In some ways this rescue wasn’t very interesting. It barely made the news at all. It was reported very briefly in the DomPost, not even giving an approximate location, but reporting the GPS failure. A press release from the Life Flight Trust (duplicated here) adds a few more details, but wasn’t picked up and analysed by any popular media outlets that I can find. Also being a press release from the helicopter operator, its main focus is that they rescued people with their helicopter rather than explaining why those people needed rescuing.

The mention of “deep snow” in the Alpha Hut area means they were probably coming over from Aston (on the Tararua Southern Crossing route) or around Quoin Ridge in the water catchment zone. From reports it’s unclear exactly why there was a problem, if the two of them intended to be out overnight, or even if they’d actually requested a rescue or if it was just lack of information that resulted in the decision to send a helicopter. If a message had not gone out, maybe they would have simply reached Alpha Hut, or just had a night out walking around in circles in calm but cold weather. Such things happen, but usually go unreported.

From informal chats I think what happened is that in attempting a Tararua Southern Crossing, they took a wrong turn at Alpha Peak earlier in the day, apparently not having a proper map or anything, and went down Quoin Ridge instead of towards Alpha Hut. Then the Sun went down. From the result it sounds as if they were probably not carrying their own shelter, and relying on reaching Alpha Hut that night for their safety (see The Hut Fallacy).

I found this story interesting because of how the GPS was mentioned. I’ve also met at least three people now who heard the news and independently expressed similar feelings. The implication from the reports is that the failure of the GPS was a key factor in causing the rescue. I’m not sure this can ever be the case, though, because a GPS isn’t the kind of tool that it should ever be necessary to rely on if other preparations have been made.

It’s sad how the media machine can simplify a story like this, through no intent of anyone specific but by how it operates, republishing information and then simplifying it to fit in small spaces. Irrespective of what actually happened in this case, the worst thing is how the presentation could just reinforce impressions that anyone might already have that a GPS makes things safe, and that it’s perfectly acceptable to assume one can send a text message from a cell-phone and expect a helicopter rescue to be called out when a GPS fails. It’s the same kind of media simplification that suggested a cell-phone would have saved a couple of unfortunate people about a year ago (see this specific example from Newstalk ZB) when really there were a plethora of reasons that added together. In that case it essentially came down to bad preparation and some dreadful decisions. The cellphone factor was almost a completely irrelevant red herring, but for a while was pushed to the front of many media reports, probably because it simplified things in terms with which more readers were familiar, reinforcing whatever false beliefs readers may have already had.

Sometimes I think the reported messages are irrationally harsh on those being rescued, to the extent that people can get called idiots or stupid even if they were mostly well prepared and did 99% of things right but just made a silly mistake that resulted in a high profile rescue. Maybe rescuers have been quoted out of context or in the heat of the moment, or are just trying to take advantage of any media attention to get another safety message published through the media lens (although to be fair there are a lot of people rescued who’ve done some pretty idiotic stuff). This time it’s the opposite. Nobody’s out there denouncing the two rescued people as morons (which I think is good), but there’s also a very skewed presentation of what the actual problem was. If anything it could only lead to a worse understanding of what happened, and how to avoid it happening to others in future. If that’s all that’s going to be printed in an outlet like the DomPost, it probably would have been better for everyone that it didn’t get printed at all.

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.

The book was published in 2004 and as far as I know hasn’t been reprinted, so it’s now 6 years old. I do still see it on occasion being sold in bookshops as a new book, so I think it’s still available, or should at the very least be easily found in most New Zealand libraries. It totals just under 200 pages of relatively easy reading that’s divided into so many distinct sections that it’s easy to pick up and put down for short stints. My paperback copy is on good quality paper. I thought it was heavier than it looked as if it should have been when I took it tramping a couple of weeks ago.

This is a tribute book to tramping more than anything else. Unlike similar books on the shelves, this one isn’t about climbing or mountaineering, and it’s not about hunting. Mark Pickering himself commented that while there are a plethora of journals and newsletters and several guide-books that include elements of story telling, there are very few books specifically devoted to tramping stories. What he’s produced is a semi-autobiographical combination of stories that mostly, but not exclusively relate to his experiences of tramping all over New Zealand. Over 30 years between 1974 and 2004, he tallied visits to about 900 distinct huts, and learned a lot of history and stories to go with his experience.

The book is structured into a combination of stories, trivia, and both anecdotes and larger explanations of tramping history. The author is a self-confessed history buff. All these elements are structured between eight chapters that group related topics, and with each chapter clearly divided into several sections. Sometimes the association of the section with the chapter is generous. Mark Pickering’s story about his discovery of a gold mine of old maps seems to be affiliated with his chapter about tramping in the Canterbury back-country on the thin premise that the second hand bookshop with the maps happened to be in Christchurch. It doesn’t really matter though, because that’s exactly what this book is — a journey of loosely connected anecdotes and stories laid out in a way for the reader to flow between, to gather an appreciation of why people go tramping, what’s important, and how things work in the back-country.

The bad:

I’ll start with the bad, and there isn’t much. I had very occasional petty annoyances that hardly deserve mention.

In one instance when discussing the night sky, the author gives some scientific explanations for things which are ambiguous, but it mostly stood out to me because of my previous life in amateur astronomy (presently taking a break with all the tramping). I also noticed that in the opening Foreward section, where Mark Pickering introduces the word “tramping” and its historic origin, he generally focused on the gold rush days and people moving between the hills, but not clearly tracing it to what might be a German origin, which I think has some merit. (Side note: There’s a more comprehensive discussion thread on this topic in the comments section of a post titled “What is a tramper?” over at Markus Baumann’s Skylark Productions blog.) Neither of these annoyances are anything to worry about, but I’m into semantics so it’s hard to avoid mentioning them.

There’s also an undertone in chapter 7 where the author expresses thoughts that people who tramp solo typically make more dangerous decisions, claiming it as a consequence of having less people to bounce ideas off and notice danger, and therefore an impaired sense of risk. I’m not personally convinced that this is always the case from my own experiences, and when reading it I found myself wondering if an alternative perspective had been missed. Introspectively I think I take far fewer chances when I’m by myself, sometimes even regretting it, precisely because I’m not with anyone else from whom to gain encouragement if I have doubts.

The good:

With the negative notes out of the way, several parts of this book made it something I especially appreciate besides being able to discover more about WTMC. I found the chapter on tracks (chapter 3) to be especially interesting, in which Mark Pickering gets into the history of how tracks have been made, built and dug throughout New Zealand, and what now remains of some of New Zealand’s past. The Fools Creek story at the end of chapter 1, in which a very risky decision was made to cross a river, strongly emphasised just how easily groups can justify what they want in irrationally put themselves into very dangerous situations. Chapter 4 contains a brief but useful history of mapping in New Zealand.

Chapter 5 has many good sections. It begins with Wilderness in which the author discusses how the word’s meaning has changed from the 1850s, when it was typically a synonym in New Zealand for “wasteland”, to the present day in which it’s more associated with ideas such as “natural” and “untrampled”. The author comments on inevitable conflicts between development and enhanced access to allow more people to experience the wilderness, but reducing its appeal as a consequence. In the section titled Storm, the author researches the history of “Hughie” (aka “Huey” and “Hughey”), the name of a tongue-in-cheek tramping weather god, finding its earliest New Zealand use in the Tararua Tramping Club’s journal in 1945, but then traces it further back to an Australian colloquialism first noticed in 1912.

Still in chapter 5, Garden of Eden reproduces an account from one member of a party that became trapped in a storm on the Garden of Eden ice plateau in 1982. One of the tents was lost under the weight of the snow, and with people’s packs (and food) also buried, six people became trapped inside a three person tent for several days with restricted movement, little air, almost nothing to eat, freezing conditions and a battering storm outside. With their emergency contact not having reported them missing, two people eventually walked out during a break in the weather and the rest were finally airlifted by helicopter, seven days overdue and eleven days after the storm first struck.

Chapter 6 is a good and thoughtful presentation of the history of New Zealand’s back-country hut network. It begins with the proliferation of High Country Huts which began as structures for shepherds and mustering gangs of the high country sheep stations, and continues into the new wave of building huts for recreation, beginning with climbing huts at Aoraki Mt Cook, and continuing with the club-funded tramping huts established in the Tararua Range. The chapter then devotes a full section to celebrate the New Zealand Forestry Service, and how its attempts at deer culling programmes and rather gratuitous allocation of funds (especially from the 1950s to the 1970s during which time over 600 huts and bivs were built) led to massive numbers of access tracks and huts being built throughout parts of New Zealand’s back-country. The author reminisces on the simple and practical designs, and how they’ve yet to be beaten in many respects. The chapter winds up with thoughts about the current state of huts, what makes good huts and bad huts, and a variety of interesting statistics.

So what’s in this book? Well, here’s a more detailed chapter listing:

• Chapter 1: Billy and Pack Club tramping in the 1970s, reminiscent of the author’s own experiences.
  • Tongue and Meats — Stories about the author’s introductory experiences with Wellington Tramping and Mountaineering Club, becoming familiar with terms and slang, and being accidentally left behind.
  • Ill Met by Moonlight — Thoughts about night tramping, apparently a mostly Wellington peculiarity, including some stories of getting lost in the dark in the Tararuas.
  • Christmas in the Hills — Reflections on Christmas trips, and getting away for two weeks at a time, organising major food drops (and distressing when they didn’t happen as planned).
  • Fools Creek — Memories of a very risky river crossing, during which the party had been entirely motivated by a quick exit but justified it all the same.
• Chapter 2: High Country A collection of stories about the “extreme back country”.
  • No Exit to Erewhon — Exchanges with farmers, characters often encountered when arranging access.
  • In Pursuit of Sergeant Garvey — An investigation of the naming of an obscure feature, Sergeant Garveys Cairn, and a re-telling of the story of how a man who made a bad decision in 1863 and valiantly charged the wrong way into a storm to his death, came to be remembered as a hero.
  • The Swaggers — Stories about the mobile labourers who, into the early parts of the 20th century, used to walk up and down the length of the country and working for the station owners.
  • The Mouse — A short remembered anacdote about feeding a mouse as it visited the author alone in an old musterers’ hut.
• Chapter 3: Making Tracks A collection of stories about the history of tracks, and the making of them, throughout New Zealand’s back-country.
  • Harper Pass: An 800-year-old Track — Notes about the lengthy 800 year history of people making their way over Harper Pass, including its Maori history and some of the route-marking techniques that were used, gold prospectors, road surveying, railways, and even a possible health resort, and its eventual fall into obscurity before a revival as a promoted tramping track.
  • Pick and Shovel — The origin of pack tracks throughout the 1800s, built to accommodate pack animals many of which still exist in an overgrown form but are rarely marked, and are occasionally stumbled upon.
  • Bush Bashing — An examination of off-track travel, and the satisfaction people gain in creating new and efficient routes from one place to another.
  • Lake Grave — The reproduced day-by-day journal and memory of one of a group that innovated a new track through part of Fiordland.
  • Salmon Creek Biv — A very short section that quotes the hut book entry of a couple of people who regularly maintain the track to Salmon Creek Biv on their own initiative.
• Chapter 4: Canterbury Greywacke A chapter about experiences in Canterbury.
  • Well Trained — Memories of the railcar that used to travel through Arthur’s Pass until the 1980s, its popularity with trampers wanting to get into the hills for the weekend, and the casually helpful attitudes of New Zealand Railways employees.
  • Up the Waimak — Recollections of the Waimakariri River, and common place to visit within Canterbury.
  • A Tragic Tale — An amusing story about how a highly anticipated trip went very wrong from the moment it started (in an amusing sense), and just kept getting worse.
  • The Imperial Treasures of Smith’s Emporium — A short explanation of how mapping developed in New Zealand, eventually through the Department of Lands and Survey using aerial photography, told through the context of the author’s experience in finding a treasure trove of old maps in a second hand bookshop.
  • Avalanche! — The reproduced account of one of a party of four climbers who were caught in an avalanche on Mt Rolleston (above the Bealey River) during 1989.
• Chapter 5: Elements Aspects of the outdoors, and stories that describe what attracts people.
  • Wilderness — Thoughts about the word “wilderness” and how its meaning has changed from the 1850s, and humorous exchanges with a helicopter pilot during an attempt to get to the wilderness.
  • Days and Nights in the Forest — Memories of a visit to Gunns Camp in 1983, the collecting of historic notes, and the re-telling of a story about Davy Gunn’s rescue run in 1936 to report a plane crash (90 km in 20 hours including 40 km of tramping in the dark), and insights from the author’s nearby walk in the forest.
  • Fire — Miscellaneous thoughts about fire and its association with the hills. The author speculates that in time, open-air fires will be banned from New Zealand’s mountains.
  • Tussock, Rock and Snow — A description of a Christmas Trip for which the author’s party were under-prepared, and comments about how people once funded tramping interests with student allowances.
  • Starlight — Comments about the extra clarity of the stars and the night sky when seen from the wilderness, away from most light pollution.
  • Storm — Notes about storms, including a narrative of two anonymous trampers who wait out a storm whilst in a hut, followed by a discussion of Huey, the tramping weather god, and thoughts about some of the rainiest parts of New Zealand.
  • Garden of Eden — The reproduction of an account of a party that became trapped in a tent during a storm on an ice plateau.
• Chapter 6: Huts A chapter all about Huts in New Zealand’s back-country, their origin and use.
  • Home on the Range — The origins and continuance of hut building, beginning with the proliferation of High Country Huts and through to the building of dedicated recreation huts.
  • NZFS — A celebration of the New Zealand Forestry Service, and how its deer culling programmes resulted in hundreds of huts and tracks making the back-country more accessible.
  • A Prevalence of Huts — The current state of huts, and interesting statistics to match.
  • Break-In — The author describes an experience in the Orongorongo Valley in which he became trapped ill-equipped in a storm, near hypothermic, and was forced to break into one of the private batches.
• Chapter 7: Solo A collection of stories and insights about solo experiences.
  • A Voice in the Mountains — The author recollects coincidentally meeting an old friend in the wilderness who was taking part in a solo experience. The is a precursor to a revelation that the same friend later died on a following solo expedition.
  • Nerves — Insights into sudden and seemingly irrational attacks of nerves for no clear reason.
  • Patupaiarehe — Alone in the night, accompaynied by the Maori spirits that inhabit the deep forest and the mountain tops.
  • The Ghost of Whariwharangi Bay — Spooky sounds from upstairs in an old hut.
• Chapter 8: Breathing Easy Leaving work and busy life behind.
  • The Red Hills — A satisfying week long journey .
  • Stepping on a Million Stones — Philosophical recollections of tramping with a friend who later died on a glacier, and reflections on why people go tramping.

