The story hasn’t made it far through the media, and most places where it’s visible show as a regurgitation of DoC’s press release pulled off the news-wire. One media organisation that investigated further was the New Zealand Herald, although the Herald’s story doesn’t offer much further information except to get a quote from a Mountain Safety Council representative who “welcomed the increase”. The article’s thin on detail about why the MSC welcomed the increase, just as it’s think on why the MSC was consulted before organisations that more directly represent use of back-country huts (as opposed to outdoor safety) such as FMC, the NZ Alpine Club the NZ Deerstalkers, or any number of local outdoor recreation clubs for that matter.

Hut fees were introduced in 1988 by the newly-founded Department of Conservation. They’ve taken time sink in, with many people early on finding it offensive for the government to effectively usurp facilities they’d helped to build, and then charge for their use. Chris MacLean’s Tararua history book quotes John Rundle during a 1991 taped conversation as follows:

“I, with a lot of other people, have put a lot of voluntary time in cutting these tracks, building these huts — which DoC hasn’t done — going on searches, instructing schools, Scouts, Girl Guides and things like that — all voluntary. For them to come and ask me for a hut fee is an insult.”

As MacLean writes, the Tararuas, which have a strong history of recreational tramping and community involvement, began with about a 25% compliance rate when hut fees were introduced. In 1989 this resulted in a long weekend helicopter blitz in which rangers were flown around many huts throughout the range to pounce on those staying there, and ensure that $4 hut fees were paid. It was bad for public relations, but apparently effective in the longer term and reportedly the $1100 use of the helicopter was cheaper than paying rangers to walk to all the remote places.

These days I’ve found it difficult to find wardens in Tararua huts. I guess either most people pay, or that the local DoC conservancies are indifferent towards enforcing it and would rather spend money elsewhere. I’ve met a volunteer warden once, at Mitre Flats about a year ago. He was a nice guy out for his own weekend tramp with a friend more than to be a warden. They had the warden’s quarters as a guaranteed room, but got the fire going before anyone else did. Next morning he wired up the warden’s radio to call in the hut’s overnight numbers and get us all a weather forecast. He reluctantly asked people to show hut tickets, which is a warden’s obligation, but decided from an unrelated conversation that I probably had an Annual Hut Pass and politely told me he wasn’t going to bother asking me to prove it. I dug it out and asked him look at it anyway, because it’s the only chance I’ve ever had to actually prove to a DoC representative that yes, I really do pay my hut fees.

To try and address some of the concerns people have, DoC also made a few concessions. A commitment was made to only use hut fee revenue specifically for maintenance and building of huts, rather than simply vanishing into DoC’s budget — it’s all in the presentation of the accounting, of course. Custodian arrangements have also been kept with many clubs, so the clubs can remain associated with certain huts, and hold a joint responsibility for their up-keep. In such cases, club members aren’t obligated to pay fees for using those huts, though I suspect many would have annual hut passes anyway.

[Edited 9-July-2010: I've added the following table and three paragraphs having heard back from DoC with some numbers]
Hut fees have always felt like token gestures to me, with the impression that they don’t come close to the costs of maintaining the hut network. I did, however, ask the Department of Conservation for more detailed numbers about maintenance of the back-country hut network compared with revenue from hut tickets and hut passes, and received limited information back from a very helpful person. For the financial year ending June 2009, DoC received the following revenue for various kinds of hut tickets not including Great Walk huts:

In the same year, as was stated in DoC’s Annual Report for the year ending June 2009, expenditure on “huts” was about $16.5m. A crucial point to note with the $16.5m expenditure figure, as was confirmed by DoC when I asked, is that it includes the cost of maintaining Great Walk huts, an amount that I was told couldn’t be separated. Great Walk huts are the five star hotels of the hut network, likely to be very expensive to maintain. Also critical when comparing the $16.5m expenditure with the $1.3m hut ticket revenue is that the user-pays part of Great Walk huts does not come from the regular back-country hut tickets and annual passes at all. It comes from a separate booking and payment system (revenue $3.9m during the same time) that’s independent from other huts.

Having subtracted Great Walk hut maintenance from the initial $16.5m figure, whatever substantial amount it may be, the $1.3m that hut tickets put towards maintenance of the rest of the hut network is likely a big proportion of maintenance, and not such a token gesture after all. If the heavily marketed tourist-frequented Great Walk huts cost $10m to maintain in that year (and let’s be clear that I’m guessing), $1.3m of hut ticket revenue makes up a good 20% of the remaining $6.5m allocated to maintaining 950-odd huts in the rest of the network for which hut ticket revenue is supposed to directly contribute.

When I first posted this before having the figures, I’d guessed that the extra money from raising hut fees wouldn’t make much difference, but now I’m not so sure. If anything though, I think it reinforces my belief that there would be much less stress on the system if all hut users actually paid for huts as they’re supposed to.

There are many people out there who don’t pay hut fees at all, both New Zealanders and tourists, and this is what annoys me about the price rise for honest people. Hut fees are an honesty system, which is not a voluntary system. Rather than the government taking a clear and visible initiative to get more of those people to pay, I feel as if I’m being made to further subsidise certain other people’s free-loading. Huts should either be fully subsidised for everyone with the addition of labour and funds as people choose to volunteer (which used to be the case), or have their costs equally shared by all users as fairly as can be managed. The current system doesn’t give the impression of doing this very well. It’s unfair to people who are honest.

Recent Federated Mountain Club Bulletins have been scattered with letters of people complaining about tourists who refuse to pay hut fees. For instance, Trish Jenner of the North Shore Tramping Club comments (Letters, FMC Bulletin 179, March 2010):

For a number of years I have noted how few pay. At one hut, New Zealanders, including us, numbered nine and every one had a ticket or annual hut pass. Foreign trampers also numbered nine but only two had bought hut tickets — a high level of non-compliance. Comments from friends suggest other tracks, for example the Dusky, support these figures.

At the Mangaturuturu Hut, an American couple camped nearby, but one of them slept in the hut, and they used the woodstove for cooking. They commented that they were “doing New Zealand on the cheap”. A French couple seemed to be playing a game of avoiding hut wardens and commented, “We are very bad tourists!”

This story is consistent with other random anecdotes I’ve heard from various people. Maybe one of the more amazing stories was of a group of tourists reportedly living in huts near road-ends for weeks on end without paying a cent, and driving out to do the grocery shopping. I’ve heard other anecdotes about tourists telling each other as they return home that the back-country hut system in New Zealand is free, and it’s completely legal and ethically okay to do this kind of thing.

One comment in a newswire feed of the recent story over at YahooXtra, from a poster claiming to live in a National Park, agrees that there’s no shortage of “hut users who have no intention of paying the NZ taxpayer for their accommodation”. Some anecdotes are extremes but there’s an underlying impression that there’s a combination of mis-information and probably intentional abuse of the system. I don’t wish to stereotype all tourists when saying this. I figure most tourists are very responsible, or at least try to be if they understand what’s expected.

It’s not just tourists to New Zealand, of course. A quick anecdotal browse of posts in the forums over at Fish & Hunt in response to this recent price rise shows that there are still New Zealanders who don’t pay fees, either because they didn’t realise they were supposed to, because they can’t be bothered, or because they refuse on principle through disliking the government for some other reason such as its use of 1080 poison for pest control.

There’s allegedly a correlation between people who avoid hut fees and people who don’t write in books, supposedly from a fear that wardens or other Department of Conservation staff must go through names in the books and correlate them with names on tickets. I can’t imagine this actually happens, but nevertheless the avoidance of writing in books is a bad thing. Avoiding writing in hut books inhibits Search and Rescue operations when it’s unclear if a missing person has been through a hut. It also gives a false impression of how frequently a hut is used, since otherwise it’s very difficult to tell. This might in turn result in the hut’s removal, or less maintenance than might be ideal.

The remoteness of back-country huts means it’s difficult to ensure that people pay fees. It’s also impractical to enforce hut fees too severely lest it put people’s lives at risk by preventing them from using huts in times of danger. In other words, putting locks on the doors would be very bad. It’s unfortunate that the honesty system results in significant proportions of people not paying for one reason or another.

Overall there are at least three groups of people who don’t pay hut fees for one reason or another:

1. Those who don’t realise they’re supposed to pay hut fees.
2. Those who forget or can’t be bothered to pay hut fees.
3. Those who refuse to pay hut fees due to some sort of principle.

Endless ideas exist for how to deal with this problem, some of which are being attempted but not completely effectively it seems. Some ideas that I like are:

• Having better signs in strategic places (DoC offices, road-ends) to make it clearer to people that they have to buy hut tickets before they leave.
• Making it easier for people to pay for hut usage in retrospect. From time to time it’s necessary to use huts without prior planning, or sometimes people just forget to buy tickets before they leave. I guess the ethical thing to do afterwards is to buy hut tickets as appropriate on returning and tear them up. There’s no formal or above-board way of doing this, however, and tearing up a ticket won’t credit it to the count of people using the specific hut as leaving a ticket stub behind would have done.
• More clearly informing tourists of what to expect when they enter the country, and working more with guide-book editors and tour agencies through which people book their trips to make it clearer to people from the beginning that they actually will have to pay. Presently the international arrival terminals present a wealth of information about what can’t be brought into the country, but very little information about what to expect and how to act.
• Giving visitors an easy opportunity to buy a hut pass as they enter the country, or even from overseas when they book their trip here, so that visits to back-country huts (except Great Walks and a few other exceptions) are pre-paid by the time they arrive, and so bookings for Great Walk huts will get the usual discounts for those with annual hut passes.
• Perhaps letting people send their fees to DoC through their phone bill, or something along those lines? The cellphone reception at most back-country huts is non-existant, and hopefully it stays that way for times to come, but even if there are ways to let people to enter a text message into their phone to be sent at a later time, and tell their phone company to transfer money to DoC, it might help to increase the payments.

I bet there are many more ideas.

The group of hut users who don’t pay on principle is unlikely to be swayed by any of these ideas. Probably the only things that can be done in some cases is either to accept it, to change the rules (eg. perhaps formally recognise people’s use of facilities is in exchange for their up-keep of the facilities), cater to people’s principles where it’s feasible to do so, or bring in more enforcement. It’s hard to say which (if any) of these is a good idea. They all have down sides. Still, I think if DoC’s going to progressively raise the hut fee prices for those who are honest, there’s a need to more heavily address the problems with other people not paying at all. Otherwise it’s an unfair system.

I think this problem is caused by a combination of things, notably:

• The Tongariro Alpine Crossing (formerly the Tongariro Crossing) is often advertised as the best daywalk in New Zealand, and something that must be done.
• For many tourists to New Zealand, it’ll be their first experience, their only experience or one of very few outdoor experiences, meaning they’re unlikely to have appropriate clothing and gear.
• Tourists often come to New Zealand from places with very different conditions to New Zealand’s alpine conditions, possibly through tourist trails of other countries where it’s more difficult for tourists to get to dangerous places unsupervised, and aren’t prepared for what to expect, possible sudden changes in weather or other dangers.
• Some people set aside a specific day to walk the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, and arrange and book other parts of their trip around this date. If the weather isn’t appropriate on the day they’ve chosen, the go anyway.

To demonstrate the changeability of the weather, these two photos were taken less than an hour apart during November 2007.

I realise I’m 4 months late with posting this link. I’m afraid I don’t watch much television.

Getting out of Crow Hut right now is one of the more awkward climbs from a valley I’ve personally had. We more or less slid down the hill-side yesterday morning, persistent rain apparently making the topsoil absolutely sodden. A year ago I bought the cheapest Scarpas I could find, part of an experiment with getting cheap boots, but the soles are the best I’ve had on any boots to date and I’ve learned to trust them. Yesterday they often failed. Placing them flat on the soil (usually safe) was enough to trigger random acts of slipping and sliding, or sometimes not. So, now on the way up, and faced with one of yesterday’s 80 centimetre skid-marks on a 40 degree slope and no clear way around the edges, I have some uncertainty about exactly where to put my foot.

Still, in my case with hands poised in front ready to spread myself flat on the ground and slow the slide next time something slips out of place, we eventually get through the worst of it.

There’s snow up here now, which must be from last night.

Dates: 25th – 27th June, 2010
Location: Ruahine Forest Park, Kawhatau Base Road-end.
People: Amanda, Alistair, Richard and me.
Huts visited: Crow Hut (1 night), McKinnon Hut (0 nights)
Planned route: Up and around the Mokai Patea Ridge, down to Crow Hut for Saturday night. Then up and along the Hikurangi Range over Mangaweka, and out past Purity Hut.
Actual route: Straight to Crow Hut for Saturday night, up along and down to McKinnon Hut, back to the Kawhatau River via the main track, then bashing up to a farm.
[Photos]
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Yesterday was a short day. Camping at Kawhatau Base overnight, we’d hoped to get up over Mokai Patea — an alpine ridge which you know you’re on because it’s a kilometre wide (as Alistair put it) — drop down to Crow Hut and stay a night, then up to the tops and along the Hikurangi Range. Another trampey club group sharing our transport, with a shorter plan in mind (walking into McKinnon Hut and back), was set to drive the van further south later today to collect us. We abandoned our whole plan before it began, looking at the weather and everything. Just rain and rain and rain, not entirely claggy tops but enough to limit visibility to about 5o metres or so. We decided to ditch the idea of the Hikurangis, go straight to Crow Hut, and maybe get up early and around the Mokai Patea Range on the next day, ending up back where we began.

The cable-way was fun. It’s the first time I’ve been in one of them. I don’t think I’d ever want to have to winch myself over, but in a group of 4 we were able to arrange things to (usually) have people winching from both ends. It’s good that it’s there, too, because it makes this a wet weather trip for which we don’t need to worry about the Kawhatau River probably being flooded for the next few days. From there it was a very steep climb of 900 metres to the bush-line, with bits of flax to grasp in the steepest parts and token efforts at steps which seem half-buried, but maybe help to keep the slippery track together. We had a brief cruise over the tops in calm but claggy raining weather — the route is poled. Then we skidded into the bush-line down the slope where every foot placement is an entry in a lottery, as I described earlier.

Alistair and Amanda.

Richard and Amanda at Crow Hut.

And yeah, a big sleep-in. We sat down at lunch time, having just arrived at Crow Hut, needing to decide if we were going to cross the bridge outside the hut and continue to Wakelings Hut on the far side of the Mokai Patea Range. Doing so would mean a marginally shorter climb this morning if the weather cooperated enough for us to go that way, but it’d suck if we had to back-track. There didn’t seem much point, especially with a dodgy forecast and with the knowledge that we were already comfortably sitting in a nice, tidy hut. Amanda started tinkering with the wood burner, and we commenced a lazy afternoon. The mud-toned Kawhatau River that we’d crossed earlier via the cable-way continued its rampage below as the rain came and went. We all slept well yesterday afternoon, and last night.

