwa Ridge in the Tararuas as part of Te Araroa — The Long Pathway. Instead, DOC is recommending that Te Araroa go via the exposed tops in the Tararuas, via places like Te Matawai, Dracophyllum, Nichols.

The full published results are available on DOC’s website.

The original proposal of the Te Araroa Trust was to go more or less via this route, but the Trust put together the alternative proposal to build a track along Oriwa Ridge, below the bush-line, after the DOC Wellington Hawkes Bay conservancy expressed concern that the earlier route could be too dangerous for the often less experienced trampers that Te Araroa might be expected to attract. This has been brewing for about a year now, and has unveiled much controversy over balancing the seclusion of dedicated wilderness areas and the promotion of recreation, and all that.

Having gone through the submission process with 218 submissions, DOC has decided that its initial concerns are no longer relevant. It’s decided that for various reasons Oriwa Ridge probably isn’t that much safer anyway, that the reasons against the Oriwa Ridge proposal out-weigh the reasons in favour, and ultimately that there will be no track built through Oriwa Ridge. Reasoning that the Te Araroa Trust has since included rugged exposed alpine routes in other regions of the track, DOC has now also come out in favour of the original Te Araroa proposal that it initially had concerns about, to follow the existing and more exposed route through the Tararuas at higher altitude. As long as everyone who walks this section of the Te Araroa Trail takes standard precautions (ie. doesn’t take undue risks), this should be a win for everyone.

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I intuitively to associate strong wind with exposed places at high altitude, but it doesn’t always work that way. Apparently Glenburn Station, up the south-east coast of the North Island from Honeycomb Rock, is one of those places that can be very exposed. I shouldn’t have been too surprised given that Castlepoint isn’t much further up the coast. This was my bail-out at my own pace walk on flat ground, as a compromise to keep me sane when my dodgy knee caused me to cancel a scurried weekend attempt at Neill Winchcombe in the Tararuas with Craig. Hopefully at a later time, though.

It’s a windy coastline.

It turns out I was the only person walking the walk to Honeycomb Rock last Sunday. A family group of about four began a few minutes before me, but turned around within the first ten minutes. I don’t blame them, but having driven for a couple of hours to get there, I wasn’t about to do the same. I’d heard that Honeycomb Rock would be an interesting place to visit, but didn’t really know what to expect. Information about the walk is fairly scarce, and this was combined with my general lack of research before I left. Being ill informed as I was, I ran into a few issues. The first was that aside form the starting point (Glenburn Station), I didn’t really know where to start. The second was that aside from somewhere around the coast, I didn’t really know where to go. The third was that aside from something about fancy rocks and a seal colony, I didn’t really know what to expect. I didn’t help that I’d for some reason been thinking it was “Honeycomb Rocks” instead of “Honeycomb Rock”, but I guess now I know better.

Date: 13th December, 2009
Location: Glenburn Station, Wairarapa Coast.
Route: Walk to Honeycomb Rock and back, wherever that is.
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The walk is administered by the New Zealand Department of Conservation in the Wairarapa region, but is entirely on the privately owned Glenburn Station (sheep and cattle farming). It’s officially closed when Glenburn Station is in baby-raising mode (ie. lambing season), but even the DOC signs only say that this is “usually” about September and October (despite the website info being specific about this), so if it’s near this time and you have any doubt you should probably contact an office in the Wairarapa to find out before going all the way out there. It’s not a major enough walk for much information to be available through DOC’s passive resources beyond a sparsely clad pamphlet downloadable from the website, and as a coastal walk it’s probably targeted mostly at people who live in relatively nearby places such as Carterton or Masterton. It’s not often that I go out for a daywalk and spend two thirds of the time driving, but I wanted to see what it was.
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The Orongorongo Valley is a nearby place that I’ve overlooked quite a lot. In once sense it’s too close, which isn’t a fair way to judge somewhere. It’s also relatively popular, with roughly 100 locked private huts and batches dotted along the Orongorongo river. When I’ve visited in the past, I’ve not really felt as if I’ve been far away from anything at all. I spent last weekend there on my own, however, and enjoyed it.

The Orongorongo Valley.

I was actually supposed to be going with some others into the Tararuas, but that arrangement fell apart a day or two before, and I doubt I’d have been able to go along with it anyway since I’ve been having some knee problems since arriving back in the country. I really didn’t want to do nothing, though, and made a last minute plan to walk into the Orongorongas from Catchpool Valley, stopping to camp at whatever point my knee decided it could go no further. This plan eventually led me to an ad-hoc campsite next to a river underneath Papatahi where I stayed for a night, before walking out roughly the way I’d come on the following morning.

Dates: 5th – 6th December, 2009
Location: Rimutaka Forest Park, Catchpool Valley road-end.
People: Just me.
Huts visited: Baine Iti Hut (0 nights), Shamrock Hut (0 nights), Haurangi Hut (0 nights), and a heap of private lodges.
Route: Catchpool Valley to the Orongorongo River, up the river to North Boulder Creek, camp in the creek below Papatahi, then back the same way.
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The end of Turere Stream as it
reaches the Orongorongo River.

And thus it was that after a late start, I arrived at the Catchpool Valley car-park at about midday. I’ve been here before, but my first impression on the day of this entrance to the Rimutaka Range was that it might not have been a good idea with a dodgy knee. It’s probably by far the most popular entrance to the range, and the Orongorongo Track, which is the main route to the Orongorongo River, is hard enough on the legs that it might as well be cemented. A little over an hour later, though, I reached the main Orongorongo River, and walking on the sandy river rocks made things easier on my problem knee.
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