Mark Pickering states near the end of the book that he thinks he wrote it to answer the question of why people go tramping, and this is the essence of the final section of the book’s final chapter. Probably his answer, however, is one that will never be fully appreciated and understood except by people who already do go tramping. It’s a book that does a very good job in artistically expressing what many people probably think, and will appeal most to those who have spent at least a little time in New Zealand’s back-country. If this isn’t you then I wouldn’t add it to the top of my list. On the other hand if you have spent some time outdoors, you might find this book a good read if you haven’t already picked it up. For me, I think it’s become a book that I’ll appreciate for a long time to come.

Anyone can sign up to an MSC course, as long as the course pre-requisites are met. For those generally interested in outdoor safety, however, the MSC encourages people to join as instructors. Presently throughout New Zealand the MSC has and handful of paid staff, but its main strength is in over 1000 volunteer instructors. Researching best practices, designing and running the courses and comprehensive training material helps to spread the knowledge further among the outdoor community, but encouraging people to train to be instructors also helps to reinforce and embed what skills are learned. It’s a really cool philosophy and culture in which people continue to use the skills by learning to teach the skills.

I’m not a member of the MSC, and so far I’ve only taken advantage of the First Aid courses on offer because I wanted an outdoor first aid certificate. Until now I’ve focused mostly on being involved in and learning general skills through people in my local club (the WTMC), which sometimes runs its own courses albeit often latching into expertise of instructors who come via the MSC. Clubs are a good way to meet like-minded people and learn from them and see a variety of ways of approaching problems, but they certainly aren’t for everyone, and so an alternative for people who want to learn about outdoor safety and useful skills without joining a club is to get more involved in the MSC. Having seen a hint of how it seems to work, it’s tempting to try and be more involved in the future.

Something that seemed apparent, although I’m not saying this as someone with a lot of experience in the MSC, was that in the original two-day course a couple of years back there were a higher proportion of people attending in similar situations to me. There was a combination of people who’d never had any first aid experience before, people who might have been to a course ages before but didn’t remember much and wanted to do it properly again, and a few members of the MSC itself who were just keen to get started. The refresher course was quite different, in that it seemed as if the majority of people attending were much more qualified and confident from the beginning. With a few exceptions (definitely including me), the culture in the refresher course was more of people wanting to keep their certificate active as part of their personal skills development, rather than just learn about first aid. I think at least half of the people attending were direct members of the Mountain Safety Council, and many also knew each other through the MSC.

I was an odd person out in the group of fifteen, given how I’ve been somewhat lazy in keeping my skills fresh, and without having checked much of what I learned two years before, I felt rusty in areas where others were simply confirming their expertise. It’s neat that the MSC instills this kind of culture in its members. Rather than just learning from the instructor, I learned a lot from everyone present, often people wanting to discuss things and suggest ideas.

So thanks to Bridget (our instructor) and Jane (the admin person behind the scenes), and everyone else involved, including those who attended, in creating and running and being involved in such a great and useful course.

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 author has written eight essays about New Zealand outdoor accidents between 1966 and 2005. Most essays are centred around a single accident, but occasionally around multiple accidents that are related. They are typically decorated with further information about circumstances and additional experiences of the people involved. All essays have been researched thoroughly through coroners’ reports, newspaper and journal articles, books and biographies, and frequently through personal interviews with the people involved. The focus of the book is on mountaineering and climbing, which typically involves higher risk than regular tramping, but one which people choose to accept. An underlying theme put forward by the author is that the risk can be managed (perhaps better than it sometimes is), and that climbing is not as risky as it’s often made out to be from outside the mountaineering community. From the book’s conclusion:

…whereas climbers are prepared to rationalise or accept the risk, non-climbers mostly are not. Society, as a whole, has become more and more risk-averse. Of course, 100 per cent safety and security is impossible. And to eliminate physical risk is to deny the ability to learn from personal experience.

Climbers accept that risk is an element of their chosen activity, but that doesn’t mean they should simply ignore the mistakes or ill-fortunes of others. Gaining experience in the mountains comes from years of skill-gathering and decision-making, as well as learning from the actions of other climbers.

There is a delicate balance here and climbers sometimes need to be reminded of that. By exploring a range of accidents in detail, including how they affected those left behind, it is hoped that climbers will continue to recognise that the choices they make above the snowline can be wide-reaching and permanent.

Each of the essays contains maps and photos, and is roughly ten to twenty pages. The brevity makes it easy to read complete segments of the book in single sittings.

The author has gone beyond the simplistic reporting of facts, which I think helps this book to stand out. The texts cover insights into how rescue teams operate, thoughts about what’s led to the high rate of alpine guide deaths, and also examines what happens to people after accidents and how they cope, going as far to get psychological comment about people’s actions where it seems appropriate. Despite each essay being a discrete entity, they’ve been well structured to support an eventual conclusion.

Overall this book is about how people cope with accidents in the outdoors. Despite the mountaineering bias, the essays are relevant far beyond mountaineering. Many are at least indirectly related to unforeseen weather or mistaken judgement, and a few are simply very bad luck such as a slip or a fall at a bad time, typically putting people in positions where they had to cope with cascading consequences.

Several described accidents were high profile when they occurred, but others were barely reported at all. I appreciated learning far more about several accidents that occurred during my lifetime than what had registered through the media at the time. One of these was an accident in 1990 where 6 young army cadets died of hypothermia in a blizzard at the top of Ruapehu. Some details of things that go on also surprised me. It was news to me, for example, that as recently as 1988, although an alpine guide’s client died during a training course (and he was later cleared of responsibility), he was not immediately stood down and offered counselling. Instead he felt obliged to complete the course for another client and was ordered by his employer to return straight back to work to teach another course, almost immediately leading to another potentially lethal accident.

The author treats all his subjects with great respect, and is always careful to emphasise a redeeming context. Rather than being critical and blaming of mistakes, he’s investigated what could have led to things having happened as they did. Where necessary he’s expanded his research to others who might have relevant things to say. On several occasions, he’s taken extra care to make it clear that most (perhaps all) of these accidents occurred due to bad luck or temporary letting down of the guard rather than habitual lack of safety concern. Subjects candidly comment on what they might wish they’d done differently if they had a second chance, while at the same time noting circumstances that might have led to accidents occurring.

The depth of the Paul Hersey’s research, combined with his experience, knowledge of and contacts in the community, and overall respect for New Zealand’s mountaineers, makes this a special book and worth a read. The essays are woven with the author’s own experiences of close encounters that might have so easily turned out differently. He uses this to emphasise that although safe climbing is something that can generally be achieved, there’s a constant and necessary process of learning and building of experience, always with an acceptable risk that can be managed but a risk nonetheless. On several occasions, he argues that safety in mountaineering is something that people need to develop through experience over time, noting that it’s impossible to gain such experience without some acceptable risk naturally present with the outdoors. In support of this, he points out that even the 1000-odd back-country huts scattered throughout New Zealand, which are often touted to be the pinnacle of safety for those who reach them, are not themselves immune from the occasional destruction by bad weather or avalanches.

All eight essays bordered by an introduction and conclusion, are well researched and well written, as follows:

• Mount Rolleston, 1966: Four young climbers attempting the Otira Face of Mt Rolleston are reported overdue. In worsening weather during the following days, search teams discover at least two people trapped half way up the Otira Face, but can’t reach them. Plans are made to abseil from the top of the face to attempt a rescue, but they are prevented by bad weather. One of the search teams’ camps is buried in an avalanche, killing one rescuer, and after this the rescue attempt is largely abandoned. This is the first rescue attempt in which a helicopter played a part. The pilot noted that he could have been more useful had he been stationed closer.
• Three Johns Hut, 1977: Four members of the Wanganui Tramping Club, having split off as a side trip from a much larger club gathering, reach Three Johns Hut at Barron Saddle above the Mueller Glacier, and report in via radio at 7pm. A severe storm hits that night, and having failed to hear from the party for the next two nights, two rangers are sent to investigate. The rangers discover that the guy wires that anchored the hut had been either torn from the ground, or sheared apart at ground level, and the hut had been lifted and blown into the Dobson Valley, killing those inside.
• Aoraki Mt Cook, 1978, 1982 (two events centred around Phil Doole’s experience on the mountain): An avalanche kills one and injures another on the Linda Glacier route to the peak of Aoraki Mt Cook. They are discovered by another group of four (including Phil Doole), two of whom attempt to reach Plateau Hut to raise the alarm, but are nearly stopped by falling into a crevasse on the way. The injured climber eventually dies before a rescue helicopter can arrive. Four years later, Phil Doole becomes trapped with Mark Inglis in bad weather at the top of Aoraki Mt Cook where they shelter in a small crevasse for 12 nights before the weather improved enough to allow for a rescue. The rescue effort itself it fraught with risk, with an army helicopter flipping and crashing in the high altitude. Due to extensive frostbite, both men had their legs amputated below the knee.
• Matukituki Valley, 1988: A climbing guide takes two clients on an alpine training course, but some way into the course loses one client during a river crossing, who’d not made it clear he was petrified of water. In the aftermath, the guide feels obligated to complete the course for the other client, and is then ordered by his employer to keep working for more booked clients immediately afterwards. He receives no stand-down period or counselling, nearly has a fatal accident with his next clients, quits the job soon after and spends the next twenty years coming to terms with what happened.
• Mt Ruapehu, 1990: The New Zealand army runs an alpine instruction course with eleven cadets and two instructors. A further instructor, who would have been the most experienced, is called away for other duties at late notice. Having dug four separate snow caves on the side of Paretetaitonga — the second highest peak near the summit of Ruapehu, they attempt to wait out the storm, eventually all moving to a single cave when several cadets show signs of hypothermia. Eventually becoming concerned about the integrity of the cave, the group agrees to try to reach Dome Shelter. Within 150 metres of the shelter, they become lost and disoriented and are forced to dig a trench for shelter. Two eventually make their way to Bruce Road for help, but in the intervening hours six cadets die from hypothermia. After the events, a Japanese climber who’d dug a snow-cave a short distance from the cadets emerges having also survived the storm.
• Mt Hicks, 1997: One of two climbers is hit by a rock, suffering a broken hip, when trying to climb the northern face of Mt Hicks. They eventually manage to abseil down, in deteriorating weather, and shelter in a crevasse for four nights before they can attract the attention of passing helicopter.
• Mt Tasman, 2003: Three mountain guides and one client, of a total of six, are killed during a slab avalanche. A coroner’s report later decided that the guides were not at fault and that risk was an inherent part of climbing, although a few changes might be made in future. The author then interviews climbers who express concern about the coroner’s findings, and the pressures placed on mountain guides.
• Aoraki Mt Cook, 2005: An interview with Guy McKinnon, covering several of his experiences but also including when he slipped and fell as a solo climber on the Beare Step near the top of Aoraki Mt Cook, luckily stopping between two sharp rocks before falling off, but damaging his ankle in the process and spending the night on an uncomfortably small ledge before a rescue helicopter could arrive. The essay examines McKinnon’s depressed attitude after the accident, and follows how it changes to a more positive outlook as time goes on.

The story was first penned in The Manawatu Standard, and it’s since been picked up by Morning Report on National Radio (streaming available in your choice of [Windows Media Player], [MP3] or [Ogg Vorbis] depending on your preference).

I don’t know what the errors are, and perhaps they’re especially bad. On the other hand, I wonder if the fact that the Topo50 series maps have errors means that they’re any worse than the 260 series. It’s hard to tell for sure without more information. It’s in everyone’s interests to have maps that are correct, but it’s common for NZ topo maps to have errors here and there, and sometimes it’s just necessary to accept this. The only way to really be sure about a region, short of asking someone trustworthy or going out with them, is to be prepared for anything, look at the landscape, be in a frame of mind to change plans if necessary and then learn about an area from experience.

I vaguely remember something from a while back (but can’t find a reference) in preparing Topo50, whereby LINZ was convinced to include older tracks and emergency routes that had been removed from some of the more recent 260 series maps. Prior to that there had been discussions about removing even more tracks from the map, but there was an outcry to the best of my recollection. We discussed this in our tramping triangle at work today, and someone suggested that perhaps the false or missing tracks are old tracks that were shown on older maps of the region, and have since been put back in the new Topo50 series.

The strength of topo maps (at least in New Zealand) has never really been about tracks, it’s terrain and topography. Keeping track of tracks and routes is a difficult thing to do, because they’re often difficult to see from the air, especially under trees. They change frequently, often without any official influence. People will sometimes go out expecting to find a good track or poled route based on a map, and find something quite different, but this isn’t something unusual with earlier maps and I’m not sure why it should be different with Topo50 maps. If you happen to go out expecting to find a track, but there isn’t a track, then clearly the map’s wrong. All it does it change the rules a little. it may make sense to continue depending on things like circumstances, experience, conditions and knowledge of the rest of the environment. If you happen to be not terribly confident with continuing, though, the obvious thing to do is something different. In other words, do what it takes to get back into whatever your comfort zone happens to be.

This may mean returning to where there was a track, and going back the way you came to return another day, or stopping and finding a safe place to camp for the night (unless you’re a victim of The Hut Fallacy) to consider things properly with a clear head in the morning. I guess this whole philosophy implies some kind of good judgement, which isn’t always present and not because people are irresponsible. Sometimes people just have bad days, or groups make strange decisions that individuals might never make alone. I don’t know exactly what to do about this because there have forever been people getting into trouble for these reasons and most likely there will be in the future, irrespective of improvements to track details on maps.

Some good news with the switch to Topo50 is that changes and updates are likely to get into the mapping system much more rapidly. With its overhaul of mapping systems, LINZ also completely changed the way it publishes maps. Pre-processing is now all done in-house, such that LINZ can now run off a new map edition soon after updating their system. It won’t take existing maps with errors off the shelves, but it could mean that new orders from retailers sent to replace them have corrections. Previously, new editions only came out every decade or so, and each map had to be manually re-plotted and carefully examined (which is why some maps had inconsistent shadings), and was probably pre-printed in large numbers.

Hopefully the ability to correct maps more quickly will also lead to more people submitting corrections. There are enough people out tramping with good GPS devices these days that getting accurate positions of the tracks is becoming much easier, as long as you can trust the person providing the data, and trusting the data may be the most difficult part. For instance, I’m now trying to digitally track every time I go out for a walk, but just because my GPS has been somewhere doesn’t mean it’s a track. My GPS stops and starts, it takes short-cuts, it ventures off-track to look at interesting things, and sometimes it just leaves the track completely because there is no formed track to wherever my GPS wants to go. When I return, I don’t always have a reliable memory of exactly when I was and wasn’t on a track, or the standard of that track, but then that’s not my main motivation for digitally recording where I’ve been. I guess time will tell.

fallacy [fal-uh-see]. 1. a deceptive, misleading, or false notion, belief, etc.: That the world is flat was at one time a popular fallacy.. 2. a misleading or unsound argument. 3. deceptive, misleading, or false nature; erroneousness. 4. Logic. any of various types of erroneous reasoning that render arguments logically unsound.