The Kawhatau River outside Crow.

The bridge outside the hut is interesting. It’s a typical New Zealand swing bridge, but without the mesh down the sides. This seems to be an area that gets less people — we’re the first people who’ve written in the book for a month. The tracks to the hut on either side are bordered by side creeks, which apparently can come up. One person wrote in the book that they’d been trapped behind the creek coming down from the Mokai Patea Range, and had to camp out on the far side.

We awoke at 6.30 this morning, in anticipation that we might just be able to walk out around the Mokai Patea. Alas it was not to be so. Glancing outside, things didn’t seem to different from yesterday. Perhaps worse. We went back to sleep, and for brief moments in between we discussed what we thought the others would be most likely to do based on what we thought they thought we might be doing. Eventually, we got away about 2 hours later, on the assumption that they’d hedge their bets and try to get back around mid-afternoon. We figured we’ll head up the top, and try to meet up with the others as they come from McKinnon. If we see footprints we’ll know, and otherwise we’ll turn the other way to catch them there. And thus we’re now climbing back up out of this slippery hole.

Alistair reaching the snow.

It’s snowy though, as I mentioned. This is the first time in a while I’ve been able to get into nice snow on the tops. It feels almost criminal to tread in the frosty covering to create a muddy foot-print. We stop at the bush-line to put on extra layers. It’s becoming colder with elevation, and I’d rather be fully covered before we start getting buffeted by the wind that’s likely above the bush-line. Further up I’m appreciating it. There’s a light but icy breeze coming from the south, although the temperature’s probably not freezing yet because we’re still getting rain.

We’re at the junction just east of spot-height 1471 at around 10am, and it’s good to have the day’s only significant climb out of the way. The tussock’s covered in ice, the poles of the poled route up here are wind-swept with ice, the ground’s covered in snow, and there are no footprints. They must be sleeping in, which isn’t a surprise since for all they know we might not be out until 4.30pm if we were to get all the way around the loop. There’s no point heading down just yet because we don’t have a key to the van, so we set off towards McKinnon Hut, expecting to see them coming towards us soon.

Drizzle drizzle. It’s still foggy but we can see far enough to pick out one or two poles ahead in the route, so nobody’s too bent on navigating. The route climbs up to a large tarn, or maybe a lake, which is frozen over and might have looked very photogenic if there were some more sunshine. It’s not to be. Then we climb further up a gentle gradient towards spot-height 1625. We’re becoming concerned now, because we certainly should have seen them unless they were backing themselves to get out really fast. Still no footprints, until we arrive at the iced-over signpost 20 minutes above McKinnon Hut. There have clearly been a group of people here this morning. They stood around and regrouped, and then went… towards the Hikurangi Range and Mangaweka!

Eh?

Alistair dropping to McKinnon.

Maybe they’ve just headed out to bag Hikurangi Peak, or something like that, and will be back any moment. Amanda suggests that a couple of us should drop down to the hut to check things out, for which Alistair and I volunteer. Amanda and Richard stay up the top, in case the others return. And it’s down again, into the slush. Every few steps I slip and slide sending a big splash of snowy mud ahead of me. My raincoat’s about to have a date with the washing machine, and so are my mittens. They’re sopping and they’re muddy, but they’re keeping off the wind-chill despite my numb fingers underneath. Glancing behind it looks as if Alistair’s having similar issues. We’re getting snowed on now, it’s getting colder. We get to McKinnon in about 15 minutes, a wonderful little hut on the edge of the bush-line, now surrounded by snow.

McKinnon Hut.

It’s empty.

Checking the book. Yes, they’ve been here. Yes, the person who wrote it forgot to write their own name. Yes they were here last night. Yes they’ve left for the morning. Yes, the cable-way pulley is broken. Yes, the cable-way pulley is broken. Yes, the cable-way pulley is broken. Yes, the cable-way pulley is broken. Yes, the cable-way pull… Um, Alistair?

Yeah? Says Alistair. He’s busy putting on another thermal layer.

The cable-way pulley is broken.

What? Oww crap, we’ve got a long day ahead of us now. Alistair says something like this at about the same time that I’m thinking it. Maybe he’s using more colourful language. It’s one of those times when things spin around in my head for moment.

What the hell are we going to do now? They’ve written in the book, and I quote verbatim as best as I can read it: “Pully on cableway broken, take alternate route. Gryzoned End? Try nav to pt 1625, pt 1471, then northern spur to farmland. May if Wx bad take main track, poss try to cross river sth of pt 854.” Er, slight problem. I quickly find a map and try to figure out what they’re doing. It makes no sense. 1625 is the signpost where Amanda and Richard are presently waiting, 1471 is the junction leading down to Crow Hut, and the northern spur would take them direct to Crow Hut by the way we came up. This is not what their footprints indicated, and we certainly didn’t see them on our way here. Enough of this, we’ll figure it out later. Meanwhile we have to get back up to Amanda and Richard and figure out what to do next. The cable-way pulley is broken. Maybe we can get there and discover they’re wrong, but in the back of my mind it seems very doubtful the river’s going down any time soon, within the next few days, given the saturation in the soil. Maybe we’ll be camping out.

With some speedy thinking between the two of us there’s no way we want to try and navigate off the tops in the Ruahines without advance knowledge of where we’re going or a lot of time and good weather on our hands, of which today is not. The range is surrounded by a giant ring of leatherwood, which can slow you to a 100 metre and hour crawl, or worse, if you get stuck in an un-cut section. I note in the book that we’ve passed through, and state for the record that we’re going back to the cable-way, and if necessary we’ll camp out and wait for the river to drop. On the off chance that the others get out some other way, we’ll at least be able to wave to them since the cable-way is practically next to the road. This is probably what we’ll do. Maybe we’ll discover a crossing point.

So what else can we do? Alistair and I struggle up another slippery slope towards where Amanda and Richard wait for us. Maybe we can drop back to Crow for another night and hope the weather’s good enough to get out over Mokai Patea tomorrow. That wouldn’t be ideal because it’ll need a lot of food for the extra energy, and we’re only really stocked with the intent of a short weekend trip. Amanda’s at the top — she and Richard have been walking back and forth to try and keep warm for the last 40 minutes, and experimented with following their tracks to try and get a better idea of where they went.

THE CABLE-WAY’S BROKEN!

What?? She can’t hear me, so I give up and just keep walking towards her.

We take a guess that the others might have been trying to go out over the Hikurangi Range, despite what was written in the book, which would put them at the wrong road (Putaru, below Purity Hut) if they got out, but at least they’d be out if they got there. Or perhaps they meant to write 1468 instead of 1471, which is a spot-height on a neighbouring ridge, and would actually put them on a farm. We’re confused. For us it’s getting near mid-day, and being the middle of winter we only have about 5 hours of light left. What to do. Well, we start by back-tracking. We’ll probably do exactly what we wrote in the book. I pull out a phone to see if there’s reception, but there isn’t. We’ll need to try and get a message out if we can, to tell our contact what’s going on. We’ll try again at the point above Crow Hut.

I took this to figure out what was wrong
with my balaclava, but it didn’t help.
Not a bad portrait, though.

This day is quickly becoming more depressing, and the weather’s changing to match. It’s not a gale, but there’s an icy blast coming from the south-west. The southerly’s coming in. My balaclava’s full up, but it’s not sitting quite right and every so often I suck it into my mouth accidentally and suddenly can’t get any air until I tear it off with my hand. We can still see, and we can mostly follow our earlier tracks, but we’re trudging through the mud. It’s about 12.20pm when we reach the junction above Crow Hut, and fluttering in the wind is a plastic back tied to the sign. It’s a note.

The day is becoming even more confusing. Have they passed by here? That doesn’t seem possible, because we still only see our own footprints and they couldn’t have gotten over here from where they’d gone without some mammoth and ridiculous navigation effort down to a creek and up again. In the end we decide that the note must have always been here, but somehow this morning we looked through it in our enthusiasm to catch up with the others. The note confirms things. They’re aiming to navigate down the spur that heads north-west above the true left of Rocky Creek. This would drop them into a farm which they must be hoping to walk through to get to a road bridge off Smith’s Road much further down.

Amanda, defiantly removing a glove to be able to use her phone, manages to get a text message out to Jackie back in Wellington, or Sydney where she was once before, or wherever in the world she might be. It doesn’t really matter as long as she’s contactable. In the message, we tell Jackie the cable-way’s broken and we might be camping to wait for the river to go down. We continue back-tracking. I’d dropped my pack for a minute as we stood around, but picked it up again quickly because the wind-chill was coming right through the back of my soaking raincoat. That’s Gore-Tex for you. I like being on the tops and I like being in the snow, but right now I’m just looking forward to getting back into the tress. The snow’s horizontal and it’s biting the side of my face. Shelter will be nice.

Further along the ridge Amanda’s phone beeps. We’ve heard back from Jackie to say she’s received the message, and if she doesn’t hear otherwise she’ll assume we’re camping, and let various people know we’ll be late out. Some time after 1pm we finally reach trees, and can drop lower and out of the wind. Amanda has a go at contacting Dirk, in the other group, and eventually gets through with a text message. Dirk sends back a message saying something like “others are at 1200 metres and it sounds a bit hard”.

Amanda and Richard on
the way down.

Another confusing message, not so much hearing that they were having problems at 1200 metres… about where there could be a leatherwood and dracophyllum jungle… but the fact that he said the “others” were at 1200 metres. With some further exchanges and the application of logic, we deduce that Dirk isn’t with them at all, but is actually roaming up and down the road because he never got across the cable-way. We continue further down, and receive news that he’s talked to the farmers below the spur the other group are coming down, and also called the Police and spoken to a Search & Rescue coordinator, presumably not because of any immediate danger, but because it sounded as if there might be a chance the other group could end up stuck somewhere awkward. Fair enough. Search and Rescue should be brought in early so that they can make decisions on whether anything needs to be done or precautions taken. We later hear from Dirk that he was asked the standard 500 questions about the group’s experience and capabilities and gear so they’d be able to tick all the template boxes for their risk assessment, hopefully determining that there’s no imminent risk. It’s amazing there’s cellphone reception up here at all! You can never rely on cellphones.

By now I’m resigned to camping out and missing work tomorrow, quite possibly Tuesday. I wonder if we’ll get a chance to try and build a camp-fire in the rain. That’d be interesting, but only if it actually works. If it didn’t work it’d be depressing. As we continue downwards, we get views of the muddy brown squiggles of the flooded Kawhatau River to our right and begin trying to pick out places where it might be crossable. It doesn’t look any better. On the other hand, we get a view of the farm-land to our left, on the far side of Rocky Creek. Alistair’s behind me, and he’s inspired. If we could get off the main track, and somehow to the base of Rocky Creek (another muddy brown gutter that’s flowing into the main river), then maybe we could cross the creek and figure out a way up to the farm-land, much of which overhangs a bluff above the main river. It sounds like a possible option, and we still have a few hours of daylight left.

Busted! (Look closely at
where the cable goes.)

Finally reaching the bottom of the spur at half-two, after a controlled slippery slide through the flax, we can see the extent of the damage on the cable-way. It’s still there, which is a relief. It didn’t collapse with anyone in it, and if that’d happened you’d assume the others would have set off an emergency beacon rather than continue on their weekend tramp. On the other hand, it certainly wasn’t anything we could fix, either. The drive cable, which fits over the large pulley wheel, has sliced right into the groove of the wheel so that it now hung around the spokes. They’ve left a plastic bag on the end with a note warning people not to use it, in case it wasn’t obvious, and wrapped a bunch of chains around the end to fully cripple it. The cart that hangs underneath is at the far end, and we later find out that although in its crippled state and with Dirk on the other side, they’d had to write a note and force it over to Dirk so he knew what was going on. The distance is too far to shout clearly over the flooded river below.

Well that sucks. My unlikely back-of-the-mind fantasy that they’d been grossly incompetent when they assessed the damage, and had only thought the cable-way was broken, was not to be. We’re still stuck.

Amanda, Alistair and Richard.

Plan B is to drop down to the river, and survey it for any possible crossing points. This doesn’t seem likely either, but we have to look. A hundred metres down-river, there’s an island in the middle that we think we could get to, but there’s little point because the far side of the island just has a much more forceful flow, plus a steep bank that we’d have to be clambering out of, and a possibly un-climbable bluff to climb up to get back to the road afterwards. Plan C is more inviting, though less instant. We follow the main river around looking for Rocky Creek, eventually having to clamber up an old land-slip to get over a hump, push through lots of stubborn scrub and drop into the creek. The creek is running muddy, but turns out to be completely crossable. We cross in pairs, now finding ourselves at the base of a short 100 metre climb to a flattening plateau, which would be the farm-land. This could take some time.

And it does take time, because the spur’s very overgrown. Amanda’s leading up the front, basically forging a path through all kinds of yucky stuff. There also the occasional sprinkling of Onga-Onga (aka Stinging Nettle) hidden amongst it all. We stop for a few minutes some way up grabbing a bite to eat, Amanda remembering we haven’t had any proper lunch and by now it’s mid-afternoon. As time goes on and we force our way higher, the bush gives way to some more exposed bluff-like clay faces, which we’re lucky enough to be able to find a way to clamber up after Richard figures it out. Finally we spot some possum carcasses, which look suspiciously as if they’ve been thrown overboard. Sure enough, there’s just one more some-what awkward clamber up an over-hanging tree root, and we’re on the outside of a fence made of number 8 wire!

Not a proud moment, but one I’m resigned
to accept in the circumstances.

This is such a great feeling. Hopefully the scatterings of what we’ve heard of Dirk talking to the farmers gives us some kind of informal permission to walk over their land. I don’t care if it gets dark now, I could walk over farm-land for ages, because being here means that getting out is under our control once again. Amanda checks her phone and actually has reception, so she sends a message to Dirk to let him know we’re coming through here. We have no idea if he’s received it, though. And we walk. And looking to the road on the far side of the gorge, we see the van sail back towards the Kawhatau Base road-end. Dirk can’t have received our message, and he must be going back to check if we’ve shown up at the end of the cable-way. And we keep walking.

An hour, about five kilometres, a flock of cows, several sheep, a curious horse, a pig, and a herd of excitable farm dogs later, we arrive at the farm-house and knock on the door. The sun’s low and we’re just reaching the hours of darkness, and these guys have had mis-placed trampers coming out of their ears all day. Well, Dirk and 6 other people at least. They’re very well tempered and accepting about it. The others were doing better than we thought they were, having made it down about half an hour earlier. Dirk had even managed to convince the guy to drive to the back of the farm and give them a lift. It was very nice of them. The guy’s wife pokes him and says he should give us a ride too, and very soon Richard and Amanda are crunched in the front of the ute. Four packs, Alistair, and I sit on the back with the dog, and we’re screaming down the road back to the camp-site. You can tell when you’re being driven around the back-roads by a local. The guy leans out the window as we’re passing through one of the gates, shouting to someone that they found the lost trampers.

Awesome. We hadn’t realised we’d walked this far in the last hour. The van’s at the end of the road, and they’re very happy to see us. (It means they can go home!) A couple of them have wandered down to the cable-way trying to see if we’re there, and they’ve been concerned that we’ve not yet arrived, but they come back within a couple of minutes. Now it’s just a mess getting out of all this saturated gear — we’re all still in the full storm gear that we’ve not removed since the snow on the tops.

As time goes on we find that Dirk stayed the night in Mangaweka with some students at the outdoor education centre, and it was very nice of them to put him up. Apparently they’re strategy board game and role-playing enthusiasts, and overnight they taught Dirk to play Dungeons & Dragons, or something like that. Very cool. Looking at what we did in the weekend, we didn’t seem to go that far — about 25 kilometres in all, but with an awful lot of steep climbing and descending. Apart from the farm-land, I figure we were on an average of about a 1/4 gradient for nearly the entire weekend. On the map it was like a giant three point turn with a wonky end. It was great weekend for decision making.

It was very nice for Dirk to stick around and keep track of everything, and make sure we could get out over a farm with some kind of notification. A few other people might be rather turned off if they’d organised a weekend tramp for seven people, then lost them all after the first twenty minutes. He was still helping out though, just from the other end.

It’s late, and we stop at Bulls to discover that the re-opened fish & chip shop there is actually really good. The sky’s fairly clear outside during the drive home. Which reminds me — I completely forgot to stick my head outside Crow Hut at 11pm last night and look for the partial lunar eclipse. I guess the southerly’s passed through, and tomorrow could be a nice day on the tops. Perhaps even a good day to walk along the Mokai Patea range. Next time, though. These things happen. The van’s noisy. One way or another everyone had a rewarding time, and everyone has their story to tell tonight. This was mine.

Rain and rain and rain.

Things began with an idea of a weekend expedition over the Tararua tops to Tarn Ridge Hut. Somehow, even with the weather cooperating for such an idea, things didn’t quite work out that way. It was the opposite, and we spent the majority of our time navigating off-track below the bush line.

Dates: 7th – 9th May, 2010
Location: Tararua Forest Park, Kiriwhakapapa Road-end.
People: Illona, Richard and me.
Huts visited: Blue Range Hut (1 night), Mitre Flats Hut (0 nights), Mid King Biv (1 night)
Planned route: Up to Blue Range Hut for Friday night, over to Cow Creek, navigate up to Table Ridge, along around Mitre and Girdlestone, and to Tarn Ridge Hut for Saturday night. Down over Mitre, then up Donald Spur and past Blue Range Hut back down to the road.
Actual route: Up to Blue Range Hut for Friday night, over Te Mara and down Donald Spur to Mitre Flats, then up to Mid King Biv for Saturday night. Back to Mitre Flats, up onto Blue Range near Stoney Creek, along to Bruce Hill and down a spur to the south-east to the old bush tram track that leads back to the road.
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Originally there were going to be four of us, but Paul unfortunately had to drop out with a foot problem, which left Richard, Illona and Myself. We stopped for a Friday night dinner at Carterton, which has a fabulous kebab shop, then continued to the Kiriwhakapapa road-end. Along the way we discussed the original plan, which would have been to walk from Kiriwhakapapa to Cow Creek, up to Table Ridge, along to Girdlestone, and then on to Tarn Ridge Hut… then come down over Mitre and up Donald Spur (a more direct way back to Blue Range Hut) on Sunday. The more we thought about it, the more that this idea seemed to be skimming the edges of available daylight at this time of year. Consequently, we thought we might try doing it in reverse instead, which would make Saturday the longer day.

The Tararua Main Range
under a blanket of cloud.

By about a quarter past eight, we’d begun our walk up to Blue Range Hut, eventually to arrive at about 10pm. The solar powered lights are back, which is nice, given they’d vanished last time I visited — perhaps they were just out for maintenance.

With a long day in mind for Saturday, we were up about 6.30am, and out the door at a quarter past seven to walk past morning views of a sliver of cloud sitting on top of the Tararua Main Range. Our 7.15am departure might have allowed enough time for our day’s plan, except that we had more trouble than anticipated in finding the top of Donald Spur — the spur to the north of Donald Stream that heads west of Te Mara (1104), and a known short-cut down to the Waingawa River and Mitre Flats. The informal route up to Te Mara is marked off the main track up from Blue Range Hut with a ribbon tied to a tree branch, but after this we muddled around for some time, and possibly wasted about an hour in confirming we were actually walking down the right thing.

Illona near the top of Donald Spur.

The delay wasn’t too bad in essence. All three of us have done reasonable amounts of off-track navigation, but none had been in a proper position of responsibility. I think the experience helped to boost everyone’s confidence because we all knew that decisions we made would actually have consequences. We did eventually find the top of Donald Spur, having back-tracked to Te Mara peak, which we’d originally sidled around (trying to be smart). Then we just trusted the bearing to let us sidle up the side, making sure the terrain around us matched what was expected, and eventually confirming with the GPS just to be sure we were correct about our assumptions. Once on Donald Spur things were fairly easy going, although there was more tree-fall than I would have expected given how often I’ve heard it’s used. The tree-fall might be left-over from a storm a year or three back, and maybe not completely cleared out.

Tree-fall on Donald Spur.

Richard crossing the Waingawa.

Donald Spur drops into Donald Stream, a couple of hundred metres in from the Waingawa River. We reached the Waingawa at about 11.20am, which is probably about an hour and forty minutes after we’d become confident we were near the top of the right spur. After a five minute stop for a snack, we crossed the Waingawa (which was running very low) and carried on for a little over an hour along the main track towards Mitre Flats from the direction of Cow Creek. By now we were really starting to realise that we’d need to hoof it if we were going to get up Mitre, around Girdlestone and on to Tarn Ridge Hut before dark. It isn’t a terribly nice track. incidentally. Very muddy in a few places, and also just one of those tracks that weaves around the inside of little gullies, involves clambering over logs, and other annoying little things that make it slightly slower than might otherwise appear. The LINZ map data also doesn’t clearly indicate that much of this track also sidles fairly high above the Waingawa. (To be fair, however, it possibly does show the track on the appropriate side of the contour lines if you look closely enough.)

Arriving at Mitre Flats.

It was lunch time, about half twelve, as we walked into Mitre Flats. Very coincidentally, within a minute of us walking up, two guys arrived from the direction of the Pines — it turned out to be Adrian and Robert, both of whom we knew. It’s a small country, I guess. They’d camped at Kiriwhakapapa last night (apparently turning up after we left, and they’d seen our car), then driven back to The Pines entrance, and were now on their way to walk to Cow Creek Hut and eventually meet up with the car they’d left at Kiriwhakapapa. As for ourselves, we were beginning to have doubts about whether we still wanted to go all the way up to Tarn Ridge. With a little over four hours of reasonable daylight remaining after we’d finished lunch, standard metrics suggested it could take us about 3.5 hours just for the 1100 metre climb up to Mitre, before carrying on around Girdlestone. The area wasn’t familiar to any of us, and if we were lucky we’d be walking up to Tarn Ridge Hut with torches on the edge of darkness. To add to this, we were having some doubts about the length of time it might take to navigate down to Cow Creek Hut on Sunday, especially if we ran into similar problems as that morning, and once we finally did get down we’d have at least another four hour walk ahead of us.

Illona had a rather good idea, though, of going up for a look at Mid King Biv. It hadn’t been obvious at first, because Mitre Flats is one of those areas that’s on the edge of all the maps. Once we were looking at the correct maps, however, and had some time to absorb the idea, it looked feasible and interesting. Mid King Biv is named after Middle King Peak (1521) underneath which it sits. It’s sheltered just below the bush-line and accessible from the tops, but (it turns out) is also very accessible from a spur that leads up from the confluence between Baldy Creek and South Mitre Stream — just south of Mitre Flats Hut. With this in mind, we wrote some notes in the Mitre Flats hut book about our adjusted plans, convinced Adrian and Robert to leave a note on the car after they walked out, and (eventually) Illona would send out a text message to inform our emergency contact. With the new plan, we wouldn’t be able to walk out the original route, either, so we made alternative plans to come back to Mitre Flats the following day, and find another off-track route over Blue Range.

Studying maps around
South Mitre Stream.

At 1.30pm we began walking straight up the South Mitre Stream, beginning from the small bridge that leads towards Atiwhakatu Hut, but we soon found an easier ground-trail on the true right. After a small (but obvious) creek shown on the map, there’s an informal marker tied to a tree about 5 metres up Baldy Creek from the confluence. Inside the trees, it’s a short hop up a slope, then a cairn. After this, although we continued to have maps and compasses out for most of the climb, things are relatively easy heading up the spur on what is often a well-defined ground trail. We decided it was probably safer to stick with the ground trail when we could, as long as it didn’t suddenly veer away, since it looked as if the contour lines get rather close in a couple of places. At a high enough point, Illona was able to get out a text message to indicate our adjusted plans.

Things gets tangly nearer the height of Mid King Biv, above about 1000 metres. Apparently Mid King Biv was quite difficult to find until very recently, but it’s now quite well marked off the main route along the spur since a couple of years ago. At first we reached a point where we could stick our heads out on the Baldy Creek side of the spur, and noticed a couple of cairns, but they might have indicated an older track or a less common route around that side. After pushing around a lot, Illona spotted one of those giant orange Department of Conservation triangles up ahead, and we found it much easier to reach by going back under the trees and continuing to bash our way through. The triangle primarily indicates where a short, DOC-marked track leads off to the Biv, which is obscured just below the bush line and not very visible from far away. It’s also necessary (or at least sane) to follow this route a short distance to continue going up, since otherwise there’s no obvious way straight ahead.

Turning off the spur to Mid King Biv.

Mid King Biv.

We reached Mid King Biv at about 4.30pm, and it’s cute. We filled a handy bucket from the stream behind the biv. There’s a good space for camping out front, and a nice fire pit in an area that would be sheltered from the wind coming over the ridge. The biv itself is basically just a box, with 2 mattresses — one of which sits on a platform about 20 cm above the floor. I lifted the lid of the platform to find a scummy old billy, and a few sheets of broken glass that looked as if they might once have been in the small solitary window on the end opposite the door. The hut book’s very cool. It dates back to 1999, and is probably only about 20% full. It looked as if someone might visit every month or two, although some people certainly don’t write in the book. The person who’d come down from here and written in the Mitre Flats book the day before certainly hadn’t.

It also makes some of the bureaucracy that surrounds back-country recreation fairly obvious. When a hut is so small and remote, the three required signs that cover DoC’s perceived legal liabilities really stand out. On opening the one and only door of the biv, we were greeted with a proportionally large FIRE EXIT sign, which mostly overlapped the standard DoC “environmental care code” sign to make it look as if the environmental care code ends where the FIRE EXIT is. Below the two of them was the giant sign stating “DANGER — Only use your gas stove in ventilated parts of the hut!”, never minding that there aren’t any unless you have your stove running in the middle of the fire exit. Completing the lower section of the door was the regular sign to say “WARNING — the water we provide here is probably okay!”. Incidentally, the water is provided by the Department of Conservation’s well-engineered and very natural looking stream behind the biv that’s a tributary to Baldy Creek down below. All of these signs are spaced on the door of a box in which it’s not possible to stand up straight.

The base temperature on Saturday night wasn’t too bad, but there was a lot of wind chill coming over the ridge and down to meet us, which made things uncomfortable when sitting outside to prepare dinner. We spent most of the time wrapped up well to keep off the light but icy breeze. Illona did most of the preparation of Paul’s green curry recipe, which worked nicely, and then produced an interesting dessert based around berries, chocolate, and some weird kind of spongy italian biscuit. Very nice.

Nobody felt like camping. Once the dishes were out of the way, we squeezed into the biv, abandoning the second mattress to lean it against the wall. Richard and I head-to-tailed on thermarests on what remained of the floor. We also briefly made more specific plans for getting out on Sunday. Plan 1 would be to cross the Waingawa opposite Mitre Flats, then attempt to get straight onto Blue Range. Plan 2 would be to find a route up to Lookout Point (on Blue Range) which Richard had come down about a week before. Plan 3, if the first 2 failed, would be to go back up Donald Spur to Te Mara, and down past Blue Range Hut. If we were really in trouble, plan 4 would result in a long and tedious day following the main track out to Cow Creek, then up past Blue Range Hut.

As we extinguished our torches and darkness enveloped the interior of the tiny box, I noticed for the first time that those Department of Conservation FIRE EXIT signs glow in the dark! For the entire night, every time I opened my eyes to what might otherwise be total blackness, I could bathe in the warm glow of the FIRE EXIT merely 2 metres from my face. It continued to glow just as clearly at 6am.

Departing under the
Main Range.

On Sunday morning, we were once again up at 6.30am, but this time things took a little longer to arrange and we weren’t away until an hour later. Following the initial part of the track that sidles around the main range ridge from the biv and back to the spur, we initially began to follow it upwards by accident towards the main range, but soon noticed our mistake and headed back into the trees to where we’d come. We mostly followed the ground trail to get down, although we probably relied on maps and compasses more frequently than on the way up. The spur broadens in a couple of places which resulted in a few minutes here and there of searching around to find the optimal way down without going too far from our bearing.

Baldy Creek as it meets
South Mitre Stream.

It was 9.20am when we reached the confluence of South Mitre Stream and Baldy Creek, and 30 minutes later, after some shuffling around on the edge of the stream trying to figure out just how far the ground trail on the true right went, we were back at Mitre Flats Hut to note in the book that we’d passed through again. After this we backtracked to the main bridge over the Waingawa, and quickly found our route up to Blue Range.