The Hut Fallacy. 1. a deceptive, misleading, or false notion or belief prevalent in New Zealand outdoor circles that the objective of reaching back-country huts can reliably replace additional measures of safety. 2. a presumption that plans work, judgement is always perfect and/or that accidents only happen to other people.

I hope nobody minds me defining this term, at the very least for my own purposes. Despite this kind of thing happening often, I don’t know of a quick and easy term to describe it. I think The Hut Fallacy is something that pops up often in New Zealand’s back-country.

Huts have existed in the New Zealand back-country for as long as people have had reason to use them, but the first dedicated tramping huts were only built aroun the 1920s, and from the beginning they were built with safety in mind. One of the early and well documented efforts was in the Tararuas, where a group of advocates including people such as Willie Field and Frank Penn, convinced New Zealand’s fledgling Tourist Department to sponsor the development of what eventually became the Tararua Southern Crossing route. Track cutting was only part of the work, as it was eventually decided that huts were necessary for the safety of tourists on the route*.

This was all happening at about the same time as the very young Tararua Tramping Club organised its first official club attempt to cross the range, in January 1922. Thanks to the lack of a century of experience now available, the group was woefully under-prepared by today’s standards. They had limited clothing and shelter, coordination and planning was loose, and many safety technologies available today hadn’t yet been invented, including waterproof clothing. A tragic consequence was that one member of the party, Harold Freeman, died of hypothermia in the exposed vicinity of Alpha Peak. For many of those involved, in a context where people were still discovering how to visit the outdoors with very little experience or peers from whom to learn, the disaster would have been the first realisation that tramping in New Zealand mountains had potential to be far more dangerous than a simple walk through the park.

One of several direct outcomes was for the Tararua Tramping Club to build a new emergency shelter in the vicinity of Hector, which came to be known as the Hector Dogbox. In June 1922, however, before it was even completed, another tramper – Esmond James Kime** – was caught in a southerly storm. Despite surviving 5 nights in wet clothes in the snow, he was discovered and taken to Alpha Hut in reasonable and responsive condition, only to abruptly die within an hour of arriving, probably due to the brandy he was given in an effort to help. The Hector Dogbox blew away before the end of the 1920s, and was soon replaced by Kime Memorial Hut, which then became a popular tourist destination for skiers until access to Ruapehu improved.***

New Zealand’s back-country now has roughly 1,000 huts (the exact number depends on who you ask) of a variety of origins from dedicated tramping huts, hunting huts and what began as private batches. With few exceptions, they’re typically open entry for use by anyone on the condition of paying for inexpensive hut tickets or an annual pass. A few huts, notably those on tourist-marketed Great Walks, are far more expensive and require booking in advance for regular use. All huts, however, exist at least in part for safety purposes. With a few exceptions, doors are unlocked for open entry, and an underlying rule is that they can be used by anyone at any time in case of emergency, booking or no booking.

There are regions that have very few huts, but in general huts are common enough to be a major part of the New Zealand outdoor experience. The scattered nature of huts means that to reach a hut requires traversing a lot of terrain, and reaching a hut can be a fulfilling experience that involves far more than simply getting there. A person who’s visited a large number of huts in an area is likely to have an exceptional knowledge of the terrain, which is one reason why it’s common to meet people who like to tick huts off a list, or describe trips and features in terms of where the huts are. Having arrived, huts often have a lot of character that’s been built and maintained by the variety of interesting people who have visited, stayed in and maintained those huts over the decades. This is especially the case with some remote huts that see few people.

Sometimes tramping in New Zealand is all about reaching the hut, and I guess propagation of this term as if it’s a definitive goal of tramping bothers me. It’s great, of course, to make the most of and enjoy huts, but I think what concerns me is an underlying impression sometimes present that huts are always present and frequent in tramping as cellphone coverage is on State Highway One. When a presentation about beginning tramping effectively tells people that reaching the hut is always the end goal of people going tramping (as did a powerpoint presentation I attended a couple of years ago), as if there’s no other reason to go tramping in New Zealand’s back-country and as if the hut is always reached, I think things can get mis-represented.

Tramping safely, irrespective of the terrain (everything from great walk to off-track bush-bashing), is (or should be) about making good decisions at decision points so as to be able to reach points of safety, and being as confident as possible of not becoming stuck between points of safety… even if that means refusing to leave the one you’re at. Huts are one point of safety in the outdoors, and maybe this is where some of the confusion comes from. I start to get uneasy if I’m going out tramping with someone and discover they have a different attitude to me about huts, because typically this means they’re somehow of the frame of mind that huts are what makes tramping safe. In other words, “why take a tent fly when we’ve got the hut?” This is where the whole Hut Fallacy thing, as I described earlier, starts to become apparent.

Well, there are plenty of reasons why it’s important to take portable shelter despite an intention to use huts. For starters a hut could be full of people already, it might be damaged or otherwise uninhabitable, or it might not even exist as a map shows it. Huts are moved and removed from time to time, and occasionally maps are just wrong from the beginning. The second potential problem is that of actually reaching the hut. It might be on the far side of a flooded river, the party might take a wrong turn or make a navigation error before arriving, or an unexpected injury might make it impossible to reach.

The wonderful thing about portable shelter is that it’s like carrying a point of safety with you everywhere. Tents, fly’s and bivy bags can’t be used everywhere, but they can be used a lot, and it’s often surprising just how possible it is to effectively set up this kind of shelter in some places when a party becomes desperate. It’s a little extra weight, but I have real difficulty understanding how people get into a frame of mind where they see relying on huts alone as being a safe way to visit the outdoors.

It’s a situation that goes beyond individuals, and I presume much of people’s attitude is shaped by those from whom they learn and associate. From time to time I meet groups and families in huts who haven’t given a second thought to their lack of shelter. We once met a large group from a tramping club, walking up an increasingly high river in the rain to an 8 bunk hut, and between 8 people they had a tent that would fit 3. The more experienced of these two people, both of whom died in the Tararuas last winter, was described as experienced by friends and family, yet the coroner’s inquest seems to imply that they didn’t properly check the forecast, made awful decisions, ignored advice, went into white-out conditions without appropriate navigation skills, didn’t carry portable shelter, and were ultimately driven on by the anticipation of reaching Kime Hut! It’s now emerging from the inquest that for this person it may even have been an habitual attitude. In another recent inquest, it’s emerged that the victim of a river crossing made a bad decision about continuing in bad weather, and then put herself in a position which made crossing the river imperative.

I honestly don’t want to be too critical. I’ve rarely met people in the outdoors who aren’t wonderful people and have interesting insights into all sorts of things, and very few people are outdoors with an intention of taking unreasonable risks. I also hope people think the same of me despite whatever weird Mike’isms come along with me. (Honestly, pretty much everyone who visits the back-country is strange in their own interesting way.) I guess I just have severe difficulty appreciating how people manage to take safety measures in the outdoors so casually. Maybe I just think this way because of the people whom I’ve learned from, but I can’t help but believe that it’s an irresponsible way of doing things, if not for one’s own safety then for the safety of others to whom one is responsible, or of everyone who might inevitably become involved in search and rescue efforts.

Footnotes

* In the 1920s context, the term “tourists” would probably refer mostly to those within New Zealand, even the Wellington and nearby regions, wanting to safely visit the mountains, rather than today’s common use which is typically about attracting visitors to New Zealand from overseas.

** The history books I’ve found only seem to refer to him as E. J. Kime, but through the magic of online government resources it’s now easy to search historic death certificates at Births, Deaths & Marriages Online, which reveal 24 year old Esmond James Kime died in 1922. Interestingly the National Library’s digitisation of historic newspapers also reveal a couple of references in 1915, including some examination results (E. J. Kime passed science examinations for both Magnetism and Electricty, and Applied Mechanics for materials and structures), and also an Esmond Kime — a young postal officer — who was admitted to hospital following a bicycle accident. Historic online resources are awesome.

*** Information in the last few paragraphs was compiled from Chris McLean’s book Tararua: the story of a mountain range.

I’ve been on call at work in the past few days, which means I wasn’t supposed to wander too far from civilisation last weekend just in case the building burned down and somebody needed to trundle into town and validate the parking of the fire trucks, or something like that. Sunday was otherwise boring so I ended up going for a wander along the Skyline Walkway, which I figure should be okay because it’s relatively civilised and there are many exit points in case I needed to get back to a road or anything. Here are some photos (biased towards the Kaukau end of the walk), and here’s the map of the day:

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I put on my number three pair of boots, which tend to get used if I think I might need to walk on some road, and headed down the hill. Having left home at around 11.30am after hanging out the washing. This began with a walk down into Otari Wilton’s Bush, not far from where I currently live, then straight up the other side of the valley up to the ridge-line where the Skyline Walkway is situated.

There was quite a lot of wind, I think from a northerly, and until I reached it I was concerned it might be impossible to get past the dip in the ridge just after the Chartwell exit and within an hour of Mt Kaukau, which tends to be one of the most forceful wind channels of the entire ridge. On this day it turned out to be unfounded, however, and although rather strong there was nothing at all dangerous. I noticed my ears were getting a pounding, though, and after a short while remembered I had a balaclava stashed away inside my backpack. For the next half hour I may have looked unusual to the several people sitting in the sheltered areas as I walked past them wearing my short sleeve shirt, balaclava and sun-hat, but it worked a treat.

Wellington is littered with great visible green space all over for walking in without having to go too far, and I think the photo below, taken from just below Mt Kaukau on the western side, shows it off quite well.

Within this frame, the line of hills down the right side is the front side of the Skyline Ridge, whereas the pokey ridge thing just to the upper left of the centre is the Tinakori Hill. (I live on the near side of it, and the CBD’s on the far side.) It’s bigger than I think it looks in this photo, and just on its own it’d be possible to wander around in the bush for the better part of a day. The hills at the back of the photo are Te Kopahou Reserve, lying behind the suburbs of Karori and Brooklyn, and also have lots of walking that leads to high points overlooking Cook Straight. If you click through to a larger version of the photo, there’s a small white dot on the centre of the ridge which is the Hawkins Hill Radar Dome. The barely visible green space at the back and far left of the photo is another part of the Town Belt, leading from Oriental Bay over Mt Victoria and back to the coast at Island Bay, basically the length of the Southern Walkway. It’s walkable in a few hours, but makes a nice full day walk at a slower pace.

And that’s only within the frame, not showing the wind farm walks around Makara further to the right, the hills towards Colonial Knob in the Porirua direction, the large Belmont Regional Park between Porirua and the Hutt Valley, the hills that run from Pencarrow Head over Eastbourne and between the Hutt Valley and Wainuiomata, the Rimutaka Range (a popular tramping haunt) that overlooks Wellington from the east, the Akatarawas that lie west of Upper Hutt, or (obviously) the Tararua Range to the north. There’s so much really nice space to walk in and it’s very accessible to a large number of people. Wellington’s great.

I’d earlier thought I’d go straight past Kaukau and hop directly down to Johnsonville to buy some lunch, but somehow at the time I decided to go a different way, down the Northern Walkway, which I hadn’t been down for a long time and for some reason assumed could be almost as direct. The northern walkway at the Mt Kaukau end is a very well graded walkway, and nice to walk along. I left it in favour of one of the side tracks before too long, though, as I really didn’t want to go back to Wellington through the suburbs, and it started heading that way fairly quickly. What eventuated was a confused sidle on tracks down the side of Mt Kaukau, then 3/4 of the way back to the top of Mt Kaukau, and eventually getting me to Truscott Avenue at about 2pm, which is the road I’d been quite keen to get out of earlier. Now I’m more educated for next time.

About 6 months ago, the local city council built a new well graded track (it even has a handrail) that switches up the end of the spur at one end of the valley. It switches so much that it takes longer, but it’s less steep. The original route, which I still try to use because of its directness, gradually becomes overgrown as time goes on. It will probably be inaccessible within a year or two if it’s not properly cleared, but meanwhile I’m continuing to use it. Earlier tonight, I must have disturbed about 50 small birds as I walked up, which never happened in the past, and it occurred that the high grass and scrub growth is becoming a haven for them as the bush takes over once again.

I enjoy seeing birds in the nearby bush, because it’s a sign that the efforts to revive their habitats are succeeding, even in the presence of population expansion. Despite living in a well populated suburb bordered by more well populated suburbs, Wellington City Council maintains large sections of native bush both up the hill and down the hill. We often hear Moreporks overnight from inside the house. Moreporks are nocturnal birds, but just a few days ago I was walking through the bush of the Tinakori Hill, and had my attention diverted by the noisy flapping of a Morepork landing on a branch a metre above me. I don’t know why it was awake and flying around during the mid-afternoon, but it was just happy to be curious about me and it studied me constantly with its giant nocturnal eyes. We had a staring contest for about 5 minutes before I got bored and left. The Morepork won.

Kereru, also known as New Zealand Pigeons, are another popular bird that flaps around here. They’re big, very noisy fliers, and often sit on branches that look far too small and thin to support them. All the lurching and swaying of their branch as they land doesn’t seem to phase them, though. They can apparently judge exactly which branches can support their weight, without bending 90 degrees towards the ground, well before they land. Kereru typically sit on tree branches, and I most easily notice them when I get to close and there’s a sudden noisy flapping as they leap to another branch further from whatever track I happen to be on. As I walked to work this morning, I saw a kereru perched on a power line out in the open above the road, for the first time ever. Power lines probably are about the same thickness as the branches that Kereru like to grip.

Kaka, one of my favourite New Zealand native birds, made it into this morning’s Dominion Post on the superficial premise that a few Wellington suburbanites people are annoyed about the new inhabitants damaging their trees. The fact that this has become an issue shows what a triumph the breeding programme of the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary, now branded Zealandia, which is a predator-fenced sanctuary operated by a trust very near central Wellington. The sanctuary as a whole, however, is only the most intensively protected part of the entire native bush design of the surrounding region and Wellington’s town belt, which is very accessible to a substantial population and scattered all over with public walkways, and people who use them. Even then, they’re starting to venture even further. Yesterday morning I saw a Kaka flap past my 6th floor window in Wellington’s central business district.

The Karori Sanctuary Kaka are easily identifiable from a distance, at least at the moment. Kaka usually have a screechey call, but the Karori Sanctuary have a rather unique call which sounds very much like a wolf whistle. The story is that early on in the life of the sanctuary, one of the staff decided it’d be fun to teach a Kaka to wolf-whistle. It caught on, other learned it, they young ones pick it up, and so it’s been that for several evenings last year I walked home through the streets of the Northland suburb of Wellington with gangs of four or five Kaka circling above, seemingly making sure that everyone knew it was their territory by calling some very loud wolf whistles at nearby pedestrians. Perhaps one day, as generations of these Kaka spread throughout the forests of the North Island, the wolf whistle call that marks the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary will also spread.

I try to get out and do a lot of tramping, but I also really enjoy how I don’t have to get out to enjoy such experiences. I also like that people don’t always have to get out into the wilderness to enjoy some of it. None of these places I’ve mentioned are in any way remote, but they’re thriving with native wildlife.

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

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

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

I can’t comment on the specific case of this group’s etiquette due to the lack of information, but I take exception to both of these claims.

It sounds as if a few mistakes were possibly made, notably that the group allowed one of their party to lag behind in the first place. Something could, have happened but she turned up of her own accord in the end. It probably was the case that “basics of tramping safety” were ignored in that it’s often a risk to let people lag behind, but scathing media criticism of the party seems completely out of proportion when reminders about how they could have managed things better might have been more appropriate.

Tramping at night is not dangerous as a rule. If this isn’t the case, then perhaps we should start campaigning against all the tramping shops who sell very grunty head-torches that are primarily designed for night walking. I won’t campaign against it — I own one. I’ve often been in groups who walk at night, sometimes to a hut or sometimes to a good camp-site. We don’t do it as a rule, and at times it makes more sense to camp at the end of a road and get started early in the morning. At other times it’s great to be able to knock off the first few hours of walking, and perhaps wake up somewhere much nicer in the morning. Obviously the situation is different and lack of daylight changes what can be accomplished safely, but it’s common for tracks and routes — especially those near road-ends — to be completely walkable in the dark for people suitably prepared and motivated.

As for the etiquette of showing up to a hut late at night, it’s really in the eye of the beholder. Huts exist for use by everyone, not just for people who like early nights. Just as I often walk late at night, I’m often part of a group that will arrive at a hut at 11pm or later. Similarly, I’ve sometimes been in huts when others have arrived late at night. It is rude to simply take over the place and make lots of noise when people are trying to sleep. Huts are for everyone, after all, but I disagree that simply showing up to make use of the hut at a time of day that others might not have anticipated is bad etiquette. It’s just a case of making minimal fuss and respecting that others are trying to sleep. Several times I and others have bedded down on the floor upon arriving so as to avoid disturbing people in bunks too much.

It might simply be that this particular SAR coordinator had a bad day, or was woken too late at night and was in a bad mood and that reflected in his comments. Perhaps he’s been quoted out of context, or the full story is missing from the media’s version, which happens from time to time. Perhaps he just thought it his responsibility to make as much noise as he could to discourage others from doing something he thought was inappropriate, despite it being at the disproportionate expense of those at the centre of events, which also unfortunately happens from time to time. Whatever the reason, I think the message that was presented through the media is mis-leading and wrong. Tramping at night isn’t for everyone. It requires additional considerations to be made, but there’s nothing inherently un-safe about it when handled appropriately. Furthermore, huts are provided for everyone, not just for people who like to go to bed early. It’s important to be considerate to other hut users, but consideration extends both ways.

If my own opinion isn’t enough on this topic, there have already been several comments in the IN THE NEWS thread in the forums over at NZ Tramper, starting near the end of page 6 of that thread.

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

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

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

I mean, Wow!

This is one of the most down-in-the-doldrums ultimately pessimistic doomsday no-hope-for-the-future we’re-all-gonna-die opinions about the outdoors and nature that I’ve seen expressed in a long time. From the tone of it, we may as well all hide inside 1950s fall-out shelters for the rest of our lives, just in case there’s another large earthquake like the 1855 one that re-defined the Wellington region, or Taupo erupts as it did around 180AD, or a giant tsunami like those which strike the country every few hundred years, albeit not seriously in clearly recorded recent history.

It was much less than this kind of negatively-biased media exposure, combined with a shortage of friends well acquainted with the outdoors, that kept me from really getting outside to explore the back-country for the first 20 years of my life, because apparently it was dangerous according to most of what I saw filtered through the media. (It’s rarely reported in the same channels when people get outdoors and have a great time.) She comments on a recent episode in the Wairarapa where a family woke to find themselves being swept away overnight after camping next to a river that just happened to flood, suggesting they must have had a warped view of the world from the country’s Lord of the Rings publicity. She later seems to express an opinion that “camping” anywhere at any time should be a last resort for the desperate.

Surely this isn’t dealing with nature or respecting nature, as the title of her writing implies. It’s hiding from it.

If the possibility of falling off a cliff is the only thing that prevents someone from getting out to see something amazing, then perhaps that person would benefit from becoming more experienced with walking in such conditions, learning how to better understand cliffs and the surrounding elements so they can be treated with appropriate safety. But this all goes back to the Mountains Without Handrails philosophy (based on ideas argued in a book by Joseph L Sax), largely applicable all over New Zealand, which suggests that people should be made safe for the mountains rather than mountains being made safe for the people.

On the large scale disaster front, preparation and understanding is a key thing, as is having good recovery plans in place both individually and as a society, but there’s only so much one can prepare for. Sooner or later something really seriously major will happen in New Zealand. All that can really be done besides constant preparation and readiness is to accept that some people — hopefully as few as possible — will come out of it worse than when they started, and then deal with it all at the time.

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

• They’re smaller. All maps are now metric A1 size. This means they fit less information, but they should also fit more nicely into other equipment that takes metric paper sizes such as photocopiers and satchels. Smaller maps also means less to carry, unless you happen to be crossing map boundaries (which is more likely). Another side effect is that the boundaries between maps have shifted all over the place. Some areas fit more nicely into the Topo50 map boundaries, whereas others definitely don’t.
• The map grid has changed, which means all reference coordinates have changed. This is the most important reason why LINZ wants people to start using new maps, so as to reduce confusion between the old and new map grids.

Strictly speaking it’s no longer necessary to buy the maps at all. LINZ now makes them downloadable, letting people with adequate facilities print their own and mix and match the parts they want. Personally I still prefer to go with the standard pre-printed maps, mostly because I trust the consistency of production, with an idea of how the paper and toner will last, knowing that every map will have coordinates properly produced, and so on.

I possibly haven’t broken these regions into the same segments that everyone else would have, but a few notes about the various regions are:

Wellington Old maps: R27, R28 & Pt. Q27 (Wellington), R26 & Pt. R25 (Paraparaumu). New maps: BQ31 (Wellington), BQ32 (Lower Hutt), BP32 (Paraparaumu) for the northern-most part.

In the 260 series, the bulk of the Wellington region used to exist on a single map titled “R27, R28 & Pt. Q27“, of which R27 was the main component and the other two parts were tacked on to two different edges making it an unusually large 260 map. Further north up to Waikanae, including Kapiti Island was on another spliced-together map. These inconsistent sizes splattered around the system were one of the things making the 260 series more expensive to produce. The Wellington map contained all of Te Kopohau Reserve, Makara and the coast up to Porirua, all of Belmont Regional Park, everything around the Hutt Valley and the bulk of the Orongorongos and Rimutaka Range as far as the south coast, with a tiny part of the southern Wairarapa on the edge (really only Lake Oneke). The northern map (which I’ve rarely used) contained Kapiti Island, most of the Akatarawas, and a slight fringe of the Tararuas east of the Akatarawa Road between Upper Hutt and Waikanae.

In the Topo50 series, the same region now crosses three main maps. Map BQ31 (Wellington) covers all of Wellington out to the Cook Straight on the south and west, but only extends north to about Tawa (not as far as Porirua) and east-wards doesn’t quite reach Petone. Pencarrow Head juts into the eastern edge of the map, but apart from this none of the Eastbourne side of Wellington Harbour reaches this map. All of Lower Hutt and the bulk of the Orongorongos and Rimutaka Range is drawn on map BQ32 (Lower Hutt), although without as much to the north. The eastern edge of this map is roughly the same as the old 260 Wellington map, just reaching Lake Oneke. Everything north of Tawa, and still reaching about the same fringe of the Tararuas, is now on BP32 (Paraparaumu). Most of Kapiti Island appears on this map, but the north end with Waiorua Bay is chopped off. If you specifically care about the north end of Kapiti Island, it’s worth noting that Topo50 map BN32ptBP32 has been intentionally shifted south to overlap, and includes all of Kapiti Island. (I don’t own this map.)

Tararuas Old maps: S26 (Carterton) for the southern end, S25 (Levin) for the northern end. New maps: BP33 (Featherston), BP34 (Masterton), BN33 (Levin), BN34 (Shannon).

I think the Tararuas lost out with the new map divisions. In the 260 series nearly the entire range was nicely covered by two maps, but now there’s a mixture of mountain range, flat farms and populated towns and coastal areas. I was going to take my new maps into the Tararuas last weekend, but took the old ones instead when I realised our stint on the middle part of the main range was going to cross three different maps. The route just fitted the old maps so much more nicely.

All of the Southern Crossing region fits into BP33 (Featherston), which also seems to be the most filled-up of these maps as far as tramping regions go. It also includes the Southern Main Range right up to Anderson, and (nearly) all of the route down to Waitewaewae Hut. The map extends north to Otaki Forks and Waitewaewae Hut, about the same line as the old map. It’s the east-west split where things get annoying, as the Featherston map only extends as far east as Mt Holdsworth and much of the Totara Creek track. If you want a map that includes places like Holdsworth Lodge, Mountain House and Powell Hut, you’ll also need to get map BP34 (Masterton), which is mostly farm-land but includes this corner of the Tararuas and also the Barra Track up to Mitre Flats (but not Mitre). That whole area falls into a frustrating network of map boundaries. If you wanted to head further north to somewhere like Cow Creek, or up over Three Kings or Mitre on the tops, you’d find yourself getting onto yet another map, BN34 (Shannon).

Much of the northern end of the Tararuas falls on map BN34 (Shannon). The souther end of this map falls a little further south than the Kiriwhakapapa Shelter and North King. The Shannon map includes pretty much all of the Northern Main Range, north-west of Arete and past Dundas, down past Herepai Hut or onward into the leatherwood-laden hell-hole towards the Mangahao Dams. West of Arete, it’s necessary to switch to map BN33 (Levin), which includes most of Carkeek and Dorset Ridges on the far east, most of the middle Main Range, and Oriwa Ridge.

Ruahines Old maps: T23 (Kimbolton), U23 (Dannevirke), T22 (Mangaweka), U22 (Ongaonga), U21 (Kereru). New maps: BL36 (Norsewood), BK36 (Taoroa Junction), BK37 (Tikokino).

I haven’t really visited enough of the Ruahines to know where all the best bits are, but at face value I think the area’s done much better for map boundaries in Topo50 than it did in the 260 series. The Ruahines are long and thin (especially at the southern end), and trend diagonally up the North Island, at least compared with the map sheet indeces. In the 260 series, the range crossed at least 5 maps, possibly more, but often only cutting corners or scraping edges of the maps. For instance, the walk into Heritage Lodge or Rangiwahia Hut occurs on the far east of map T22 (Mangaweka) — a map which is almost entirely farmland irrelevant to the range. Further east, the bulk of the Ruahine Range at that latitude falls onto U22 (Ongaonga), but still only uses 1/3 of the map surface. Further south, most of the range fell diagonally across T23 (Kimbolton), but just cuts the corner of U23 (Dannevirke), and that could have been annoying for anyone wanting to walk across to any of the 6 huts marked on that tiny corner of the Dannevirke map. Towards the northern end, map U21 (Kereru) was actually reasonably full of Ruahine Range area.

The reason I think the Ruahines win so much under Topo50 is because the west and east map boundaries are placed to fit the full width of the range so much more nicely than in the old maps. About the same area for which I needed 5 large maps with lots of farmland is now covered by 3 smaller maps of mostly mountain range. The thinner parts of the range around Rangiwahia, Heritage and further south now have the entire width of the range falling within a single map — in this case BL36 (Norsewood). The two maps further north and north-east, BK36 (Taoroa Junction) and BK37 (Tikokino) cover the whole area up the Ruahine Main Range, and out to the edges on both sides without huge amounts of extra.

Aorangis Old map: S28 (Palliser). New maps: BQ33 (Lake Wairarapa), BR33 (Ngawi).

The Aorangi Range, mostly a hunter’s playground on the south-east coast of the North Island, used to be entirely on one map. I guess there’s a slight loss here because it’s now mostly on two. The southern border of map BQ33 falls just south of the Putangirua Pinnacles, which is a starting point for a trip I’ve now done twice, to walk south from there out to Cape Palliser. Both maps have a lot of wasted space outside the mountain range, but at least the whole range does seem to be covered on just two maps, though, and it doesn’t get more complex.

Mt Taranaki / Egmont Old maps: P20 (Egmont), plus a few extras around the edges. New maps: BJ29 (Mount Taranaki or Mount Egmont), BH29 (New Plymouth).

Most of Mt Taranaki/Egmont used to fit on P20 (Egmont), with the exception of a couple of edges of the national park falling onto P19 (New Plymouth) or Q20 (Stratford). The design of Egmont National Park, I think, means that those two edge maps often wouldn’t have been relevant anyway, simply because they mostly involve just the beginning of well define tracks up to the mountain in the middle, and also because the Park has several roads leading up to the inner section in which many people start their activities regardless. Consequently it was often possible to get by in all of Egmont with a single map.

In the Topo50 maps, I think the boundaries become slightly less efficient. There is still a single map, BJ29 (Mount Taranaki or Mount Egmont) that covers the central cone of the mountain. Most of the national park is restricted to the north-west corner of this map, however, and the entirety of the Pouakai Range to the north east has been cut off. To get the park in its entirety, it’d be necessary to obtain three more maps: BJ28 (Opunake), BH29 (New Plymouth) and possibly BH28 (Oakura). I don’t own any of these, but might get them in the next bulk order I take part in.

I have a few other maps scattered around, but this covers the main Wellington-based regions I tend to spend most time tramping in. If you’d like a look at the boundaries for yourself without leaving the internet, LINZ has published map sheet guides for the new map series, including comparisons between where the old sheets and new sheets lie. My current favourite way to check out the Topo50 map extents online, however, is to visit Koordinates.com and search for “Topo50″, switch on the Topo50 map layer, zoom around to find what I want, then toggle the Topo50 sheet index layer to see which map it’s on.

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

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

After a first effort, this was the result.