The proper spur that we’d had in mind starts at Stoney Creek and heads a little north of east, but we didn’t follow that far because there’s an informal track that begins from behind a big obvious sign. In one direction the sign points towards Mitre Flats, in the other direction it points towards the road (The Pines). At first glance it seems fairly pointless having this sign at all, given that it only offers a backwards and forwards option, and most people probably want to go to wherever they didn’t come from. On closer inspection, it probably exists because directly behind the sign, a third informal ground trail climbs the hill and it stands out very well. I think this is what remains of the track to the old Mitre Flats bridge, which was further along the river, and we even saw an old orange marker some way along it. Apparently there’s also an unmaintained and rougher track along the river, so there may be some connection.

In any case, we followed this ground trail for a few minutes looking for an obvious route up the hill, based on vague memories I had of doing something similar about three years ago. The trail mostly runs parallel above the river, but we spotted a few options for heading up-wards and soon decided on one roughly opposite the hut, just north of the top of a slip, at least as we discerned later once we’d figured out what spur we were on. This took us up a small bubble of a spur heading south-east, almost at right angles to the main spur, and briefly well defined at about the 500 metre contour. There was even an occasional axe-blaze chunk taken out of the odd tree, and we figured that as we couldn’t possibly go past the initially planned spur (one would think) we may as well follow it, and they eventually met nearer the top. After a brief sit-down followed by a little extra climbing, we found ourselves on the southern-most of the two nearby spot-heights at 865 metres. It was nice to be on Blue Range.

The main Blue Range ridge has a ground trail along much of it which, if you don’t mind sharp Totara branches regularly slapping you in the knees, and occasionally face, is superior in many ways to some of the more official tracks around the Tararuas. (The one I mentioned earlier near Mitre Flats comes to mind.) We pushed north along the range towards Bruce Hill (975), taking guesses every so often at where we were, and confirming with the GPS once we’d placed our bets. The range veers to the north-east as it nears Lookout Point (725), which we didn’t visit because it’s off to one side but which is reportedly not a very impressive lookout point, but is the top of another common route down to the Waingawa River. Very soon after Lookout Point, the going became much tougher and more overgrown. It was still very doable and there’s still a ground trail, but things were certainly slower. After a kilometre of bashing and climbing, we arrived at a small plateau just south of Bruce Hill to stop for a snack, maybe ten minutes before 1pm.

From here we’d had an approximate idea to navigate down a wonky spur to the east, then south-east, into Mikimiki Stream, and I hopped up to the top of Bruce Hill, about 100 metres north, to calibrate the altimeter. We debated for a little while about exactly where to go to find our east-ward spur. I managed to confuse myself because there’s a very well defined, and marked, ground trail that heads south-east off the plateau, which I thought might twist eastwards soon after it left. I think Illona had it most correct when she suggested we’d need to simply push eastwards off the plateau and follow a bearing, even though it wasn’t very well defined at a first impression. In the end, we looked at the time of day and considered there were only a few hours of daylight remaining, and followed the markers, leaving at about 1.10pm or thereabouts.

It quickly became obvious that the markers were leading us straight south-west down a spur towards spot-height 535 and onto the same old tram-line track we’d have been aiming for anyway, albeit a few kilometres further from our destination. We knew from past ventures, however, that the tram track was very fast, and figured we may as well just hit it further back, possibly adding half an hour or an hour to what we might have otherwise had to walk out. It’s actually a really well defined and easy to walk hunters’ trail down that spur. It’s marked frequently with blue milk bottle caps and white plastic covered in reflective tape, and even hops out onto rocky knolls between the dracophyllum for short stints, affording some nice views of the surroundings both out towards the Wairarapa, and in towards the Main Range. Overall it’s far superior in quality to many official tracks, and we hit the main track a little before 3pm. Not too long after, about 4.15pm or so, we stepped back out to Kiriwhakapapa Shelter where we’d left the car.

What a great weekend. As places go, the Blue Range in the Tararuas isn’t a bad place to get lost. There’s not a lot to fall off, there are plenty of spurs going to interesting places, and it’s on the side of the range more sheltered from the rain coming off the sea to the west, which among other things makes it just a little easier to push through the bush, and probably to find a reasonable campsite if necessary.

It’s strange that our initial plan had involved little if any navigation, because I think this is perhaps one of the most worthwhile navigation trips I’ve had so far. All three of us had done some off-track stuff in the past, but none of us was too confident beforehand. Realising that we were all about equal with navigation skills, I think, helped us all to take the responsibility more seriously and it was a good confidence booster. As Illona pointed out, we each tended to look at similar problems in different ways, and it helped to learn from each other without immediately having to feel as if one person was more of an expert and authoritative over anyone else. I’m hoping I have an opportunity to get out on a similar trip again some time.

Even if the appeal is turned down, the Minister of Conservation (Kate Wilkinson) still has to finally approve Meridian’s plans to dam the river because it happens to be on conservation land, and she would have to do so in the face of her main advising department giving strong advice about how bad-an-idea they think it is. On the other hand, Kate Wilkinson ordered a review into the advocacy role of her department a couple of months ago.

Anyway, enough of this, politics is boring. I’m going tramping this weekend, or possibly swimming depending on how things go.

Recent proposals by the current government to open up parts of schedule 4 land is is largely with mining interests in mind, and it probably has something to do with the spike in certain mineral values, such as Gold, in the last few years. It seems likely that such mining will actually go ahead sooner or later if certain targeted land is removed from Schedule 4. A variety of conservation, recreation and political groups (notably Forest and Bird, and Federated Mountain Clubs — the latter of which represents most tramping and outdoor clubs in New Zealand) have come out very strongly against the proposal, centred around a campaign titled 2precious2mine.

A Forest & Bird bus stop advertisement, corner
of Bowen Street and The Terrace (Wellington).

The Ministry of Economic Development is driving the push to open up parts of schedule 4, and (eventually) released a discussion paper after months of unclear speculation about exactly what was being considered. Public submissions on the document close at 5pm on Tuesday 4th May Wednesday 26th May (Update 13-5-2010: It’s been extended). Despite my feelings that a submission from myself would not make a real difference, I figured I’d feel much worse if I did nothing. At the very least, I suppose I can contribute to the count of people who cared enough about it add to the flood, and collectively that might help to demonstrate something. I visited the Submissions Page earlier this evening and made an online submission, which I’ve included the text of below.

If you feel strongly about Schedule 4 (even if you disagree with me), please go and make your own submission, even if it’s just a short one. It’s not too difficult, and don’t feel compelled to stick to the structure that the Ministry of Economic Development is trying to encourage if it doesn’t fit what you want to say.

I structured my submission to the Ministry’s web form, but didn’t bother to answer a few of the questions (such as the one asking what sort of stock-take information it’d be useful for the government to collect on behalf of mining companies). I’ve thrown this response together more or less on a whim, and it may not be the same as it might have been if I’d sat on it for a few days. It wasn’t the sort of thing I wanted hanging around in my head, though.

Q1 On the areas proposed for removal from Schedule 4: Section 7 of the discussion paper sets out the areas proposed for removal from Schedule 4. Do you think these areas should be removed from Schedule 4 so that applications for exploration and mining activity can be considered on a case-by-case basis? Yes or No? And why? (Your response may be in relation to any one or more of the areas discussed. Please clearly identify the area(s) to which your response relates.)

My response: Doubtless there will be many submissions that cover the specific conservation values of the specific areas being proposed for removal. I’m not well qualified to comment on specific conservation values, and could only repeat what’s already likely to be said.

What concerns me is that areas should be able to be removed from Schedule 4 at all. Schedule 4 was designed to rule out mineral exploration applications in certain places specifically because those places were deemed important to conservation values. Land should not be allowed to be removed without extraordinary cause and without very credible arguments as to why the original decision to include them in Schedule 4 is no longer relevant.

The question of mining potential of land in schedule 4 should not be a consideration, unless mining operators can prove they will have zero significant impact on the values for which an area was included, and any additional values that have become relevant or known since it was included.

Q2 On the areas proposed for addition to Schedule 4: Section 8 of the discussion paper sets out the areas proposed for addition to Schedule 4. Do you agree with the proposal to add these areas to Schedule 4? Yes or No? And why? (Your response may be in relation to any one or more of the areas discussed. Please clearly identify the area(s) to which your response relates.)

My response: I’m sure the proposed areas can be considered on their merits using the same standards that have been used previously, and I think this is what should happen.

My only comment here is that new additions should not be considered an exchange for areas being removed. Areas should be added on their merits, and only removed in extraordinary cases if their respective conservation values change such that those merits are no longer relevant.

Q3 On the assessment of areas: The assessment of areas covered by Schedule 4 and those proposed for addition is outlined in sections 7 and 8 of this document and Appendices 1 and 2.

(a) What are your views on the assessment of the various values (conservation, cultural, tourism and recreation, mineral, other) of the land areas discussed?

My response: I’m concerned about the numerical values being considered with respect to the value of minerals.

The discussion document makes frequent mention of possible mineral volumes, but habitually states monetary values either “at today’s prices” (sections 7.1, 7.2 and 7.3) or similar (section 2.2). Despite pointing out that several years will pass before significant amounts of minerals can be extracted, the document does not make clear, or even appear to acknowledge, that mineral prices fluctuate by large amounts on the international market over long periods of time, and that “today’s prices” happen to be at an all time high that will probably not persist. The 2010 price for gold is roughly 4 times the value of gold between 1998 and 2002, and about 3 times the value of gold through most of the 1980s and until the late 1990s.

Presumably the recent spike in mineral values is why there’s a sudden interest in accessing what minerals might be inaccessible due to schedule 4, but I think great care and consideration needs to be taken to consider if the relevant minerals will retain this value, or anything remotely near it, during the amount of time it will take to extract and sell them.

Q5 On a new contestable conservation fund: Section 9 describes a proposed contestable conservation fund the Government proposes to establish, which would be made up of a percentage of the money the Crown receives from minerals (except petroleum) from public conservation areas.

(a) A broad objective, to enhance conservation outcomes for New Zealand, is proposed for the fund. Do you agree with the proposed objective?

My response: Not in principle. Having such a fund for conservation is better than not having such a fund, however:

The disturbing and contradicting thing I see about this fund is that it’s an acknowledgement that conservation values *are* being compromised by mining, and these conservation values are the ones currently protected by schedule 4 for specific reasons. If the funding of conservation efforts elsewhere are worth the loss of conservation values protected by schedule 4, then surely those efforts should already be being treated with very high regard already, and be getting sufficient funding from other sources.

The assertion in the discussion document that such a fund will not impact on money that DOC receives for its conservation work seems confusing. DOC will receive money based on what it’s applied for according to what it believes is necessary, and these necessities will be adjusted or re-prioritised accordingly (possibly resulting on less money being allocated) if another organisation or voluntary efforts are already using the fund to carry out work that DOC would otherwise be doing. Ultimately it’s completely possible that DOC will get less money for conservation work, and the combined amount of money for conservation work (including the contestable fund) will be similar.

(b) What do you think the fund should be used for? What should its priorities be?

My response: Fostering New Zealanders’ understanding of conservation of remote areas beyond scenic beauty in computer desktop wallpapers.

Encouraging and getting New Zealanders outdoors into some of New Zealand’s remote places to experience conservation values, especially from demographics and communities of people who traditionally don’t see them, and to build systems that ensure people remain involved and encourage others in their communities. eg. Recent immigrants with English as a second language who might be interested in visiting the outdoors but not know how to get started, people who are generally restricted to cities due to travel costs, and so on.

ie. Give people an opportunity to appreciate and understand what’s out there, and to be able to enjoy it.

(c) An independent panel appointed by the Minister of Energy and Resources and the Minister of Conservation is proposed to run the fund. Do you think this is a good idea?

It would depend on how open and objective the appointment is, how governed it is by process and qualifications rather than whims, opinions and friends of a Minister, how likely it is that the Ministers would follow that process, and the likeliness that meaningful consequences for Ministers would be imposed if and when this didn’t happen.

(d) It is proposed that half of royalties from public conservation areas are contributed to the fund, with a minimum of $2 million per year for the first four years, and a maximum of $10 million per year. Do you think the amounts proposed for the fund are appropriate?

No. Why should it be restricted to $10 million if it were to go higher? If mining companies are paying that many royalties for extracting minerals, the conservation estate which ultimately pays for it should, in some form, get an even cut.

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.

It ruffled feathers and caused stress for people on both sides early on. Oriwa Ridge is within one of two Remote Wilderness Areas in the Tararuas — special areas set aside to receive little or no development. This is so experienced people really can get into the wilderness without having to run into tracks, huts, helicopters, and too many other people. Despite having been a popular route many decades ago, Oriwa Ridge itself has a reputation (deserved or not) of being a remote ridge to walk along thanks to a famous storm in the 1930s that left behind lots of tree-fall, causing the ridge to be a comparably challenging, but rewarding route for people who enjoy getting out to that sort of place. The Te Araroa Trail proposal would have ploughed a more heavily walked track along the ridge, which contradicts the idea of a remote wilderness zone and (being on the ridge itself) would have made it difficult for people visiting the region to avoid.

When the Department of Conservation eventually requested submissions on the Oriwa Ridge idea back in August, it triggered debate amongst many of the locals who visit the Tararuas. The Te Araroa Trust encouraged its supporters to make submissions in favour of its proposed route. At the same time, however, several of the local tramping clubs approached the Federated Mountain Clubs of New Zealand, which made a strong submission against the proposal.

In some ways it’s a shame that so much time and effort has been spent both by people in the trust, in DOC, and other interested parties, certainly with much stress along the way, to effectively arrive at the conclusion that the initial idea was always the best. I suppose at least it’s been thought through in a lot of detail now, however, and hopefully everyone can at least see there’s been reasoned consideration.

Perhaps the last word is that anyone who still wants to walk along Oriwa Ridge, as part of their own Te Araroa route or not, can continue to do so. I’ve never been there, but I intend to see it sooner or later. Unlike many countries, there’s no legal requirement to fill in any forms or pay any admissions, or stay on any marked track. All that’s required is to leave it as you find it, and to be fully responsible for yourself. Once these things are accounted for, Oriwa Ridge and nearly anywhere in New Zealand’s back-country is there to be visited in a relatively un-touched state. It’s one of the beauties of our public estate which I hope I’ll never take for granted.

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.
[Photos]
[Download GPX] [Show map] [Display in new window]

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.