Several amateur insights occur following this cooking expedition:

• My first effort didn’t look very volcanic.
• Despite having imagined I could gulp the entire thing in the space of a few minutes when I first saw the recipe, it may not have been very healthy, or easy, to do so. Having made only a third of the original recipe, Stacey and I tried to get through it for dessert but we only managed half of it.
• The recipe looks like dessert, but the amount of couscous suggests it could almost be a main meal, though devoid of things like vegetables. It felt too filling for dessert, though.
• It’s very sweeeeeeet.
• In hindsight I don’t think I let the couscous mixture cool down enough before pouring spooning it over the ice-cream. The whole thing went quite mushy when it mixed with the ice-cream.
• I’m not clear on how this is a regular tramping recipe, mostly because of the ice cream. I suppose if you’re not going far, and able to make it before the ice cream’s melted you’d be fine. Or perhaps you could carry a portable petrol generator and use it to power one of those mini-bar freezers which could be being carried by a co-tramper. It’d be awkward though, as you’d have to keep the power cord between two people from snagging on everything.
• I had trouble pouring the jam over the mountain as the recipe instructed. My lava wanted to stick together in clumps, so I had to come down on it with a big crunching spoon and smear it over the sides. Do I need to buy a certain kind of jam, or treat it somehow?

Well, at least now I’ve done it. It was nice but it’s a shame I can’t transport it back in time and space by a couple of weeks and 250 kilometres west.

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

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

I can’t comment with authority about whether these kayakers were being irresponsible. Rescuers claim it was irresponsible, but the kayakers were supposedly experienced and capable of making their own decisions based on knowledge about their abilities. From the description (and I’m not going on first-hand information) it sounds as if the kayakers perhaps could have gotten themselves out of the situation and were perhaps busy figuring this out, but accepted a helicopter ride because it showed up. Supposedly the two were “very happy” to have the helicopter available, but it seems probable that they weren’t informed at the time that the rescue was going to cost them anything. Within New Zealand, it would be a reasonable assumption in a compromising situation that any rescue helicopter on offer is free, particularly if it’s obviously been sent to search for you without having been requested, and even if you’re not in absolute dire trouble. On the other side (as has been pointed out by the harbourmaster), they can’t ignore the sign of an empty kayak floating down a flooded river.

The question of fault isn’t the most important here, though. I’m uncomfortable with how they were sent a bill at all, and are now being threatened with court action. Typically within New Zealand, search and rescue operations are not charged back to those being rescued. After the event, things are assessed and costs are either underwritten by ACC or by the New Zealand Police. If the national search and rescue coordination services are notified (by emergency beacons or otherwise), the service is legally obligated to follow up the notice and respond as appropriate, and cannot legally ask for payment. These legal obligations will not prevent the Police and/or SAR from issuing noisy press releases shouting “stupid idiot trampers” or (in this case) “stupid idiot kayakers”, and in excessive cases such as people being very obviously stupid or wasting police time, the police can choose to prosecute a person in court for wasting time and resources. But a person can’t be charged up-front, and this ensures a situation where people aren’t considering silly and irrelevant details about affordability of requesting a rescue when their life is in danger. It also supports a situation where people are comfortable donating vast voluntary resources (time, money and experience and leave from their regular work) without feeling so much as if they’re being ripped off by a system where the victim pays someone but not them.

There’s an ongoing debate in New Zealand about whether people should pay for rescues, whether there should be a requirement for tourists and/or back-country users to sign up to some kind of insurance scheme, and perhaps it has merit. New Zealand isn’t the only place with this debate, either. For example, the Spanish province of Catalonia decided to start charging particularly reckless people late last year, citing hourly rates of helicopters and people required during the search and rescue. There’s also a Facebook page campaigning for free SAR operations throughout the USA. What bothers me in the apparent New Zealand situation is the inconsistency of there being a general policy of rescues being at no charge, but still having some invoices issued depending entirely on the circumstances of the rescuers — not the rescued. Even if this bill can’t be enforced, sending it through the courts creates uncertainty that could create doubt in people’s minds about requesting a rescue when they really need it.

It’s understandable that the Queenstown Lakes District Council felt obligated to launch a helicopter, did so independently for expedience, and their budget will be limited, which is why the harbourmaster wants to recover the costs somehow. The possibility that rescuers could show up to help a person in trouble, and that person might not know whether the search will cost or not, is concerning, because unless all rescues are free of charge, it compromises the reason for other searches being free of charge. The more often this happens, the more often people will think twice about accepting an offer of rescue when they genuinely need it. I like to think that if and when I’m rescued after a back-country mistake, I’d make an effort to donate at least the cost of my rescue as long as it’s within my means. In this case it was $4,000, and such a cost could be manageable for people good at managing their money (which a significant number of people in New Zealand are awful at, by the way). If it happened to be a $40,000 invoice, which wouldn’t necessarily include the time, resources and expense put in by any number of volunteers, it would be completely unaffordable for most. The consequences of telling local authorities that they can’t send invoices, however, might make them less likely to respond to potential emergency situations when it makes sense for them to do so.

As long as search and rescue is generally designed to be at no cost for rescued parties, perhaps it would be useful for systems to be adjusted so that local authorities conducting rescues could more easily tie into the national framework. In this case, for instance, the Queenstown Lakes District Council would not attempt to charge the rescuers, but would instead apply back to the Police or ACC to have the bill paid out of pre-existing budgets that can absorb it more easily, on the grounds that they made a decision to investigate the likely possibility of a person in imminent danger. Otherwise I think we may as well go the full distance and make it clear that people need to pay, or take out insurance, or whatever.

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.

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.

Late last month, a petition was opened on the Wellington City Council’s e-petition page titled Ban on smoking along the city’s “Golden Mile”, with the idea being that smoking on the main central Wellington streets should be completely banned — so far, the only CBD street in which a by-law prevents smoking is Cable Car Lane. As I write this, it has 550 signatures. To add to all of this, however, another e-petition titled Continue to allow smoking along Wellington’s Golden Mile was created by another local today, intending to show support for an opposing view that smoking shouldn’t be banned.

I’m generally skeptical of petitions for various reasons including how they’re sometimes used to claim and campaign for things that don’t match the wording under which people signed. Even in this case I’m still unsure whether I agree with the exact wording. I put my name against the first petition after some days of thought and the lengthy consideration, however, mostly because I think it’s a great issue to actually be discussed.

Restaurant and cafe owners on the main strip probably wouldn’t support such a bylaw, since (as proposed) it’d make it illegal for them to cater to smoking customers when it might not be so for competitors just around a corner. I’m also not personally certain a complete ban on smoking is the best answer, despite liking the idea of strongly encouraging and better facilitating people who want to smoke to give better consideration to those around them without alienating smokers into a reject hole.

Ultimately, I’m simply glad that this issue is being brought up and seems to be arousing interest in the community. Irrespective of whether new by-laws are needed, or just better facilities for and communication about the problems, it needs to be discussed out loud. Presently, I sometimes feel as if I can only get a breath of fresh air by stick my head into the middle of the road because today’s cars seem so much cleaner than today’s cigarettes (albeit not a scientifically-derived assertion on my part). Some people would probably say I’m just overly sensitive, but I don’t think I’m too far out of line to feel a little miffed at the current state of things. I’ll be keen to see what kind of discussions and viewpoints come out of this.

Rain

It rained and it rained and rained and rained
The average fall was well maintained
And when the tracks were simply bogs
It started raining cats and dogs

After a drought of half an hour
We had a most refreshing shower
And then the most curious thing of all
A gentle rain began to fall

Next day was also fairly dry
Save for the deluge from the sky
Which wetted the party to the skin
And after that the rain set in

– Anonymous tramper, 1984

I thought this was the end of it — just a very amusing poem from an anonymous tramper in 1984, seemingly very New Zealand-like to me (as a New Zealander) — until I started to look around the web.

It turns out the poem’s been spotted on at least several continents. Although many sightings have been in New Zealand (such as Architect’s Creek Hut in Westland National Park) it seems unlikely that it originated here as far as I can tell. It definitely dates back much further than the 1984 that was given by DOC’s visitor’s centre staff.

The best resource I’ve so far discovered is this helpful womens’ Morris Dancing website (scroll down that page a little) which initially suggested it might have been one of Barry Crump‘s written ramblings based on his New Zealand experiences, but then notes that it was also published in the 1979 edition of the Cambridge University Ramblers’ Club songbook. This doesn’t necessarily rule out Barry Crump as he was very active in the 60′s, but unverified claims suggest it might also have appeared in the 1950 edition of the Cambridge songbook. The page collects together three distinct variations of the poem from various parts of the world, none of which exactly match the one I transcribed (though the Architect’s Creek Hut one comes close).

Wherever it originated, it certainly found its way around and people who tramp in New Zealand have adopted it quite well. I guess things people can identify with are like that. Who woulda thunk it?

It’s been a surprisingly difficult decision for me to get a GPS receiver, and not strictly because of the cost. I’ve been putting it off because I’ve really wanted to get a good feeling of how to navigate without one, and I’ve not wanted to have the temptation lying around that would encourage bad habits of using a GPS without understanding the surrounding land. I definitely think that understanding maps, compasses and (sometimes) altimeters is the way to go, perhaps with a GPS to fall back on when things get unexpectedly bad or chaotic. I certainly don’t ever want to get myself into a situation where I go out relying primarily on an electronic device that runs on batteries. There’s a stigma in some tramping circles that’s attached to openly carrying a GPS receiver. To some extent I do even agree with the origins of this stigma, I think, though mostly because there do seem to be some people out there who really are relying primarily on a GPS to get them through a tricky situation without necessarily having the more fundamental navigation expertise and experience to back it up. I suspect it’s asking for trouble, which is why I’m hoping I don’t fall into the trap myself.

All of this aside, I did still take the plunge as I mentioned earlier, despite not yet fully backing my own navigation skills. I guess now I’ll have to take care to avoid relying on it. The reason I made this decision actually had nothing to do with navigation or safety whatsoever, at least not in a way that I’ve consciously identified. Put simply, I just decided I want to track where I’ve been. I guess since I bought my GPS, I’ve been playing with it quite enthusiastically to figure out all the cool stuff I can do with it. Beyond the short term, however, I really just want something I can shut away in my pack, give minimal attention to, and let it track where I’ve been.

It’s a red-lining thing. Red lining is a term used to describe the drawing of lines on a map to record where one’s been. I’ve no idea if it’s a local term or if it’s international. Some people have maps covered in lines, but it’s never worked for me. I started trying to do this early on so I could remember where I’d been, and so I could more easily discover where I still hadn’t seen, but lent my map to someone and it was lost. (Left in a hut somewhere, I think.) Then I started drawing on maps again, but a few months later the map was caught a storm and quickly became tatty. It’s easy enough to buy a replacement map, but I didn’t feel like drawing the same lines over it all over again. I know at least a few people who keep separate maps at home which they never take into the field, strictly for drawing lines on, but I don’t think I’m organised enough for that. Not to mention, I’ve never quite figured out how to represent being in the same place multiple times. I like to match a place where I’ve been with an experience I remember, which might be linked with the time of year or the conditions or other people involved. Maps aren’t well designed for this — a good map represents the land well, but there’s little space for meta information about whatever you might happen to draw on them.

This is why I eventually decided that I really want to track where I’ve been digitally, as a variety of people already do, of course. The easiest, most accurate and lowest maintenance way to do this seems to be to use a gadget to do it for me, which is why I ended settling on buying a GPS. I began by looking at simple GPS data loggers, which are essentially miniature things that do very little except record tracks, often not even having a display. They’re often used on combination with digital cameras, so geographic information can later be added to photos. I never really found one that suited what I wanted though, which was a long battery life, replaceable standard batteries and high sensitivity antenna, and at the very least a simple display so I’d be able to get a positional coordinate if I really needed it. At least, I couldn’t find what I wanted readily available in New Zealand (where the market is limited) and within my price range.

So I tried asking some helpful people on the NZ Tramper website, and was eventually put in touch with Tony of Kiwi GPS. Tony runs his own business in Christchurch, importing and selling GPS equipment. He was a pleasure to deal with, put absolutely no pressure on me to buy anything, and during an exchange of several long and detailed emails, he even directed me to a good deal he’d noticed going on Trademe, which would have been no benefit to him whatsoever if I’d gone there instead. (On this topic, I absolutely recommend getting in touch with Tony if you’re looking to purchase any GPS equipment within New Zealand.) The discussions were useful, especially once I discovered that I might need something slightly further up-market to store tracks to a level of accuracy I wanted over the lengths of time I was thinking of with minimal maintenance. The consequence was that I had to up my budget a little to reach the ranges that included external memory cards, and I ended up getting a mapping GPS as an indirect result.

Apparently one of the most popular hand-held GPS models for tramping in New Zealand is the Garmin GPSMAP 60CSx, and (to my understanding), this is also the model generally used by New Zealand’s Search & Rescue teams. It’s a mapping GPS that also has a built-in barometric altimeter and electronic compass. In the end though, I settled on a Garmin eTrex Vista HCx, which is about the most sophisticated of the (usually basic) eTrex range, although looking at the specs it seemed to be very similar to the 60CSx. Tony told me it’s not as popular because it has a smaller screen, and the 60CSx is only slightly more expensive, but the deciding factors for me were that it weighs less, and supposedly has a longer lasting battery life, which is really what I want for tracking. Even better? I get what seems to be a very nice barometric altimeter. The party trick will be to pull out my GPS in front of other people during a navigation exercise to use it entirely for the altimeter, without them thinking that I’m cheating by using the GPS functionality. I fell into that trap last weekend, but I guess that’s part of it.

Getting this GPS thing to interface with my home PC has been challenging to begin with, mostly because all the software is designed to work with Windows, rather than my chosen Linux-based operating system. I don’t run Microsoft Windows on my home PC for various reasons that are difficult to describe in a paragraph, so getting the software to work has been quite an exercise. It’s the sort of challenge I’m used to given that I’ve been doing this for some time, however, and it’s beginning to behave. Of course, it would have been far nicer if Garmin would support non-Windows operating systems to begin with, but I guess you can’t win everything.

What now? Well I suppose I’ll keep using it, and see what comes out of it. The biggest thing that concerned me at purchase time, not having actually seen and played with it, was whether the smaller screen would be an issue for me. Fortunately I haven’t found it to be any problem whatsoever. I’m also looking forward to taking the data that it produces about tramping trips I go on, and see what I can do with it.

The first in the news was a Wellington man who slipped whilst descending from the summit of Mt Tapuae-o-Ueneku, slid about 400 metres, and managed to walk away with little more than a few bruises. This strikes me as extraordinarily fortunate. The second is the case of Victorian government minister Tim Holding, who spent two nights disoriented in freezing conditions near the top of Mt Feathertop in the Victorian alps, after he slipped off the track and slid several hundred metres. He was lucky to be found, and now he’s recovering.

One valuable quote from Tim Holding’s insights into his experience was in the above-linked article.

“I slid very, very fast and if you’ve ever slid in the ice before, you’ll know you start slowly and you slide faster and faster and you gather huge momentum.”

Self arresting is the technique of stopping when you’re sliding down an icy slope, and stopping is the all-important thing in a situation such as the one above. If you can’t stop sliding on your own terms, you’ll be stopping on the mountain’s terms which will just as likely be off the end of a high bluff or slammed into an uninviting rock-face as not. If you’re into mountaineering, you’re most likely familiar with all this stuff already. If you’re more into tramping (as I am) then it’s a very handy and sometimes essential thing to know, especially if you spend a lot of time above the bush-line.

Self-arresting is usually done with an ice-axe, and involves ramming the pick part of the ice-axe into the snow and ice, lying face down on top of it, and then to jam as much weight directly onto the adze (the flat edge part) of the ice-axe as you possibly can until it stops you…. and then hope it actually does stop you. (Don’t take this short paragraph as instruction. I’m not a qualified instructor, nor very good at all this stuff anyway. Besides, you really need to practice!) There’s a handy video that describes the technique from the British Mountaineering Council on Youtube, but you should really consult an organisation such as the NZ Mountain Safety Council or equivalent for proper training.

There’s also a technique for self-arresting without an ice axe, if you’re unfortunate enough to be without. The technique confused me when it was first explained, as I found it counter-intuitive. Summarised, the technique is to try and orient face down, arch your back and place hands and feet on the surface, then put as much weight on them as possible to try and dig in. It’s important to try and minimise surface area by keeping your stomach off the ground, since doing so will then increase the force on the pressure points that are touching, to help them dig in. (Think of your hands and feet being like an ice axe that’s digging in — it’ll hurt but there’s a better chance it might stop you!)

I found the hands-only technique counter-intuitive at first, because I usually think of more surface area as meaning more friction and a better chance of stopping. Extra surface area doesn’t work with ice, however, thanks to various physical properties of ice. You’ll just end up turning your body into a sled, getting faster and faster.

As an important side note, the most recommended way to save yourself is to avoid slipping down the ice in the first place. If you do slip, try to be holding an ice-axe before you fall, because the hands-only method is a whole lot harder to do effectively, if it’s even possible which it isn’t in some cases. Even with an ice-axe, it’s not always possible to stop, especially once you’re going really fast. Slipping is unexpected, and this quote (from the climber on Mt Tapuae-o-Uenuku) isn’t an uncommon story to hear from people who’ve survived a slide:

“I do remember the descent, I was airborne on occasion and going at speed. I was conscious all the way down, but, because of the solid ice and speed I was going, I couldn’t use my ice axe to self-arrest.”

Still, better to actually know and be familiar with the optimal techniques for stopping before they’re needed. Otherwise there’s very little chance. Practice with self-arrest techniques is absolutely necessary before they’re needed, because when it happens there won’t be time to mentally go through the process. Next time I have an opportunity in a safe environment, I might make an effort to figure out the hands-only technique.

Shortly after the search concluded, one of those involved posted an amateur 4 minute video that shows an interesting snapshot of a SAR operation in progress. If you’ve not already seen it, it’s worth a quick look, and if you click through to the YouTube page you can read a better description about what’s going on.

One outcome of the Coroner’s report seems to be that DoC review its branding of “Great Walks”, noting that the term “Walk” might create confusion for some tourists whose first language isn’t English and who might incorrectly interpret the term to mean that there’s no potential danger. On the face of it and without all the information at hand, I’m not convinced it would have helped in this situation, but perhaps there’s something to the idea.

LINZ has a large section of their website which describes the project in detail, explaining how it will affect people’s use of maps, GPS devices and other related systems. It’s good to see this actually happening — we’ve been hearing about it for several years now.

Everything you need to know is behind the link above, but I thought I might try to summarise the changes, perhaps to help people understand it better but as much to help myself to get a grasp on what’s changing and why. I’m doing my best to get this as correct as I can, but please keep in mind that I’m an amateur at this. If you notice inaccuracies or omissions, I’d appreciate it if you could point them out by posting a comment. If necessary, I’ll correct the post and credit as appropriate. Meanwhile if you’re keen to get more authoritative information from the source, a good place to start is the LINZ Publications & Other Resources page. The downloadable Topo50 map Reading Guide and the Where in the World Are We? booklets are especially helpful, and much of what I’ve written here is really just a dumbed down version of them.

For a long time now, LINZ has produced both the NZMS260 and NZMS262 series’ of maps, the former of which is used extensively for tramping. These maps are about as official as it’s possible to get for topographic maps of New Zealand. It’s taken decades to produce the entire series, with each map having been manually drawn. As the series of maps has been produced over such a long time, some maps don’t even match properly with neighbouring maps in properties such as colouring, especially if the maps were produced at different times. A few years ago, LINZ announced that as a major project, the map system would be changing and the various coordinate systems associated with New Zealand mapping would change with it.

There are a variety of reasons why it makes sense for LINZ to update the mapping system, but the most important is to make it work more nicely with the alternative “Geodetic Datum” that LINZ decided to adopt a few years ago. To understand why on earth this was necessary at all, let alone what a “Geodetic Datum” actually is and why LINZ cares about it, it’s necessary to understand something about how maps work and how they’re put together.

It’s all about projections

If you’ve dealt with maps before, you’ve probably heard something about map projections. A “projection” is the necessarily imperfect answer to the problem of how to represent the curved surface on a flat piece of paper.

Each of the maps in the NZMS260 series, the NZMS262 series, and probably most other series’ that LINZ publishes, is drawn on a flat sheet of paper, but the land that it represents isn’t flat. What it comes down to is that a flat map is not a perfect representation of the land it represents, and it can’t be. If every map in the series were laid side by side, the combined land area would look very skewed, and if the maps were pushed around to make the land appear closer to the correct shape, they would no longer line up properly side by side, and all of the nice, parallel lines of the overlaid map grid would no longer be parallel. In practice, the Earth is so large that the area represented by a single map is almost flat, and for most common uses (such as trampers taking compass bearings), it’s easily good enough for the job.

This is what a projection is. To ensure that the map can be displayed most usefully in a flat context, LINZ has to skew the shape of the entire country both so it’s not quite correct, and so it’s as un-obvious as possible that it’s not quite correct.

Points of reference and coordinates

Until recently, I’d intuitively assumed that things like latitude and longitude were very easy concepts. ie. With a specific coordinate, just draw a line from the centre of the Earth in whatever direction some brilliant maths indicates, and the geographic point for a given latitude and longitude will be where that line intersects the Earth’s surface. The intuition falls apart once it’s realise that to do this, just for starters, some way is needed for deciding where the centre of the Earth is. It falls apart even further when it’s realised that the Earth isn’t a perfect sphere, or even a sphere with mountains and valleys messing up the surface. It’s actually an oblique spheroid, which means it’s a flattened sphere that’s much wider in the middle than at the poles. The simplicity of projecting lines from the centre is getting less simple all the time.

You don’t necessarily need to know the centre of the Earth to draw a decent map that’s a good representation of an area, but you need reliable points of reference for which you do know the latitudes and longitudes already. The reference points can’t move, because if they do then it means you can no longer be certain about every measurement you’ve taken from them. New Zealand is a geologically active place, where the land moves around, and this is essentially the problem with the old NZGD1949 Geodetic Datum on which the existing LINZ topo maps have been based until now.

Geodetic datums define the reference system

This is where we come back to geodetic datums, because a datum is essentially the reference system on which everything is based. It might be something derived from the centre of the Earth, or it might be something else. It’s essential that it’s reliable and well understood, however, or everything derived from it becomes confused.

NZGD1949 is what’s known as a “local horizontal datum”, and also a “static datum”. It’s a reference system based on the known positions of trig stations around New Zealand that have been measured very accurately, and it also assumes that they never move. This isn’t exactly true, and the way the datum works makes it more difficult for surveyors to model geological movement without a lot of effort. Therefore this kind of system is not sufficient for use in New Zealand for some of today’s needs, because it’s not a reliable reference to the level of accuracy those needs require. Another issue with NZGD1949 is that having been designed to only fit New Zealand’s land-shape and nothing else, it’s not naturally compatible with much of the globally-aware navigation technology available today, notably GPS systems. To work with NZGD1949 and systems based upon it such as the New Zealand Map Grid, such technology has to incorporate lots of conversions. Through doing so, they waste resources and lose accuracy.

NZGD2000, the new Geodetic Datum which LINZ internally adopted in 1998 (but didn’t immediately use publicly in place of the NZMS260 or NZMS262 series’ of maps), is known as a “geocentric three dimensional datum”, and a “semi-dynamic datum”. It’s a referencing system based on a particular definition of the centre of the Earth and it’s been designed from knowledge that takes the whole planet into account. It’s designed around a model that estimates the shape of the entire Earth well beyond just New Zealand. Obviously the use of NZGD2000 doesn’t prevent New Zealand’s land-mass from morphing by about 5 cm relative to itself each year, but through its design it does help the surveyors and geographers at LINZ keep track of what’s actually moving around in New Zealand much more accurately. Otherwise it’s like trying to measure a distance while someone’s pulling the carpet out from underneath you. Also, being a globally-defined datum, it’s much more easily compatible with the GPS network, which operates in that context.

Collateral damage to coordinate systems

Being naive about the topic as I am, it hadn’t occurred to me until I learned of these changes is that latitudes and longitudes, which I’d always assumed were absolute everywhere, are really only subjective to the system used to plot them and that the systems vary in different places. When LINZ switches its maps to use NZGD2000, all places in New Zealand will be assigned a new latitude and longitude, as far as the predominant series of maps are concerned. Effectively, if you were to go to a specific position of latitude and longitude according to an old map and then again according to a new map, it will be as if New Zealand has shifted about 190 metres north and 10 metres east. (Check out the Differences section of the LINZ FAQ for more information about this.) What’s really happening, of course, is that those latitude and longitude lines are slightly offset from where they used to be because New Zealand is properly aligning itself with the same reference point used by much of the rest of the world.

The New Zealand Map Grid (NZMG) will also disappear, to be replaced by a new grid called the New Zealand Transverse Mercator projection (NZTM2000). This happens for the same reason, because the old NZMG was projected onto New Zealand using systems derived from the old NZGD1949 reference system. With NZTM2000, drawing the old map grid doesn’t quite work any more.

Even though LINZ has been doing its surveying using the new NZTM2000 for more than a decade now, it’s certainly possible to hack together maps with the old grids on them and use the old numbers and draw the old lines. In fact, this is what’s been happening over the past decade. During all this time LINZ has still released newly surveyed editions of their NZMS260 and NZMS262 topo maps with all the internally surveyed new coordinates converted back to the old coordinates for publication. This has been so that the new maps would be compatible with those already in circulation, giving LINZ more time to prepare for the change-over which is now here. Ultimately though, this is inefficient and leads to more and more complications and maintenance problems. Sooner or later, it all has to change.

Change happens on 29th 23rd September 2009

On 29th September 2009 (edit: 23rd September 2009), LINZ will finally release its new series of maps into shops. The old NZMS260 and NZMS262 series’ of maps are no longer being produced, and they’ll be completely withdrawn on that date. At the same time, the complete series of all Topo50 and Topo250 maps will be released, and LINZ is taking the opportunity to make several additional changes to the production system of its maps. Notably,

• The standard printed size of map sheets will become smaller and more consistent. In the NZMS260 and NZMS262 series’, maps were printed on a non-standard, and very large, sized sheet. Some maps were even sized inconsistently with their neighbouring maps, especially if a small segment of land existed off to the side, and making an existing map slightly wider would remove the need to print a new map of mostly water. With the new Topo50 and Topo250 map series’, all map sheets will be produced as metric A1 size. In cases where a map will only have tiny amount of land to be nearly useless for land navigation, LINZ will overlap the maps with neighbouring maps to ensure that every map displays a useful amount of land. Therefore some land may be duplicated on multiple maps, but will also do away with maps that are 95% water.
• Maps will be cheaper. LINZ really wants to encourage people to switch to the new Topo50 and Topo250 maps as soon as possible. Part of this encouragement is to make them available to anyone at the wholesale price of $3.50, as long as 20 or more maps are purchased. (ie. A minimum of $70 spent.) This means you could potentially replace your entire map collection relatively cheaply, or alternatively you could put together an order with several friends. LINZ is switching away from sub-contracting the printing of maps, and will now print them in-house, and this is contributing towards the cheaper costs (as I understand it, at least).

  To help people figure out which maps they might need, LINZ has provided material that compares the NZMS260 and Topo50 Map series’, including diagrams showing how grids of the map sheets overlap each other. If you have a collection of NZMS260 maps and need to know which Topo50 maps to buy for the same areas, it’s a good place to start.

The Topo50 maps are already accessible, in a sense. The complete database from which they’re produced is available using NZTopoOnline, part of the LINZ website which can be used to generate and print maps of sections of New Zealand on the fly. Presently the maps from NZTopoOnline don’t come out quite the same, however, because it’s an automated system that only has raw mapping data to generate from. Apart from having been printed professionally and with predictable consistency, printed LINZ maps, once available, will all be rendered more nicely as a consequence of people having gone through the data to ensure it looks readable, notably by doing things such as ensuring labels of features don’t overlap each other, and that kind of thing. With the natural move towards a more digital and centralised storage of all the information, however, it may become much more feasible in the future to print maps on demand, or have agents do so on LINZ’s behalf rather than require retailers to stock hundreds of different maps just in case someone might walk in wanting one. This is more towards the future, however.

Consequences for old maps

Obviously the old NZMS260 maps will still work, and it’s not as if geography changes simply because the New Zealand government decides to draw a new set of lines over it. There’s an underlying theme of encouraging people to stop using their old NZMG maps, but it might take a while for them to disappear completely. I certainly won’t throw out my maps simply because they’re old, and I doubt many of my friends will. Old maps are a great source of information about things like old tracks and routes that are no longer officially marked. Some people have lots of lines and marked up information drawn over their existing maps which is great for reference material when visiting somewhere, and that won’t be thrown out quickly. What I expect to do, however, is to move towards the Topo50 series of maps and take them out tramping with me.

The real problems will occur when communicating information about maps using two different systems, however. For instance, the potential of confusion if someone gives an NZMG grid reference from a 260 series map, which another person tries to apply to the NZTM2000 grid of a Topo250 map. New Zealand’s Land Search and Rescue is taking this seriously, and at the change-over date, all of SAR will immediately switch to the new mapping system in an attempt to avoid confusion when communicating between each other.