Driving over the hill and down to the coast, it was already clear just how windy it was simply by looking down on the fields and seeing the giant waves of wind racing over the grass-lands below. The unsealed road passes through a couple of farm gates, so if you’re going this way it may be necessary to open the odd gate — the standard New Zealand farm code applies of course, which is to leave the gate as you found it. (ie. Close it if it was closed, and leave it open if it was open.) Some time after 10am on Sunday morning, I parked the car in an intimidatingly strong wind beside the end of the road, and ducked outside finding some ad-hoc shelter under the car to sort out my gaiters. Gaiters probably aren’t needed here as a rule, but I’ve often found them to be very useful around farm-land even when it wasn’t clear they would be. Good footwear is a must, but that’s probably the case anywhere with a significant walk.

The DOC track leads over the ledge
directly above this beach for a short
distance, so I just hopped down.

I watched the family group (mum, dad and a couple of children) leave a couple of minutes ahead of me, clutching coats around their ears to keep the wind off, and followed the along the fence-line for a few minutes, which is marked over the farm by occasional DOC orange triangles. DOC goes to great pains to stress to people that the beach cannot be legally reached from the track, probably because people would otherwise wander over farm-land where they shouldn’t be. The marked track does actually follow directly alongside the beach in places, however, and one such place is within a few minutes of the start, where it heads direct to the beach and routes people outside the farm fences for a while, practically on the beach, before hopping back over the fence to be slightly further in-land. It was during this short stretch on the beach that I overtook the earlier-mentioned family group, and I don’t think they went much further than this because the wind in the air was just so frustratingly and consistently strong.

Wide and windy flats between
the coast and the hills.

Although the rule is to stick to the DOC-marked track and never leave it, I did find the entire thing fairly ambiguous. Having followed the markers over a fenced field from the coast and over a fence, I just lost the markers and didn’t pick them up for ages. At this time I decided to follow the coastal farm road on the assumption that it was probably where I was supposed to be, and my lack of research prior to arriving wasn’t helping. After 10 minutes of this, I started to wonder if I’d missed a critical marker completely, and if I’d been supposed to head up a small spur onto the top of the hills above the coast. During this time I met the only other person I’d see for the entire walk, driving a farm vehicle the other way back towards the public road. He grinned at me as he sped past and I took this as a sign that I wasn’t in a horribly illegal place, but it didn’t help on reaching a farm gate further up the road that was ambiguously un-marked by anything of a DOC nature.

I eventually discovered on the way back that there is a sort of a track, even with occasional markers, that sometimes seems to run parallel with the farm road on the coastal side, at least as best as I can tell. If you find yourself around here and can’t find the nice, legal DOC track, I’d suggest just sticking to the road unless you notice otherwise. Chances are you’re within a few metres of the legal track anyway, and the primary purpose of this restriction is to ensure that people don’t interfere with work or conditions on the farm in unexpected ways, antagonise animals accidentally, fall into holes and sue the Glenburn Station owners, or whatever else might occur as a consequence of people being in unexpected places. Being on the road, at least, is probably the next best way to minimise potential problems if the DOC-marked track isn’t visible. I did venture from the road at least once, which was necessary to find a rock behind which I could hide from the wind while I applied some sunblock. I also replaced my sun-hat with a beanie to protect my ears from the wind blasting, and this was one of the few times that I’ve felt I had to periodically check to see if my beanie hadn’t blown off my head. Several times it came close.

Looking back along the road. It think there’s a legal
DOC track buried somewhere to the right.

There were three gates in total, and it was only shortly before the third gate that I began to notice the occasional pole poking low out of the ground with small broken fragments of orange plastic nailed to them. The second gate, still not clearly marked by anything DOC related, holds a sign saying “Coast”, and it’s after this that the road moves quite close to the coast. As opposed to running about 50-60 metres inland, it’s now a hop, skip and jump of less than about 2-3 metres away. Although DOC states loudly that there’s no legal access to the beach from the DOC track, the road at least gets very close here. As it turns out, parts of the DOC track obviously do reach the coast regardless, because there’s a marker I’d missed in the vicinity of the major seal colony about half way towards Honeycomb Rock, and the seal colony is (of course) on the coast. Generally though, they don’t want people randomly wandering over the farm-land, with good intentions or not, for good reason.

First signs of unusually-eroded rocks.

The third gate, just before Honeycomb Rock, actually does have a small orange triangle marker attached to confirm that it’s still a DOC-managed route. As soon as I opened this I could suddenly smell the stench of the New Zealand Fur Seal, but it I didn’t see the straight away. The rock itself stands out clearly on the coast, and I took a couple of photos. Not have a clue what to expect, or if I’d reached it, however, I thought that perhaps I was supposed to be reaching a much larger cluster of rocks rather than a single rock, so I kept walking for a while.

The third gate, which actually has a marker.

The wind had been blustery and strong all the way, but on turning the corner at the gate it suddenly became much extreme. Occasionally it would be carm, but the stirring of the trees in the distance would always turn into approaching waves of dancing grass, and spray from the waves being thrown in what was surely the wrong direction. There would be about enough time to quickly examine yet another creative variety of four letter words scrolling through my mind before having to rapidly duck to the ground thinking “oh krud, not again”, before it would hit.

The cows didn’t mind.

Moo.

These cows that I mention were the crowd of cattle cautiously eyeing me up, and being careful to stay together in the herd, as cows do, whilst I carefully negotiated my way around them. Soon after this was a shallow and un-bridged stream running into the sea, which I walked through, and a short distance later was another gate that looked even less as if it was designed for casual walkers to pass through. At this time, with the wind battering me, I decided that i really didn’t mind if I’d reached whatever it was I was supposed to be looking at, and I’d turn around now.

Honeycomb Rock, I think.

Having slowly come to the conclusion that perhaps I’d already passed all of the honeycomb, I stopped on the way back for a more proper look at what I later confirmed actually was Honeycomb Rock. A number of grumbling seals were basking near it so I didn’t manage to get too close to the sea (not wanting to disturb them or cause them to feel uneasy by getting between them and the sea), but it’s quite an interesting formation I guess. Not the kind of rock you see every day, unless you live in a place like Glenburn Station I suppose. What I should have done was to look on the southern end of the rock, where there’s supposed to be the wreck of the Tuvalu, “a Fijian trader which ran aground here on its maiden voyage on 11 January 1967″.

Seal guardians at the rock.

I’ve been trying to find out the geological details of Honeycomb Rock, about how it formed and why it’s like it is and such. A quick and lazy search on the web specifically about Honeycomb Rock doesn’t reveal much more than several plagiarised verbatim-lifted-and-uncredited copies of the DOC description that states it’s “a spectacular outcrop on the Wairarapa coast, so named because of the remarkable cell-like weathering pattern which gives the rock a honeycomb appearance.” So far the best reference I’ve found about the general concept is the Wikipedia article about Honeycomb Weathering, which essentially says it’s a reasonably common process on porous rock on horizontal planes in coastal areas. The salt-water settles within the pore spaces in the rock (rather than simply running off), and the salt from the water then crystalises as the water around it evaporates. Because it’s inside the pores, it the crystals eventually start to break seals open as they grow within the rock, and this opens up the rock to other kinds of erosion in a certain way that result in the honeycomb appearance. If I understand it correctly, anyway, but please correct me if you know otherwise. Pretty cool, actually.

More Honeycomb-eroded Rock next
to the beach on the way back.

Now on my way back, I thought I might try to walk on the DOC track that I could see poled one metre to the right of the road, although I stopped from time to time to sit on the beach and have staring contests with seals before the track and road left them behind. It was basically an animal track more than anything else, and when the DOC markers disappeared again (as far as I could tell), it just became several fairly non-distinguished animal tracks roughly between the road and the coast, occasionally converging back to where the road was at places such as gates.

More rock guards.

As I reached the mini-peninsula point that juts out about half way back, I spotted another DOC pole poking out of the ground with a marker on it, and took this as a happy sign that I could legally cross the farm-land, if for no other reason than to get back onto wherever the DOC track was supposed to be, since apparently it wasn’t where I was right at that time. The point of this marker was to provide access to the main fur seal colony, and at this time of year there were quite a few hanging out. I didn’t count, but certainly at least 50, and perhaps triple that if counting the others spread up and down the coast to Honeycomb Rock. I spent a few minutes having another staring contest with a big grunty seal sitting on a rock. Then I turned around and walked back to the road.

The spray tears back into the
sea as the waves come in.

Nearing where I’d parked the car, I finally managed to replace my sun-hat, and the cord that ties it down proved its practicality on several occasions when my hat blew away. The sea was still rolling in with as I approached outside the edge of the farm-land, the wind wisping away any spray well back into the sea, and I stopped for a few photos before reaching the car.

With a roughly 2.5 hour drive each way from Wellington and much of that on unsealed roads (and stopping for things like a very late lunch), I worked out that I was walking from 10.20am to 2.07pm, so a little less than 4 hours of walking — it may be wildly different for different people depending on how much of a hurry any given person or group is in, and the length of time of the staring contests with the local wildlife. It’s roughly similar to the DOC posted time to the “Track End” on the sign at the beginning, whatever that means. The same sign states it’s 3 hours return to Honeycomb Rock, and the online DOC information estimates a far more conservative time of 5 to 6 hours. So I’m still not really sure which rock is which, or how far I was supposed to go — perhaps the three hour “Honeycomb Rock” was the one I saw part way along that was practically on the beach, and the other big one that I thought was Honeycomb Rock was the 4 hour end of the track. Ultimately it doesn’t matter because it was an interesting walk, but I find it frustrating not knowing these details lest I might have missed something interesting.

It’s a photogenic walk on a day like today, especially without too many people around and if you can prepare things to tolerate the wind if it’s present. I was relieved to be able to sit in the car and recover from the wind for a few minutes, but looking back on the photos I took along the way, I feel quite good about where I went.

I’ll dispense with the complete story of our holiday, except to say that Laos is a fantastic place. (Some photos of the whole thing may be found here.) It’s not yet quite so touristy as neighbouring Thailand and Vietnam (having to pay the US$1 going rate to the Vietnamese immigration guy at the land border just so he’d stamp my passport was a disappointing introduction to Vietnam), and Laos has only been generally open to tourists since the 1990s. There’s a project to at least double tourism over the next decade, adapting facilities in to bring in more overseas money. The place will probably change a lot in that time, and I only hope the attraction of the tourist dollar doesn’t cause any more of the country to become like Vang Vieng, which ten years ago was a tiny village but has now turned into a giant pub crawl town aimed at young English-speaking young backpackers who typically go there to get hammered.

Laos has a devastatingly war-torn history through the last few centuries, having been hastily usurped into “French Indochina” in 1893 as part of the race between France and Britain to be first to colonise as much of the world as possible. Not long after the communists finally kicked out the French, Laos became tangled in the Vietnam war, and the USA dropped more bombs on eastern Laos between 1964 and 1973 than were dropped during the entire second world war. (Reportedly that’s about one B-52 payload being dropped every eight minutes day and night over 9 years!) To this day, Laos holds the unenvious title of being the most bombed country, anywhere, ever. It’s a sad story, especially having seen how polite and generous the people are, but on the other hand it’s good to see it’s no longer happening. The entire region is full of limestone, dotted with numerous pinnacle structures and caves. During the various wars, people frequently hid in caves, surrounding themselves with Budda statues for protection. Until relatively recently, typical life expectencies were as low as about 45, with about 25% of children dying in their first few years. With roughly 1/3 of the 260 million bombs that were dropped never having detonated, people who live in that region still suffer indiscriminately from tripping unexploded live ammunition.

Slow boats like this are a common
sight in Laos on the Mekong River.

Our holiday didn’t involve much walking or tramping or hiking, apart from the odd three hour staged walk to a waterfall here and there. From what I saw there was a lot of potential scope for tramping around Laos, but it’s not really an angle being pushed by anyone there, as far as I can tell. I asked someone about such possibilities as we spent a couple of days floating down the Mekong River, but I had to repeat and re-phrase the question a couple of times because he didn’t understand the concept of what I was talking about. Walking around in the wilderness for recreation doesn’t make a lot of sense in a place where people already do this as part of their lives. In particular, certain nomadic people live along the banks of the Mekong River, re-locating their settlements as the months go on to wherever it’s appropriate for them to farm and grow what they need, prior to packing up and moving somewhere else so the land can re-generate.

Local people in Laos have far more to worry about than enjoying the wilderness. When you already live in it, it’s everywhere, and you have to think about day-to-day living, recognition of the wilderness as something for leisure or preservation takes a back seat. I’m sure there are parallels here with early colonisation of New Zealand. When the first people arrived 1000 years ago, massive amounts of forest were burned off to make way for humans to live. There was so much of it, after all, and New Zealand bush does tend to be impenetrable on average in its natural state. The pattern was repeated 200 years ago when European settlers arrived, fresh with new farming techniques and newly-developed technology that could be used to turn nearly all of the country’s native wetlands into valuable farm-land, giant thousand year old trees were felled all over for short term gain, birds became extinct and other birds became severely endangered as their habitat was destroyed. Ecologically it was a tremendous disaster, and I’ve often wished for the chance to see New Zealand as it might have been before humans messed it up so much, but these also established a stable economy for settlers who needed to live and sustain themselves in a new land.

Things change over time. Life becomes more comfortable, people get more luxuries and discover ways to live reasonably without spending every waking hour at work. People have leisure time, and they begin to appreciate things around them more, perhaps having reason to notice what’s around them, and see reasons to preserve and protect it rather than unsustainably suck it dry. Throughout the 20th century, New Zealanders established a culture that involved more leisure, getting outdoors and enjoying the environment of their country, whether by exploring the mountains, tramping, climbing, or just by getting out to the campgrounds or having barbecues on the beach. I suppose I’m fortunate to live in New Zealand now and not before — it’s undoubtedly a different world.

This is something that doesn’t really exist to the same extent in a place like Laos, at least as far as I can tell. Despite people having lived in Laos (and all of South East Asia) for a very long time, the history means that absolute preservation of the complete environment as it exists today isn’t necessarily at the top of the priority list. People have far more to worry about than preserving every piece of scenery, as Laos is a country that needs to attract more money to help people to improve their way of life. I guess this is where the mineral part of the story comes in, because the other major place besides tourism where Laos is searching for income happens to be mining.

Laos has minerals — it’s uncertain exactly what minerals are there, but it’s believed there’s quite a lot of mineral wealth buried underground. There aren’t many people in Laos with the skills to search for minerals, or get them out, so the present plan has been to involve large international mining companies, especially some of the big Australian mining companies, and give them a cut of the proceeds as part of the deal. The hopeful end result is that local people will be trained up, and over time the country will become more equipped to extract its minerals on its own.

Recently in New Zealand, there has been much controversy just on the mention that the government wants to look at the conservation estate to get a stock-take of what minerals exist and where they are. This is without even explicitly saying that anything will or might be mined, but the concern has been more about what went un-said, and later Official Information Act requests discovered that Gerry Brownlee (Minister for Economic Development) already knew that he wanted to look at opening parts of places like Fiordland, the Kahurangis and Paparoa national parks for mining operations. Mining companies claim this criticism is unjustified and their footprints are minimal, and to many people this will be completely true because obviously people have different opinions on what’s acceptable depending on how important they see things.

I think the outcry is a reflection of the culture I mentioned earlier that New Zealand has built over the past century, with so many people seeing their outdoor environment as a critically important part of their lives that shouldn’t be messed with. If it really were just a stock-take, I’d think it was awesome. Coming from a relatively scientific background, I see it as a great thing to be learning as much about everything as possible. Under normal circumstances, criticising the government for simply wanting to discover more about our environment would seem bizarre, but in this case I sympathise with those who were quick to jump the gun and assume the worst. It’s unlikely that clear details for people to argue over the specifics of will be released for some time, but it seems there’s good reason for concern. I’m also very concerned.

It’s strange having just returned from a place like Laos which is also considering mining of its natural resources, because in Laos my opinion about mining might as well be a polar opposite. It’s possible that the limited amount of what I saw has skewed my opinion, but it at least seems as if mining in Laos seems will have a much more definite and positive effect on the quality of life for the people who live there, as long as it’s done carefully and with consideration about where the money goes.

Some of the 700 monks in Luang Prabang go
about the morning ritual of collecting offerings of
sticky rice from the local populace.

No doubt people involved have their own much more complete sets of photos, but I’m quite chuffed to have my own. This is the first time I’ve had an opportunity to watch a hut being built in this way.

It must be an interesting and unusual project to be involved in building a back-country hut like this. One of the guys there told us that as Atiwhakatu Hut is near the Holdsworth road, they were spending about seven to eight days on the job at a time, then getting a break. When he was working on Maungahuka Hut near the Tararua Peaks, though, he spent a solid month up there.

The story from the Dominion Post is available on Stuff.

The wreckage was taken illegally in March by Wairarapa Helicopters following a commissioning by the Sport and Vintage Aviation Society for a new museum being built. After discussions with the families of the pilots who died and were buried nearby, the helicopter company has now agreed to return the wreckage, with an agreement that DOC won’t revoke its permit to operate in the park. It seems there will be no prosecution.

This is good news. The plane wreck has been on the side of Shingle Slip Knob since 1955, clearly visible from one of the most frequented tramps in the Tararuas (The Jumbo/Powell loop). Perhaps it was decided that prosecution of either or both organisations would not accomplish much or might work out worse for everyone. I still have trouble believing that nobody involved could have realised that it was most likely illegal to simply fly into the Tararuas and take things, or that nobody would notice, or that nobody would have a problem with it being done.

The sanctity of any conserved area, be it national park, scenic reserve, or historic reserve, can be violated at will by the State acting under Sections 7, 32 and 39 of the National Parks Act, under Sections 16, 34 and 97 of the Scenic Reserves and Domains Act or, if either of these avenues by any mischance should fail, under Sections 13(a), 311 and 312 of the Public Works Act. Neither Parliament, nor, least of all, the public at large, need be informed of what is proposed to be done. The first they know is, all to often, heralded by works activity or accomplished fact.

— Dr J. T. Salmon, Senior Lecturer in Biology, Victoria University of Wellington. Heritage Destroyed — The Crisis in Scenery Preservation in New Zealand. 1960. Page 11.

I remember growing up in the 1980s with the devoted belief that New Zealand was a clean and green, environmentally sound country. We had a wonderful conservation estate that was open for exploration and fantastic scenery, though it took me a while to discover it properly. New Zealand was completely anti-nuclear, unlike the French who were exploding test nukes nearby, and in related actions committed acts of terrorism in New Zealand, and it was terrorism according to France’s own condemnation before French agents were caught and its government was forced to admit guilt. France threatened wide-spread European Economic Embargoes against New Zealand until we gave back their secret agents, or something like that. This entire event was a major boost to sentiments against nuclear power, which New Zealand didn’t have and therefore New Zealand was clean and green. There was even a movie about the valiant New Zealand neighbourhood watch group catching two bumbling French secret agents (or something like that), starring well known New Zealanders such as Sam Neill and Xena Warrior Princess!

My friends and I knew that New Zealand was clean and green because the French government was exploding nuclear bombs in our back yard, and we weren’t. And we also had earthquake drills in school during which we screamed and dived under tables, and mohawks were the new rage of fashion. If it were today, I imagine we’d be clean and green because we don’t like the way Japanese vessels hunt intelligent friendly whales in the southern ocean. Fallacies are a wonderful thing for self-assurance.

By a nifty follow-on logic, all our clean and green energy was generated from environmentally sound renewable sources, unlike all those ugly nuclear waste cesspool generating machines in places like the USA. New Zealand’s self-propagated reputation being clean and green assured me that our own sources had no side effects beyond the tasty electricity that we all consumed. Hydro dams were brilliant, because they do nothing more than move water from one side to the other, and slow it down a little in exchange for some energy on the side. They certainly didn’t pump masses of black polluting smoke into the air. Best of all, it was all free! Water renewed itself, and if you think about it really hard, it’s just another manifestation of solar power. (Don’t think too hard about solar power, though, or you might realise that it’s just another manifestation of nuclear power!) In hindsight I realise this belief about where all our energy came from wasn’t quite correct, but it was the gist that mattered. (Side note: New Zealand generates its energy from many different sources, and there’s a very cool representation of the break-down of power usage and generation sources in real time.)

I remember a family holiday driving around the South Island which must have been in the late 1980s, walking through the old town centre of Cromwell, with part of the attraction being that these very streets were intended to be completely submerged shortly afterwards as part of the Clyde Dam project — one of the most recent major hydro dam projects in New Zealand, and now the third largest hydro dam in New Zealand. The entire idea of an engineering feat that would do this sounded very impressive to me. Growing up helped me to notice that renewable hydro energy comes at a cost. After a while I realised that the entire “clean and green” attitude that New Zealand tells itself about is also a myth in some respects (but not all). Through actually meeting people, I also found that most French people aren’t mean and evil unfair nuclear polluting terrorist economic embargo seeking bullies, certainly not in the same way as their government was in the mid-1980s. I’m therefore profoundly sorry if my 1980s sentiments that I expressed earlier offended anyone. But that’s going off on a tangent.

50 years ago: Regarding hydro dams and conservation, I was trying to research material for another post, and references led me to the book titled Heritage Destroyed — The Crisis in Scenery Preservation in New Zealand, by Dr John Tenison Salmon, from which I pulled the quote at the top of this post. Dr Salmon’s 1960 book is recognised as one of the very influential and possibly pivotal publications that changed the thinking that many New Zealanders had about conservation, and how it applies to New Zealand. I tracked down a copy at the Wellington Central Library. It should be available through most New Zealand libraries, through the inter-loan system if not directly.

Having now read all 100 pages of the book, I’d rate it as essential reading for anyone interested in conservation in New Zealand. Regardless of whether one agrees with Dr Salmon’s arguments or not, it’s a fantastic snapshot of how things were 50 years ago, through the eyes of a well qualified author whose work became very influential for others.

The book was published out of frustration during a time when “conservation” was barely defined, let alone having any significant place in the New Zealand Government’s agenda. Assets such as “scenery”, “wildlife” and “recreation” had little or no defined tangible value in the minds of a majority of people, making it very difficult to compare their loss with obvious economic gains of something like additional electricity generation. Nine national parks had been declared by 1960 with the general intent of preserving them, but the designations didn’t mean much in the face of a state that effectively had un-checked god-like powers to over-ride amenities such as scenic values, even when areas had been set aside specifically for that purpose. The picture painted of 1960 by Dr Salmon is one in which the New Zealand Government Bureaucracy was systematically working its way through destroying nearly every scenic asset the country had if there was any chance of exchanging it for some kind of useful infrastructure, and frequently there was. Officially scenery and nature had no economically defined value compared with infrastructure for things like power generation.

The author spends a lot of time describing the “horrors” of the Ministry of Works’ unnecessarily destructive road-building practices, and especially the Electricity Department’s severe adjustments of lake levels in what had previously been some of New Zealand’s greatest scenic attractions. He noted something of an insane indifference to environmental values by government engineers and management in charge of the projects, who refused to make even minimal and supposedly quite easy compromises to preserve the scenic assets that were being affected. Examples that he gives include the leaving of half-submerged buildings poking out of a raised Lake Tekapo, and not bothering to clear the trees before raising the level of lakes Pukaki and Lake Monowai, which resulted in corpses of dead trees surrounding the shore-line that would persist for up to 200 years. Dr Salmon also describes the 1958 scenery “conference” which had been promoted on behalf of New Zealand’s Prime Minister (Walter Nash) as an occasion where interested parties could discuss the management of New Zealand’s scenic values, but which actually turned out to be a government-dictated farce whereby everyone except the Electricity Department and the Ministry of Works were severely restricted in what they could present and for how long, and anybody who expressed views contrary to what these departments had already decided was completely ignored anyway.

He pointed out that in 1958 New Zealand spent a grand total of £50,000 for all nine national parks put together (about NZ$3.1 million in 2009 terms after inflation according to the NZ CPI Inflation Calculator). This meant about $1.30 per person in today’s terms, which for me personally will buy about a third of a day’s lunch if I’m being a cheapskate. The author noted that on a per-person basis, the USA was spending nine times as much on its own national parks.

On page 89, he comments on the state of Tongariro National Park, noting that:

Mount Ruapehu in the vicinity of the Chateau skiing grounds is developing into one vast rubbish heap. Not only do we find there the litter of holiday-makers, but also the junk from broken-down chair-lifts tossed into ravines by people who should know better and who should be setting an example to the general public. [...] My impressions of Ruapehu behind the Chateau were that it is rapidly becoming the National Rubbish Dump instead of a National Park.

Most of Dr Salmon’s discussion is about preservation of scenic values, and he only slides past other conservation topics such as preservation of species and of the native environment as a whole. (Interesting for a biologist’s perspective, I thought.) This may simply be because there was still a lot of research to be done about what was actually happening to the environment, and to what extent beyond anecdotal evidence and the obvious scenic damage. At one point, however, he suggests a team of up to 100 fully trained field biologists are needed to survey the situation properly. Towards the latter part of the book, the author describes the severe effects that introduced predators have had on the New Zealand bush, noting that its disappearance will certainly result in accelerated erosion, flooding and impending natural disasters. He advocates the dramatic reduction or annihilation of all introduced pests (deer rabbits, possums, etc) if at all possible. I also found it interesting to notice on page 86 a mention of 1080 poison, which New Zealand is now the largest user of world-wide albeit with some protests. He suspected might be a magic bullet for this purpose but for which there was also insufficient information 50 years ago. I hadn’t realised 1080 had been around for so long, but I suppose now I know better.

We’ve definitely changed since 1960. For one thing, New Zealand’s $3.1 million spent maintaining National Parks in 1958 (expressed as 2009 money) could be approximately compared with the 2008/2009 Budget, in which the Conservation Vote was allocated roughly $403 million, or well over 100 times that amount. It’s not a completely fair comparison given that the Department of Conservation does other things besides maintaining national parks, just as the 1958 National Parks Board wasn’t responsible for everything that DOC does today. Still, the difference of a couple of orders of magnitude is quite telling. If you want to see details of where the 2008/09 money was budgeted, click through the above link to Treasury’s website and read the section titled “Vote Conservation”.

Changes in attitude:

The snapshot of conservation problems in 1960 is interesting by itself, but I think by far the most valuable aspect of this book today is how it demonstrates the attitudes and government of the time, compared with today. The author frequently complains about the frustrations of government bureaucracies that go to great lengths to hide information for their own operational convenience even though (and perhaps because) many parties are likely be affected, ignore concerns that are expressed by people who are demonstrably qualified, generally work behind closed doors, and in some cases would outright lie when questioned and simply get away with it. Some people would claim that this is exactly what happens with the New Zealand government today, but I think things have changed a lot.

The OIA. For one thing, we have the Official Information Act, which Dr Salmon would have greatly benefited from. The OIA essentially says that one can ask any question of a government department (as long as it’s reasonably specific), and that department is required to provide the requested information within a set time-frame unless there’s a very good reason not to do so. My favourite summary of New Zealand’s OIA is from Rick Snell, an Australian Journalist blogging for the Sydney Morning Herald who compared it with Australia’s Freedom of Information Act. More recently however, Russell Brown presented an episode of Media 7 in which his panel of journalists and other stakeholders discussed New Zealand’s OIA, also noting a few down-sides and things that aren’t working perfectly under the Act. The entire episode can be streamed via YouTube through his blog post at the link above.

The RMA. Another revolutionary change since 1960 is New Zealand’s Resource Management Act of 1991, which defines a structured process of consent through which an organisation must go with the relevant local authories before large and potentially destructive projects such as gigantic hydro dams can go ahead. The 1991 RMA grew out of concerns about the conduct of a previous government in pushing its Think Big projects in the 1980s without adequate consultation. One of the Think Big projects (interestingly enough) was the Clyde Dam that I mentioned near the top of this post, which submerged the old town centre of Cromwell.

The RMA itself has been at the centre of controversy in recent years. Although it has allowed for objections to be heard from virtually anyone, and then considered out in the open, it has also resulted in many infrastructure developments being delayed to painful extents, or otherwise canceled, thanks to the problems of getting consent. The RMA gives a lot of power to local authorities and residents to decide what happens in their back yard, and typically there’s not much incentive for people to want big and potentially destructive things happening for a variety of reasons, even if they collectively help the nation as a whole. The recently elected government has pledged to review the act, and it’ll be interesting to see what it comes up with. In some ways it’s curious that our new Minister of Conservation is already signing away parts of the conservation estate, however. Hopefully the changes won’t approach the scenarios described in Dr Salmon’s book.

DOC. The third huge difference since Dr Salmon’s 1960 book is the existence of the Department of Conservation, which was formed by an Act of Parliament in 1987. Government lands had previously been divided between a variety of government departments and various authorities, but the Department of Conservation combined much of the management into a single entity, with a primary goal “to conserve New Zealand’s natural heritage for all to enjoy now and in the future”. The very existence of such a department is in stark contrast to New Zealand in the 1960′s, where for the most part enjoyment was just a side benefit to be had from the environment once any economic benefit had been extracted.