The confusion between the two map grids has been of particular concern, and a decision made to reduce confusion has been to design the new NZTM2000 grid so that the New Zealand land mass which it describes does not even overlap the same land mass in the NZMG when the reference numbers are the same. In other words, a grid reference in either system for anywhere in New Zealand will appear as if it’s pointing to open sea if it’s applied back to the wrong system.

Now it’s just a case of waiting

Hopefully this is a reasonable summary of not just what’s changing, but why it’s changing. The “what” part is easy, but having written this up I now feel as if I’m getting a better grasp on what the reasons and problems are. As I wrote earlier, I’d appreciate feedback and corrections, and whatever further thoughts or comments anyone might have on this.

I guess the most important thing to keep in mind is that it’s coming very soon. It seems like a very significant and important change in the use of maps in New Zealand, yet to date I haven’t seen much publicity of it outside tramping circles. I’ve wondered if there may be large clusters of people whom it might affect, who aren’t even aware that the entire mapping system is about to change.

This equality is one of the wonderful things about the outdoors in New Zealand. it manifests itself in the informal experiences of meeting people out of context and away from their normal day-jobs. If Craig and I or anyone else had been tramping up that way this weekend (as we’d planned) and happened to meet people, it no doubt would have made no difference who they were or what they’d achieved. You get to meet and chatter with all sorts of people in New Zealand’s back-country, and meet them on equal terms. One way or another everyone’s out there to enjoy themselves.

I won’t dwell on the specifics of what happened right now. The published information is so sparse and it wouldn’t be fair to people involved. No doubt more information will emerge from those in the know in the coming weeks. Whatever happened, it’s a testament to the impressively coordinated and largely voluntary Land Search and Rescue organisation, and to the SAR Coordination team of the New Zealand Police and all other organisations involved, that the trampers were found so quickly once it finally became possible to mount a search.

It’s strange having been to these places, even felt as if I was in some kind of trouble near there at times (especially this time), yet never for a moment having thought I wouldn’t get out safely. I’m fortunate enough to have never been in such a catastrophic situation to date, and I hope I never am.

Perhaps it helps to ease the mind if you’re as prepared as you can be, to the extent that if you make a mistake (preparation or otherwise) your further preparation will be more likely to compensate. Having experienced, competent and level-headed friends nearby also helps tremendously when things get difficult. When this kind of awful thing happens, however, it’s a saddening reminder that on occasion things can go tragically wrong, even for experienced people and in places that are well frequented and which might sometimes give the impression of being much more safe than what they really are. Probably all we can do now is try to learn from it.

It was a trip that that the club rated as Easy, organised by a fun chap called Andrew who really likes excessive good cooking on the club’s easy-rated tramping trips. We were starting from Otaki Forks, walking to Waitewaewae, and coming back. Waitewaewae (also known as YTYY) is definitely straightforward if you’re reasonably used to tramping and all the efficient packing and tuning that goes with it. It’s sign-posted at 4 hours, it can be walked in 3 by someone reasonably fit, and last time I checked somebody had crossed out the 4 on the sign and written 7 hours. The reason for this is that the YTYY track involves lots of undulation, and also walking up Saddle Creek, which can be slippery. Last time I visited Waitewaewae Hut from another direction, we were due to meet another group who never showed up, as one of their party had slipped in Saddle Creek and been airlifted out. If a group happens to be very inexperienced, the walk to Waitewaewae can be a challenging first tramp.

I going off on a tangent, though. Andrew is a chap with many fun stories, and one of the stories that he raised to convince people that the walk to Waitewaewae was very do-able was about an earlier time he’d been at Otaki Forks. Having arrived on Friday they’d stayed the night in Parawai Lodge. Whist packing up to leave in the morning, they met another club group of absurdly crazy fit people who’d walked the entire Southern Crossing overnight!

To my recollection, my first reaction towards Andrew was “why?”. At that time when I was relatively new to tramping, and to the Tararuas, I saw the Southern Crossing as the major thing to do in the Tararuas, although I now know many places I’d rather visit in the Tararuas. The thought of walking the Southern Crossing (typically a three day tramp) over a single night seemed absurdly pointless. Why??? Nobody in our cheerful easy-rated group had much of an answer.

It took a few months of getting to know more people before I was able to piece together the attraction of trying to attempt this strange feat of walking between Otaki and Kaitoke in the dark. The attraction, of course, is the combination of snow and moonlight. It’s not just a walk in the darkness with head-torches to no end, it’s a walk through the well-lit snow under a Full Moon, and it’s a way to see the Tararuas in a way that very few people do. (Even less people than the amount who see them in the sunshine, apparently.)

It’s difficult to get the right conditions, too. For a Moonlight Southern Crossing, it’s necessary to have a combination of snow-covered mountain tops, a Full or nearly-Full Moon (which occurs only several days each month), clear weather all night (ie. no or very few clouds), and, for practicalities sake, the time, ability and fitness to do it. The time, ability and fitness factors are often the most difficult, because on what is typically short notice it’s necessary to be in a good frame of mind (and fitness), to get transport at both ends, and if optimal conditions occur during the week, to potentially take two days off work.

Earlier this week, it looked as if all these factors were coming together. When Craig first asked me if I was interested, it took a night to get my head together about what was actually involved, but after I’d shaped it out in my head I became very enthusiastic. This would be Craig’s third attempt at a Moonlight Southern Crossing, with him having turned around early due to weather conditions on the previous 2 attempts. (In his blog post to which I linked earlier, Craig implies it’s only his second attempt, but Craig’s also a liar liar pants on fire.) For me, it was my first attempt, but I was very hopeful all the same.

Craig and I both arranged to take Friday off work, sleep Friday morning, do some car juggling on Friday afternoon, and be leaving Otaki Forks at 5pm. We planned to be at Field Hut by about 7pm, Kime some time before 10pm, and hopefully over at Alpha nearer the other side by about 2am. Some people walk the entire thing in a night, but we planned for the cop-out option of walking as far as Alpha Hut, and stopping to get some rest before heading out the eastern side of the Tararuas. The traditional Southern Crossing route then heads along Marchant Ridge (famous for its claimed feature of being an up-hill walk in both directions), but we thought we might adapt the main route and take the alternative across the Tauherenikau to Cone Hut, then out at Walls Whare some time on Saturday morning.

I’ve never really packed for something like this before. Craig and I were taking an ice-axe each as a precaution, but with the trip basically being a 15 hour walk overnight without much planned stopping, it’s also tempting to leave out luxuries that might weigh a bit. For a while I was concerned that I don’t really own a pack designed for shorter overnighters — the next size down that I have from my 70 litre Macpac pack is a 28 litre daypack, which is very nice for daywalks but it wasn’t quite enough for what I had in mind. As it turned out, I think I ended up packing almost the same as what I would on a typical weekender anyway, except for less food, and minus a couple of token extras (like Crocs). I also substituted my thermarest for a foam mattress, which to my surprise I managed to fit completely inside my pack. I figured that if the situation reached a point where I needed either of them, we’d likely be stuck on snow. Despite being less comfortable, the warmth insulation properties of foam mattresses outshine inflatable thermarests by a long way.

It’s difficult to skimp on things while still feeling safe. I’ve seen people leave things before on the assumption that they’ll use back-country huts, but I feel very uncomfortable doing this. Even with the well-maintained back-country huts along the Southern Crossing these days, you can never safely rely on a hut with 100% certainty in New Zealand’s back-country. Huts are a fall-back safety thing and typically if you’re in trouble and you reach a back-country hut, you’ll almost certainly be okay, but they might also be burnt down or full of smelly people, or you might not reach one as planned if you break a leg. They should really only be treated as a convenient luxury once you’re already there. Ultimately I think I got my pack for an overnight walk in the Tararuas (without water) down to about 13 kilograms including the ice-axe, which for me is akin to me not taking a hard-cover library book, so it’s not much of a saving. It wasn’t too concerning though, as I think I could still happily walk up to Kime with that sort of weight in the time we’d planned reasonably comfortably.

But, we’re not going now. Earlier today we were getting ready to leave, but in an anti-climatic phone conversation a couple of hours ago, we decided to call it off. Unfortunately the cloud’s just getting worse, and Craig commented that he thinks it’ll probably get sucked even further into the hills late this evening.

Next time, perhaps.

It’s not too bad. Realistically it wasn’t going to happen tonight, although I say this now before tonight’s happened at the risk of looking silly. I think all the preparation has gotten me even more enthused to attempt this at the next practical opportunity if I’m able to, whether it happens to be next month or a year from now.

Stacey and I went for a walk down into the central city, 20-50 minutes away depending on urgency, and the view over the harbour was iconic of these kinds of days. Much of the mist would have evaporated by the time we saw it at 11.30am, but with the Orongorongas highlighted by their contrast in the background behind the city and the harbour as they lead towards the southern extent of the Tararuas, it’s a good sight all the same.

It was an expensive day. I’ve had a busy week at work for various reasons, and a certain amount of stress has been compounded my the loss of my miniature Silva L4 head-torch (like this one). It’s not the losing of the torch that irked me, but that being in mid-winter without a torch has meant I haven’t been able to take the much more scenic and through-the-forested-town-belt route on my walk home from work every night. It was the original head-torch that I bought for tramping several years ago, easily durable enough to have been through the washing machine a couple of times without a scratch. When I had more time for amateur astronomy, the red LED doubled as an excellent light for reading of star maps and fiddling with observing tools in the dark with minimal interruption of night vision.

The only thing I disliked about the Silva L4 was changing the batteries. Even in full daylight, at home and armed with a full selection of kitchen implements, I’ve never been able to get the thing open to change the batteries in less than 10 minutes. I dreaded the day that I might be trapped in the dark having to fight with it, and this was part of the reason I ultimately replaced it. The other reason I replaced it was that as great as it is for short range light, there’s not a very strong beam and so it wasn’t ideally suited for tramping at night, which is something I’ve been doing a lot of lately. Since I retired it from tramping in favour of a Black Diamond Icon, which I like for different reasons, the L4 has experienced its retirement as a handy light-weight torch that I’d simply carry everywhere I went, and was thus very handy any time I decided I wanted to walk home in the dark via the scenic routes.

I’d been looking around the house for 2 weeks, searching everywhere I could think of. With no success whatsoever, I finally decided this morning to accept it was gone, and buy a new one. After some brief research, I decided that a Black Diamond Gizmo was about what I wanted, and it was also the price I was prepared to pay (roughly $40). Literally 20 minutes later, Stacey and I were sitting on a bench in Courtenay Place, I had my back-pack on my lap, and I found my old Silva L4 lodged in a gap between the outside of my daypack and its harness. I walk that daypack to work and back every day and it must have been lodged there for a good 2 weeks. Irony abound. So now I have two quite nice torches for walking home with. I think I might try the Gizmo for a while and see how I like it for coming over the hill at night.

The torch wasn’t my most costly purchase of the day. As of a couple of weeks ago, I’ve needed new boots. I’ve been using some relatively light-weight Zamberlans for non-alpine tramping for a while and they’ve been going well, but after a couple of weeks ago I decided they were just too worn out. It doesn’t seem to matter which boots I get or how carefully I look after them between going tramping, they only ever seem to last 2 years. I guess they get thrashed to an extent when I use them (especially rivers, mud and scree), but I’ve more or less decided that when I’m out enjoying myself, I’m not going to sacrifice that enjoyment or safety to look after gear. I’ll do whatever I need to to look after gear when it’s at home, but I very rarely rock-hop over rivers to prevent water getting in, for instance, because I’m not personally very comfortable balancing on rocks when I find can feel more secure wedging my foot on something underwater and just let my feet get wet.

I’ve been looking at what’s available for a couple of weeks, and unfortunately the selection of stocked tramping boots in Wellington retailers is quite feeble right now. I eventually narrowed it down to a pair of Scarpa Trek boots, though. These are about the simplest boots that Scarpa makes, and to be honest it’s part of the appeal. Maybe I’m not careful enough, but I’ve had all kinds of frustrating problems with boots in the past. It’s usually related to bits and pieces such as boot-lace eyelets popping off, things bending and poking holes through my gaiters, seams coming un-glued then catching on things and tearing off even worse. The list goes on. Plus, I’m really sick of Gore-Tex lined boots. It’s very difficult in tramping shops to get boots that aren’t Gore-Tex lined, even though they take the better part of a week to properly dry out once they’re saturated, and it’s typical in New Zealand to walk in rivers and get boots saturated inside and out when tramping.

If I followed the advice of a tramping friend, I’d give up on the flashy branded imports and excepting alpine conditions, run around the Tararuas and Ruahines in something from Para Rubber (which he does and he’s been at it for 20+ years), but I haven’t quite evolved to that level of thinking yet. I’m hoping the Scarpas will prove to be reliable and less likely to break, and I guess we’ll see. They have a good reputation for that kind of thing, at least. At a glance the construction seams reasonably sturdy, there aren’t many obvious seams that might come apart and catch on things (one of the first things I checked), and they’re not Gore-Tex lined. I guess I’ll need to wear them in over a day or two of walking in them, then I’ll see how they go. It’s strange in a way — I never thought I’d own more than a couple of pairs of shoes. Now I own six. Five are directly connected with walking or tramping and the last pair I only own because I needed to attend a job interview.

I dropped into work for a couple of hours this afternoon to tidy up a few things that I couldn’t do during the week, said hello to a few others working on the weekend, and then noticed that the Tinakori Hill was enshrouded in a wonderful cloud. How quaint. So now armed with two head torches in my day-pack, I made my way up and over the Tinakori Hill for the first time in several weeks. It was fun and I’m glad of it. Standing on the top of the hill and looking down over the stillness of the cloud covering Wellington City, faint shapes were still visible in the distance and despite it being a 20 minute grind to get up here from the city side and adding 10-15 minutes to my walk home, it reminded me of why I enjoy it so much irrespective of the weather or the time of day or night. Plus, it was dark enough under the trees for me to be able to try out my torch on the other side. All in all a good day.

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.

I’ve never lived in Auckland and it’s not a place I know much about, but I was very surprised to discover that it’s not actually legal to walk over the Auckland Harbour Bridge. After all, if it’s illegal to cross the bridge without a vehicle then it seems like a very long way to walk between St Mary’s Bay and Northcote Point. Google Maps tells me that it turns a 7.1 km walk straight over the bridge into an estimated 12.5 hour 60.8 km walk, complete with warnings from Google Maps about possibly not having adequate footpaths along the way! Perhaps someone with a better knowledge of Auckland could confirm if this is accurate? It seems very strange, though. Several other bridges that come to my mind all have free walking routes — these being the Sydney Harbour Bridge (in Sydney), the Brooklyn Bridge (in New York), and the Manhatten Bridge (also in New York). Not having something similar for an iconic bridge in a place such as Auckland seems to be a confounding oversight!