Ultimately Dr Salmon called for an authority independent of the government to be given power as a kind of arbitrator on conservation issues. From his 1960 viewpoint, he claimed (on page 58) that “New Zealand, compared with much of the rest of the world, is extremely backward in the conservation of her natural resouces, the preservation of her scenery, and in the implementation of a sound policy for the preservation and development of her National Parks and scenic reserves. A conservancy with adequate legislative powers could do a great deal to alleviate the present unsatisfactory situation in New Zealand.” It’s a shame that he died in 1999 (according to the library catalogue), because I’d be interested to know what he thought of the current structure.

Combined changes

I find it fascinating to see how these three aspects of the government system interact with each other, particularly DOC and the RMA. Several months ago, I spent a horrible time working through a collection of submissions towards the Tararua District Council’s upcoming District Plan. It was horrible because it was so excessively boring, and I had a headache for three consecutive evenings. Lately the Tararua District has become a target for energy companies wanting to build wind farms. The RMA makes it much easier to get streamlined consent if a proposal can be shown to be in line with a District Plan, so naturally several large power generation companies all wanted to get their hands in on the authoring of the new plan for the Tararua District.

I merely chose to read through the submissions, and at the time I really felt sorry for the poor people of the Tararua District Council, who presumably have few resources to draw on and suddenly have to cope with a massive influx of large businesses from out of town, all trying to fight their way into the district to support their infrastructure plans for the rest of New Zealand. Some submissions even read as if they were a patronising pat on the head for the Tararua District Council. Translated, they might have said something like: “Your proposed plan is such a cute effort, but it has typing mistakes and some of the references are inconsistent. Why not just replace this entire section with a large block of text we’ve written for you? We already write so many plans for other councils and we clearly have far more experience in these things than you do.” In a few cases it appeared as if the submissions had been made so overwhelmingly detailed so as to disguise the important parts of the detail.

I can fully appreciate why power generation companies do this and I don’t have a problem with their actions, as long as it happens out in the open where everyone can see it, and is considered fairly on its merits. And this is where the Department of Conservation comes in, because it was especially notable that DOC also made a submission to the district plan, offering advice from people who have a lot of expertise in conservation management and who are less likely to be biased towards specific commercial interests over other issues. Effectively, power companies that are owned by the state are making submissions to a local government that might well contradict submissions made by another part of the national government.

On one hand this sounds extremely bureaucratic and wasteful, such that all these government entities should just save money and overheads by talking to each other behind government doors. Personally I think that this particular consequence of the RMA is awesome, though, because it puts all the debate between experts out into the open where everyone who chooses can read and analyse it. When it was revealed in February that DOC had made a compromise behind closed doors with Meridian Energy over a wind farm, it was strongly criticised.

So far, I think the main problems with the RMA are in its tendency to result in certain kinds of infrastructure, and in its tendency (especially right now) to pile hugely important and detailed submissions for major infrastructure onto local bodies that are unlikely to have all the necessary resources to consider them properly. I should stress that I’m hardly an expert on it though, and I know there are additional problems that people have. I don’t know if the new National Government’s reforms of the RMA are likely to make it any better, and I guess time will tell. Having just finished Dr Salmon’s book, however, I guess I’m simply really happy at the moment that we’ve advanced past the conservation management of 1960!

Apparently they had no idea that they might be breaking some kind of law by fly into conservation land and taking things! I’m not sure why — if I wanted to reconstruct a New Zealand back-country hut for a museum in my back yard, would it be okay for me to fly in with a helicopter and take that from conservation land too? Perhaps the leave-it-as-you-found-it rule isn’t quite so obvious for people who don’t spend a lot of time in or near New Zealand’s conservation land.

It sounds as if it was some kind of misunderstanding and I haven’t exactly figured out what I think about this at the moment. Supposedly DOC’s lawyers and the families of the pilots will decide what happens next.

There seems to be a continuing discussion about this issue over at the NZ Tramper website.

The Tararua Range is dotted with plane wrecks which make up much of the history of the region. A particular one of these wrecks is very well known to people who visit the area, as it’s clearly visible from Mt Holdsworth and the surrounding ridges. It seems that recently, this wreck has been raided and major parts of it have been stolen for unknown reasons.

The Shingle Slip Knob wreck of 1955 is clearly visible from the ridge between Jumbo and Holdsworth along the popular Jumbo/Holdsworth loop. (This photo from December 2006.)

According to the linked article from the Dominion Post, an unidentified helicopter was seen making three trips to the wreckage, and further investigations have now found that the plane’s engine has been taken, and other parts have been moved to other places for easier removal.

From the linked article:

The wreckage of a plane strewn near the gravesites of two pilots killed in the crash in the Tararua Range more than 50 years ago has been stripped in an act damned by the Conservation Department “as daylight robbery”.

“In the past week, parts of the plane’s remains, which are now owned by the Crown, have been whisked away and other sections have been moved into clearings for easier removal.

[--snip--]

Tramper Barry Durrant told The Dominion Post he saw a red and white Hughes 500 helicopter make three trips to the site of the wreckage last Friday.

The Department of Conservation staff who administer the park are fairly dismayed, and I don’t blame them. So am I. It’s disrespectful to the pilots who died in the accident, and it’s disrespectful to everyone who enjoys the history of the Tararua Range.

Update 8-3-2009, 9pm: There’s a conversation thread about this topic running over at New Zealand Tramper.

Building Code Compliance Documents for New Zealand Back-Country Huts

Until 31st October, the Department of Building and Housing is accepting submissions on its proposed compliance documents for the Department of Conservation to use in building and maintaining back-country huts.

This is closely related to the consultation of the Building Code document which I posted about back in June. The compliance documents, however, are designed to accompany the building code. Rather than being an overall plan of how things should work, these ones state some quite specific engineering and building requirements that DOC will be expected to follow when it builds huts. The advantage of this is that they’re tailored very specifically to DOC’s requirements, as opposed to the current situation where DOC has been having to do some quite ridiculous bureaucratic things to stay in compliance with building codes that haven’t been very relevant to the back-country environment anyway.

I’m not a builder or an engineer, but I found Part F (Toilets and Grey Water) to be an interesting read, because until now I’d never realised that so much documented detail went into the design of long drops.

One point that befuddles me (although I’m sure there’s a good reason) is point 1.7.4(iii) to do with the design of back-country long drops, which states that “Windows shall be non-opening and, if located in the wall, the window shall face either west or south”. The previous point already stated that skylights aren’t allowed, so I guess a window that’s not in the wall would have to be in the door… and in that case it can be facing any direction (to give the occupant a great view, of course). Now I’m really keen to know why windows shouldn’t be facing east or north, however. Maybe it’s something to do with the direction the Sun is most likely to be coming from.

Tararua District Plan

I posted earlier that the Tararua District Council was flooded with submissions from major wind-farm-friendly power companies when it put its Draft District Plan up for consultation, and that many of those submissions seek to do things that seem a little suspect, like removing provisions from the plan that protect the “Skyline of the Tararua Range” and the “Skyline of the Ruahine Range”. Until 3rd of October, the TDC is still seeking feedback about those submissions that it received, and I’ve been trying very hard to read them.

It would have been much less painful if the power companies had been as brief, direct and clear as the person who simply stated “The confiscation of private land for road reserve without consideration for fair value is extortion, unconstitutional and an abuse of statuatory authority.” Unfortunately power companies pay lots of people who specialise in writing these kinds of submissions, and they tend to come with lots of detail and bickering about terminology amongst the more important things.

Nevertheless I did survive reading it, although I’m still not sure I’ve appreciated the complete essence. For what it’s worth, I posted my observations about the submissions over at the WTMC forum.

A couple of weeks ago I was intent on making a submission, but I’m no longer sure if I’m quite as interested, because it seems to me that most of the submissions relate more specifically to the Tararua District and might not have a huge effect on the recreational areas in the Tararua Range. Because of this, I don’t really feel that it’s my business to start making submissions about what goes on in that region when I don’t live there, and my main interaction with it is to drive through on the way to the nearby mountain ranges.

You tend to start off feeling quite angry and motivated with these things, but then find out it’s actually quite boring. Then you fall asleep and dream about kittens, and aren’t quite so angry by the end of it. It’s probably why controversial submissions are written this way, too.

A national policy statement for Renewable Electricity Generation

This probably wouldn’t have been as much of an issue if there hadn’t been the recent controversy around wind generation in the Tararua District, but a friend pointed out to me that the Ministry for the Environment (so many ministries) is accepting submissions for its “Proposed National Policy Statement for Renewable Electricty Generation”. It’s actually a very short document and is intended to be a broad overview of how decision making processes should be directed when considering applications under the Resource Management Act.

It’s worth a look, and the actual policy is visible here. I did notice that there doesn’t seem to be a specific mention of anything like Recreational Values. It probably belongs somewhere in Policy 2.

Earlier this afternoon I ordered a couple of permits for next Saturday. I only hope that DOC’s online booking has improved since I last used it about 3 years ago, when we booked some huts on the Abel Tasman Coast Track (aka the Hiker’s Superhighway). That time we booked the huts about 3 months in advance, as soon as the online booking system was opened for that period. This seriously confused the DOC ranger at Anchorage Hut on the first night, who tried to tell us we didn’t have tickets. It turned out that because we’d booked as soon as we were able, the records of our tickets were off the end of her print-out.

The very same booking system also seemed in disarray when we reached Whariwharangi Hut. Despite us having booked so far in advance, every one of the three other groups of people who turned up that night had all been told by various DOC officers that they’d be the only people in the hut that evening. Not that we minded — we had a great time teaching the visiting Germans how to play 500. Apparently almost nobody books great walks that far in advance, and we came out thinking we were very strange people.

To be fair to DOC, it was during the off-season (May) and in Abel Tasman it’s a good bet that the huts will never be full at that time of year. Consequently I don’t think DOC took the bookings as seriously. Most Great Walk users are overseas tourists, and tend to book a few days beforehand through the backpackers’ they’ve been staying at… at least at that time of year. We only saw three New Zealanders on that entire walk which consisted of that DOC ranger, and two fun old guys at Whariwharangi Hut, but I’ve been told guess that’s what to expect on a typical Great Walk.

As for Kapiti Island, we still have to arrange the boat ride, and there are currently two choices, both of which we’ll probably consider on the easy-to-find information on their respective websites, because we don’t have much else to go on. For instance, Kapiti Tours advise that they have a “well maintained, clean vessel”, whereas Kapiti Marine Charter advise that they provide a “well presented, clean, and stable vessel”. By that comparison, I suppose it comes down to how exciting we’d like the ride to be. Kapiti Tours advise that they’ve transported such famous film crews as those from King Kong, Whale Rider and Country Calendar. Kapiti Marine Charter, on the other hand, advise they’ve transported The American Ambassador, “staff from most Embassies” in Wellington, Prime Ministers, Sir David Attenborough, and so on. By this comparison, I imagine the decision comes down to whether we’d rather go with a company that transports politicians, or a company that transports film crews.

It’s a tough decision, but I’m sure they’re both great so it probably doesn’t really matter.

Oh, and a small meta note which has nothing to do with Kapiti Island: If you’re reading this then it means you’re probably looking at my new web server, which is hosted by a new provider. It’s a little slower (at the moment). I’m now paying for and supporting the whole thing myself rather than sharing the server with others, and I might also need to fine-tune a couple of things while I get a feel for what bits of it need fixing. But I hope it’s at least consistently slower, rather than being completely down for a day at a time. Unfortunately there’s only so much you can do to mend things when your website lives on a server where it has to compete for memory and CPU time with another person’s out-of-control Bittorrent client, which is what I think was causing some recent problems that motivated me to finally try and sort it out.

The Tararua District Council has published the proposed plan on its website. In addition, comments received about the proposed plan are also available for download, either as a summary or as a complete scan of every submission.

The Tararua District is already known for the Tararua Wind Farm, which is operated by TrustPower and sits in the wind tunnel between the Tararua and Ruahine Ranges. This is probably why the energy companies have such a vested interest in the region. As Robb pointed out, however, the changes proposed by the energy companies might result in changes to the District Plan which make it much easier for very large wind turbines to be built, and which could potentially affect the skyline of the Tararua Range and the Ruahine Range, whatever that might entail.

As I write this I’m still trying to figure out exactly what’s been submitted and its significance. Section 2.6.1.3 of the proposed district plan looks of particular interest because it deals with “protection of important natural features, landscape and habitats”. The section goes on to refer to several notable things which include both the Tararuas and the Ruahines. On this section, Meridian Energy has commented about the ambiguity of what makes a “significant landscape”.

Another possible concern is that TrustPower has sought deletion of certain clauses which refer to protecting the “Skyline of the Tararua Range” and the “Skyline of the Ruahine Range” and the “Skyline of the Puketoi Range”, arguing that “skyline” is an ambiguous term and not based on a valid assessment of the landscape. (According to the original draft plan if I understand it correctly, this clause was originally requested by the Department of Conservation.) TrustPower also wants to change some of the terminology from terms like “protection of” to alternative terms like “management of”.

As Robb also pointed out in his blog (see his comment), another important concern is just how much risk the mountain ranges could be in themselves from continued development by energy companies in the longer term future, particularly if there’s a change of government. Such a change any time in the next 10 or 20 years might result in a major change in policy towards large scale development either nearby or inside what is currently considered back-country territory. Irrespective of what the actual motives are or the likeliness of things happening today, these are the kinds of reasons why it’s critically important to monitor what actually gets written down in these sorts of guiding documents. It’s never absolutely clear what might change in the future to affect the motivations and intents of corporations (or leaders or influential individuals) — particularly when lots of money is involved — but at least having some kind of protection in writing makes it easier to keep things in perspective.

District plans by themselves don’t usually determine whether resource consent will be granted for any particular request, but wanting to do something that’s consistent with a district plan that’s already developed will typically make it much easier to get something rubber-stamped. This is likely to be why several energy companies, and also the government’s Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority, have requested that the plan explicitly recognises that renewable energy is an important thing that contributes to the Tararua District, as it will help renewable energy-related requests to be more streamlined and more likely to be granted through the resource consent process. At the same time, a district plan that makes a less explicit attempt to protect the landscape and skyline value of nearby mountain ranges would make it even easier for energy companies to gain consent for structures (such as massive 200 metre high wind turbines, for instance) which are visible from very far away. This might be a good thing depending on who you are. For instance, making it easier for companies to develop an industry in your region will also inject money into your local economy, although with appropriate guidance it might also be possible to have the same effect without having as many negative externalities. From a tramping and outdoors perspective, this could be harder to find a genuine outdoor experience in certain parts of the Tararua and Ruahine ranges, especially if there are always large human-built structures in the background.

Personally I’d be interested to know what the proposed District Plan means by “skyline”. This is also part of the issue raised by the mentioned energy companies, and the plan doesn’t seem very specific. Reading the draft, I’m confused if “skyline” refers to the silhouette of the mountains as seen from a distance, if it means the view of the horizon as seen from within the mountains, if it refers to the views from people within the Tararua district, or if it’s a combination of these. For myself I think all are important, but that’s just me — whether it’s something that’s out-weighed by the importance of wind generation of electricity in the Tararua District is something that I think needs to be clarified and decided.

Comments about the submissions are being accepted by the Tararua District Council until Friday 3rd of October 2008, so if you’re feeling concerned about this, you have until then to make your voice heard.

For myself, I’m thinking about submitting comments on the submissions to express my concern over protecting the landscape in some way for everyone who visits the area for tramping purposes, but I haven’t completely decided exactly what I’ll say at this point. As a regular visitor from Wellington, I think I might have to at least double, if not triple the amount of after-tramping ice-cream I buy to even come close to the kind of contribution that energy companies make towards the Tararua District’s economy. This is probably the context in which any submission I make will be treated, and from many perspectives that’s fair enough. Ultimately, it’s really also up to the people who live and spend a lot of time in the Tararua District to decide what they want. Personally I’m hoping they decide that the landscape is an important enough thing to make sure that it’s preserved for themselves and for everyone.

The catchment is very accessible to Wellington and probably one of the most commonly visited forest parks in the area. As well as being popular for daywalks, tramping and hunting, it’s full of private batches — some of which are quite extensive, particularly along the Orongorongo River, and is accessible by 4WD from around the coast. No doubt there are a lot of interests.

The Poneke Area Office is also planning a couple of information evenings, and instructions about how to become involved in these are also available on the survey page.

Anyway, within a short time my email had made it to the Visitor Asset Manager at the Kapiti Area Office, who responded immediately to let me know that they were onto it, and to try and confirm some more details of what the exact problem was, and offering some hypotheses about possibly lifted lap joints around the skylight. I was impressed, but I was really impressed when I received another email a few days later saying they’d visited Penn Creek Hut for a look, letting me know what the problem was and indicating some plans to re-roof the hut next spring.

DOC often gets criticised for all sorts of reasons, especially being such a big department with so many responsibilities to so many people, many of whom have conflicting interests. It’s great to get responses like this though, I think, which just demonstrate that underneath it all there are still a lot of really great people whose main job and interest is to keep things running well.

A few weeks ago when I wrote my trip report about visiting Cattle Ridge, I made a comment about the apparent absurdity of DOC’s decision to remove a bunk from the 6 bunk hut. This is apparently due to some ambiguity in the various New Zealand building codes which imply that these days, certain kinds of structures that are intended for a certain number of people require a certain number of fire exits, as well as various other things that seem more suited to populated areas. The consequence? Well somewhere along the line, someone decided that back-country huts with 6 or more bunks would require at least 2 fire exits. Because the design of many back-country huts makes it impractical to add an additional fire exit (there’s simply not enough wall space), DOC adopted the policy, in some cases, of removing one of the beds to turn 6 bunk huts into 5 bunk huts.

This bunk-removal policy seemed absurd to us at the time (and it still does) because realistically, there’s no way to tell how many people will already be at a hut before you leave home. If you get there and it’s full, it’s unlikely that anyone will turn back simply because there’s no vacant bed inside. Typically, excess people either camp outside (if it’s reasonable and safe to do so, which it sometimes isn’t), or simply stretch out over the floor. This is exactly what happened at Triangle Hut last March, where we met a group from the Wanganui Tramping Club, and ended up stuffing 12 people into a 6 bunker. It was reasonably crowded, although even then with some good tetris tactics there was probably space for at least 3 or 4 more people on the floor if we’d needed it, and that was without any attempt at double-bunking, which is also known to occur on occasion when situations get desperate.

In short, the number of beds in a back-country hut has little effect on how many people will be using it on any given night — it only has a bearing on their comfort while they’re using it, which is why it appeared absurd to us that some kind of bureaucratic anomoly was causing bunks to be removed from huts in the Tararua Range with no clear benefit to anyone. It seems unfair to put much direct blame on the Department of Conservation, however, which (as a government department) isn’t just required by law to do a lot of things, but also has some kind of obligation to set an example of abiding by the law.

More recently when visiting Mt Richmond Forest Park, we noticed that the 6 bunk huts there hadn’t had bunks removed, but all of the huts we visited had a clearly marked second Fire Exit sign above one of the windows. Rather than being any kind of preference for Nelson, this was more likely because the 6 bunk huts in Mt Richmond Forest Park appeared to be slightly larger from the beginning than several of the huts in Tararua Forest Park. The Richmond Range huts appeared to be slightly wider, and actually had a reasonably large window off to one side, over which a fire exit sign could be placed, presumably being satisfactory enough as a second fire exit under the building codes, and meaning that the 6 bunk hut could keep its full complement of beds. As a side note this wasn’t the only extra thing they had. Unlike huts such as Cattle Ridge and Dundas (both in the Tararuas), the bunks in the Richmond Forest Park huts that we visited were actually long enough to properly fit the standard-issue Dunlop mattresses that DOC likes to put in most of its huts. In other words, they didn’t uncomfortably arch upwards in the middle.

Fortunately, it seems likely that these inconvenient bureaucratic legislative curiosities might not last for too much longer. After returning from Cattle Ridge I flicked an email to DOC to ask about the specific legislation that was causing them to make these structural adjustments. In the response, I was informed that the Department of Conservation has been working with the Department of Building and Housing to develop some proposed changes to the Building Code which would exempt back-country huts from many of the clauses in the code. The proposed changes define what a back-country hut is, and then proceed to specify exceptions for back-country huts from several clauses in the code which deal with things like artificial lighting, escape routes, providing for people with disabilities (who’d rarely if ever visit back-country huts anyway), and requiring water supplies that are guaranteed to be drinkable.

The submission document is structured into 10 questions and asks about each modified clause, providing space for comments about each proposed change. I sat down for about an hour this evening and made my own submission, which was mostly in support with a few minor concerns about exactly how things were worded. If you do feel strongly about this kind of thing and read this post in time, I’d suggest that you do the same.

Over the weekend, I’ve been catching up with the plight of the three people who were caught at Barker Hut down in Arthur’s Pass National Park. Reportedly they were stuck behind flooded rivers and down to their last energy bar between them. They attempted to arrange a helicopter out via mountain radio, and even offered to pay for it, but were denied this after the Department of Conservation and Police decided their situation wasn’t an emergency. (Helicopters are banned in Arthur’s Pass National Park except for emergencies.)

The Press, Christchurch’s daily newspaper, sensationalised their plight when they were still stuck in the hut being denied a rescue. Once they’d returned on Thursday, reportedly having been forced to make a shockingly dangerous river crossing, The Press spent quite a lot of effort continuing to slam DOC and claiming their are flaws in the system. It makes for some quite shocking reading if you believe how The Press reported things, but I did find it enlightening to read a researched chronology of events and conditions that was put together by Graeme Kates, who lives in Arthur’s Pass and maintains a locally-focused mountaineering website. [Update 3-July-2008: Here's an example of another story by The Press from earlier, again authored by Dan Silkstone, followed by this one a couple of days later which looks as if it's trying to save face after generating more backlash against the paper than they might have expected.]

Graeme’s post about the subject is titled “The Wimpy Media Trio“, and claims the party made some quite silly decisions leading up to their arrival at the hut. They also ignored weather forecasts, didn’t carry their own shelter (ie. a tent), didn’t properly research the route or have adequate maps, ate a large meal the night before they ran out of food, despite knowing they might have trouble leaving immediately, spent a lot more time talking to the media (over the radio) rather than SAR personnel, and continued to ask for a helicopter without actually checking if the level of the river was going down. The entire article makes interesting reading compared with the sensationalist media view of things.

A very brief background of this post is that the Kaimanawa Range itself has a big hole of private land cut out of the middle of it, much of which is mountanous and generally looks interesting. Public regions around the outside are administered by the New Zealand Department of Conservation. The majority of the land is Maori land (according to Map 6 of the maps included in the park management plan), and much of that land is leased to third parties. On our particular trip, parts of the private land located near where we wanted to go are leased by Air Charter Taupo, which exclusively flies hunters into the region for a price.

For tramping access, the company provides a system where individuals can purchase a one year entry permit for $30, after which there are strict restrictions on where that person can go within the block. The page on the company’s website which describes the restrictions states that only three routes are allowed at all, even for those with permits. The ironic statement that would probably twist a few traditional trampers’ guts is “red line access is not permitted”. Camping is also prohibited, which means it’s necessary to cross the land and be out the other side within a day.

To justify its policies, the company claims that it has already suffered considerable expense fighting against efforts from overseas investors to lock trampers (and everyone) out of the region completely. The price for access is to cover costs of leasing the land without imposing an unfair burden on its hunting customers, and the permit system is also described as a way of making sure that trampers don’t disturb hunters in the private areas of the park. It claims that the Department of Conservation was approached with a request to subsidise access for members of the public, but that the department was not interested.

The Kaimanawa Forest Park zone is still quite large, but it’s also around the edges with much of the mountain area being inaccessibly located in private zones. A traverse of the park without crossing private land would be nearly impossible, and one small section of the park, around Boyd Lodge, is cut off from the others completely.

Organising legal tramping in the area can be a messy experience, and this was the problem that Craig (our trip’s organiser) encountered when planning our route. The Department of Conservation website provides a list of six different contacts whose permission might need to be obtained in order to access eight separate regions of the range.

Furthermore, many of the property boundaries tend to be geometrically drawn straight lines, which take little if any notice of the geographical landscape, as might be more logical. This means that a lot of would-be good routes get randomly cut off by private property boundaries. In our planned trip, for example, there was one particular ridge that we really would have liked to walk along, but unfortunately the corner of a perfectly drawn two dimensional isosceles triangle happened to poke through about 3 kilometres in the middle. Even if we’d each paid $30 for an annual permit (despite the likeliness we’d only visit the area once or twice at most within a year), the 3 kilometres of ridgeline wasn’t on Air Charter Taupo’s list of 3 approved routes. In other words, there was no guarantee we’d be allowed to go there anyway.

It’s completely possible that Air Charter Taupo might say we could simply go ahead if we asked nicely and explained what we wanted to do, or they might have said we couldn’t cross it no matter how much we paid them. The classic problem, apart from the denial of access, is that there’s no clear way to know in advance. It was some effort in the first place to discover who was responsible for the land, and contacting to arrange specific access can also be a real hassle, especially if specific plans aren’t made until late in the process which is often the case with New Zealand back-country tramping. We didn’t bother, and we changed our plans, just as I’m sure many other people have done in the past.

A draft Kaimanawa Forest Park Management Plan was published by DOC at the end of 2005 which also, incidentally, has lots of interesting background information about the park. (Update 19-July-2008: The final plan is now available on DOC’s website.) So far I’ve only skimmed the parts that looked most interesting, but it seems the main objective of the report is Kaimanawa Forest Park rather than the Kaimanawa Range. The Forest Park, of course, only includes the parts of the range that DOC actually administers, and considerations of private land in the middle are limited to how it affects the disjointed areas of public land. Consequently, the plan tends to focus on issues specifically to do with things like working with the property owners to arrange specific access routes to public land where appropriate, rather than pro-actively arranging for access for the public to large amounts of the range, including those parts that are held privately.

With respect to the permit system put in place by Air Charter Taupo, the report agrees that the system has appeared to reduce the amount of interest in tramping in the area, but its suggestions of how to alleviate these issues are limited to ideas such as re-routing existing tracks so that they don’t cross private land as much. There’s no serious mention of ideas such as attempting to negotiate for the public to have access to large amounts of the private land under the same sorts of restrictions as would apply in public land.

One thing I found interesting (and I do only have a limited understanding of the context) was that the discussion document which requested public submissions for the management plan focused on steering suggestions towards improving and re-routing the track system, and avoided specifically inviting suggestions about negotiating more widespread access to the internal private land. This is understandable, I think, considering that DOC’s objectives are intertwined with a lot of legislation that’s very specific about what DOC is there to do. Administration of the public’s existing land is probably prioritised over acquisition of new land or negotiating for the public to access it, unless there’s clearly a good reason, or a directive from above.

We’re probably very spoiled in New Zealand compared with some other countries, in terms of having some vast areas of comparably unspoiled public land and reserves in which it’s both legal and fun to simply walk around and enjoy oneself. I really like it this way, and I do feel quite uncomfortable that it’s possible for big amounts of back-country land to simply be shut off by private owners. I do like being able to take for granted that if I see a mountain in the distance, I should be able to go for a walk around it, or over it, or wherever else, as long as I don’t spoil it for other people, and expect the same favours in return from others. I also dislike the idea of having the best or safest possible route plan being compromised by something as artificial as a property boundary in a back-country zone.

Obviously it’s a complex situation because of New Zealand’s history among many other reasons, and there are definitely a lot of issues that need to be resolved. They include commercial issues, Treaty of Waitangi issues, economic issues (including farming), people who have historical ties to land, and the odd private owner who wants a lifestyle block. (Personally I hate it when I climb up somewhere and all the spots with good views are subdivided and fenced off, although that’s probably a concession for built-up areas and may be another issue.) It’s also true that not every member of the public who accesses land — public or private — respects and looks after it in a way that’s expected of them. This undoubtedly also leads to some private owners restricting access across the board for their own protection.

In Air Charter Taupo’s case, for instance, they clearly have a business to run and part of the existing business model relies on being able to give a small number of people exclusive access to large areas of land in exchange for large amounts of money. For the actual owners of the land, it probably makes commercial sense under the current environment to lease it and make some money off it, if the alternative is to simply leave it alone.

Anyway, all of this aside, I really hope this gets sorted one day to improve the public access to some of these large and significant areas of back-country land. I’m fully aware that there are a lot of opinions out there about this kind of issue, and realistically I’m a bit of a late-comer.

Well, a few weeks ago, Amelia went past Powell Hut and took a photo for me that proves that I’m not a complete nut-case, or at the very least is consistent with that theory. Eight months later, it looks as if someone’s crossed out the number and written the correct one, but that doesn’t really bother me. (Thanks Amelia.)

In other news, I joined an informal WTMC group this evening, walking up the Tip Track to the Radar Dome in Te Kopahou Reserve. Bronwyn, Marie and I all compared our identical $40 altimeters. They did quite well staying consistent with each other, whatever that means.