The whole thing reminds me of a few years ago. The day after I finished writing up my Masters’ Thesis I had nothing else to do at university except turn up to my office and stare blankly at the wall for 16 hours, but instead I decided to just start walking towards the Hutt Valley for as long as I could before either getting bored or exhausted. This went well until I neared Petone, walking along the cycle lane that’s embedded in a thin strip between State Highway 2 and the railway line, and therefore I think many Wellington cyclists would be familiar with this area. After about 6 km of straight walking between Ngauranga towards Petone, the barrier between the cycle way and the road disappeared and final 400 metres of this cycle-way was fully open to high speed traffic, and not at all well conditioned for walking on.

I suppose cyclists are used to this kind of thing, but I certainly wasn’t and standing on the edge of a crash barrier with nowhere to run if a high speed vehicle gets too close is very unnerving. I certainly wasn’t going to turn around and walk all the way back to Wellington, though. I managed to cross the barrier in the middle of State Highway 2 and caught an old lady turning out of Horokiwi Road, who neglected to ask me what I was doing but happily offered to give me a ride to wherever I was going. She didn’t seem to understand the concept of me only wanting to get a ride for the 400 metres which I couldn’t comfortably walk, so I just told her I was on my way to Petone.

Straight after that incident, the whole thing just felt wrong to me. There shouldn’t be places where it’s possible to drive but not safely walk. The only feasible way I can think of to walk to Petone without walking along that road would be to head out towards Johnsonville or Newlands and somehow get through Belmont Regional Park, which is ridiculous when there’s such a direct route. It’s a double tragedy that the stretch of coast between Ngauranga and Petone would make a truly awesome walkway if it were able to be developed as such. It’d be one of those walkways that’s fantastically sunny in good weather and would get fantastically thrashed by exciting waves in bad weather. Presently, however, it’s nothing more than a metropolitan railway line and commuter highway to shunt workers between Lower Hutt and Central Wellington.

Another area in Wellington which I think could be vastly improved for walking is the coast-line along-side Pauatahanui Inlet.

I grew up near here, and every so often I end up in the area. A couple of years ago I came out of Belmont Regional Park on provincial SH58, walked around to Pauatahanui, spent half an hour browsing through the Wildlife Reserve, then began to make my way back towards Paremata to hop on a train home as it got dark. The problem, which I hadn’t expected, was that the coastal road around Pauatahanui Inlet is nothing more than a road, and there’s virtually zero space for walking between the open road and a steep drop-off into the harbour. Despite having a reasonable torch, I spent more than an hour crawling along the edge of the road, hugging the crash barrier and often clinging to the harbour side of it for protection every time a car sped around a corner. As soon as I found an opportunity, I ducked into Whitby and walked triple the distance simply to get away from such an awful un-walkable road. It’s a shame, because this could be an awesome walk around a beautifully scenic part of Porirua Harbour. As it is, it’s an uneasy potential death-trap for anyone who chooses not to shield themselves in a vehicle.

I generally think of the Wellington region as being extremely walkable and for that I’m proud of it, especially compared with some of the alternatives in New Zealand and around the world. It still has its share of places that could be improved, however. As for people who like walking and cycling in Auckland, well if the situation is as it seems then I hope they eventually get their access route over the harbour bridge. Being required to own and use a car simply to access the most obvious and shortest-by-an-order-of-magnitude route from A to B is really sucky.

An underlying problem in New Zealand walking recreation is being aware of the places where public right of access is available. With some areas it’s obvious, such as national parks, but with others it isn’t. Land Information New Zealand, which produces the most commonly used 1:50000 maps of the entire country, would seem to be the most obvious authority on the subject, but LINZ has never been given a clear directive, nor the funding (presumably), to produce and maintain accessible maps of where public rights of access exist. LINZ even prints a disclaimer on all of their maps which states “The representation on this map of a road or track does not necessarily indicate public right of access”.

Without adequate maps, discovering what is publicly accessible land can be a mission. Gaining permission is often necessary to access public lands, such as when needing to walk over privately own farms. Sometimes simply figuring out if land is public or private, and then locating the appropriate person to ask for permission, can be challenging and time consuming, and disproportionate to whatever recreational activity a person might be hoping for. With the effort required, some people don’t bother to seek permission when they should, often leading to more problems and bad feelings.

Land-owners, especially those with operational farms, often their own legitimate concerns and sometimes motivations to deny access, especially if they’ve experienced people in the past who have caused problems through ignorance or otherwise. For instance, it’s a common complaint that recreational walkers might damage the land, leave farm gates open or closed when they shouldn’t be, spook animals, make annoying noise at 2am, and so on. The Walking Access Commission can play a helpful role by negotiating on everyone’s behalf, by resolving conflicts, and where appropriate by encouraging and providing enough information to allow people to contact land-owners themselves and to act respectfully as appropriate.

The Request For Proposals for the new system (PDF link), which lists the requirements, makes interesting reading with regard to what the commission wants. It outlines a system that should be able to graphically represent regions, roads and strips in a 1:50,000 scale to match and overlay maps that already exist, store relevant contact information and links for areas of land, and help the commission track various meta-data about particular pieces of land, such as historical issues and complaints and resolutions.

The RFP indicates a hopeful schedule of a signed agreement by July 2009, and a ready system a year later. With any luck if an agreement is reached with a suitable provider, then perhaps by mid to late 2010 we could all be better informed about where it’s legal to walk in New Zealand.

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!

At Totara Flats in the Tararua Range, March 2007

It was raining outside. A lot.

If you think this sounds familiar, it might be because you’ve already heard of Te Araroa (The Long Pathway). It’s a project, so far 10 years old, managed by the Te Araroa Trust to create a walkway the length of New Zealand, both by setting aside existing tracks and by building new tracks. Just yesterday in fact, the Te Araroa Trust posted a response to the media hype about the possibility of doubling up the two routes in as many places as possible, re-assuring people that Te Araroa won’t be dumbed down for walkers in order to accommodate the flatter and lower types of terrain more suited to cyclists.

As Michelle noted, a cycleway probably would add to tourism and it’s likely to generate more money from tourism than a walking trail. What makes me suspicious, though, is that New Zealand’s already had many years, during which cycling has been increasing in popularity, to do exactly this. If the numbers overwhelmingly stacked up, we should have seen this idea become popular without a recession 5 years ago. Perhaps nobody had the idea, or (more likely) nobody thought to suggest it to the government?

The primary reason for it to happen right now, which I don’t think many would deny, is to keep people in work and producing something during a time when jobs are scarce. If we’re doing it because it’s a great thing to have then fantastic, but if it’s simply to keep people working then I’m curious to know what other projects (if any) people could be working on that might produce something more immediately beneficial than a cycleway. Perhaps one advantage is that it might create certain types of jobs in areas that traditionally suffer most during recessions, such as smaller towns.

I’m not an economist of course. Doubtless we’ll see some clearer numbers about the whole thing before it properly goes ahead, which will hopefully compare it with alternative proposals, and I’d like to be proved wrong. It still sounds like a cool thing to have, and I feel generally good about anything that reduces reliance on cars for arbitrary and stupid reasons such as not actually having footpaths. Having recently been trapped in a hotel in New Jersey, thanks largely to design around roads, was a reminder of this, but it also occurs in New Zealand on a smaller scale. eg. Walking or cycling from Wellington out to Petone involves a nice, fenced-off cycleway for the first hour of walking before you’re suddenly thrown into a very exposed un-barriered region of State Highway 2 for the final 400 metres! If it isn’t economically justified and simply happens to be politicisation, I suppose at least we’ll get a nice national cycleway out of it.

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.

The entire trip was eye-opening for a variety of reasons. For instance, I finally know what people are talking about when they refer to Central Park in New York. It was quite interesting but to me, I guess it seemed like more of an afterthought of a design in a city of rectangles. The city’s architects realised they were building everywhere, so they carved out a nice rectangle in the middle where they’d grow a few trees, add some fountains and let the squirrels run around. Down the road, a billboard loudly proclaims a line from Frank O’Hara stating “One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes. I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life.” Gah! I just can’t get over how rectangular and artificial the whole place is. It’s so excruciatingly organised into squares and straight lines with no flow between two places unless it makes compete logical sense, and Central Park is just another part of the city’s jigsaw. I suppose I’ve grown up in a place quite different. Doubtless many people who come to Wellington or another area in New Zealand would miss the things that they were used to. Some of the park benches in Central Park are amusing. In Wellington they’re mostly boring, because they’re only ever dedicated to dead people (no disrespect intended). Central Park benches often have funny little creative quips on them. The most amusing that I found was “I love you very much and look forward to marrying you… but if we have a fight you can always sleep here.”

The Bell X-1 that Chuck Yeager flew,
becoming the first to break the sound barrier.

The Lunar-Earth-Module that would have
travelled to the Moon with Apollo 18, had
it not been cancelled.

I actually had a nice time added up, and Washington DC was by far the highlight for me, especially the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. The Spy Museum was also a lot of fun, and the Holocaust Museum was very eye-opening, though I’d only made it half way through the top floor of about four floors before I was kicked out at closing time. They suggested that about 2 hours was normally sufficient but I think I could easily have spent all day there. A quirk in DC is that the slogan they’ve been putting on most of their vehicle licence plates since about the year 2000 or so — “Taxation without representation” — is actually a protest as opposed to the glittery promotion slogans of most other states. The issue is that thanks to US constitutional anomalies, DC residents don’t actually get a voting representative in the US congress, and after a very large amount of arguing there’s still been no resolution about how to give them such representation, or even a clarification that they should have it. Interestingly one of the last actions of President Bill Clinton before he left office in 2000 was to have all presidential vehicles re-fitted with licence plates brandishing the “Taxation without representation” slogan. Clinton was a supporter of DC’s state-hood, and this might have made things awkward for George Bush Jr when he entered office, who was an opponent.

Taxation without representation.
It’s a common slogan on
license plates in DC.

One of a long line of statues of
the Korean War Memorial.

DC lights up its memorials at night, including the war memorials. Walking along the Vietnam memorial to arrive at the Lincoln memorial, then turning back and passing the eerily-lit Korea memorial which is made of many silent, dark and sombre statues of service-men sitting in a field, is a unique experience.

Back in New York, I did the main tourist things. The first time I visited Brooklyn I never went above ground, because I’d arrived there accidentally on the subway. I spent an entire day in the Museum of Natural History (dinosaurs and meteorites), another entire day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (ancient Rome and Greece, ancient Egypt, middle-age warfare), I spent an evening at the Museum of Modern Art (just generally weird and choc-full of strange drawings of curiously shaped people missing their clothing by people like Picasso).

Even the NYPD has to be lit up
in Times Square.

I went to see Wicked on Broadway from what must have been one of the worst seats in the Gershwin Theatre, and from which I could see about a third of the stage. It only cost me about 140 New Zealand Dollars. Having seen it, I don’t think that particular Broadway show was any more spectacular than what might tour Wellington from time to time, but the telling difference is that New York has 39 major Broadway theatres just in the top tier that are always running flat out every night, whereas Wellington may have a couple that run intermittently at best. I walked to Brooklyn over the Manhatten Bridge, and back over the Brooklyn Bridge, I went to a lecture hosted by the New York Academy of Sciences on the 40th floor of the new 7 World Trade Center about the science of taste, and I caught a train up north of New York and went for that hike around a place in which I wasn’t really sure about where I was going. On top of all of this, Shaun and Sarah spent a large amount of their spare time and money taking me around many of the places they enjoy in New York. Having friends in a place is a great thing.

I think the part I found very disturbing was something that seems typical for many large cities. A couple of years ago I spent a month in Santiago, where it’s quite common to see people living on streets. It was also very common to see people being employed in jobs that I don’t think would be available in New Zealand. The strangest of these that I saw were the people whose jobs involved sweeping leaves off the footpaths. It wasn’t specifically that they were employed to do this, but that they were being employed to do it even when it made no sense to do so. On several occasions I walked behind a person sweeping leaves on a windy day, only to have the leaves block straight back to where they were within seconds of the worker passing by. It was completely redundant in practical terms, but it was his job. The point to this kind of job, however, was to keep people in work in a country with no real social welfare system, where the only fall-back that many people have to losing their job is hoping that their family might support them, or begging on the streets. Those people were doing something that what absolutely pointless, but they actually had jobs, whereas many other people didn’t have anything.

Perhaps though naivety, I didn’t expect that New York would be quite like this, being within the USA and everything. In some ways, however, it was. In the middle of winter during which the temperature was often below freezing, there were a large number of people living on the streets. This is something I have trouble understanding, and I feel very uncomfortable about, particularly because it feels as if it’s being ignored by so many of the people who live there, even though I know it probably isn’t. There’s just something wrong about the whole thing when you see a guy settling down on the footpath in Times Square surrounded by tens of thousands of people racing away to their expensive Broadway shows and ignoring him. Huge neon signs light up the surrounding buildings, advertising some kind of telecommunications firm or telling everyone that the sign is powered by wind! There’s money flitting around everywhere, but it’s very selective about its destinations. Meanwhile, everything the guy owns fits in the shopping trolley in front of him, which he’s chained to his wrist. 50 metres down the road, someone else is having exactly the same problem. Meanwhile a woman’s riding around the subway system, hopping on and off trains and pleading people for any spare change they might have in their pockets to help her look after her family. Homeless people are begging passers-by for money frequently, sometimes struggling to reach out of the blankets they’re hiding under on a cold evening, or other times they might be quite jovial, smiling and just trying to get people’s attention and approval in any way they can. In the time I was there, I never met any homeless people who acted rudely towards me, and if I couldn’t offer them anything it was just accepted.

It’s as if there’s a disconnected form of altruism operating between people in similarly unfortunate situations, since they know if they’re as polite as possible to someone, then that person might donate to someone else in the future… and the favour will probably come back to them sooner or later.

I can’t help but feel that it’s a really disgusting thing that any society is able to get this way, but it happens everywhere and all the time. It’s not just an issue of people being homeless and there are many more problems of similar magnitude, not just in New York or the USA, but all over the place including New Zealand. What this particular problem does is to put itself where everyone has the opportunity to see it, and it’s discomforting to see how easy it is for people to become largely desensitised. This is why I don’t know if I could ever easily live in a metropolis. By the end of the trip and once I’d figured out how much money I actually had and what I needed, I started stashing a few dollars in my pockets to make it easier to give them to people who were really having a hard time. It wouldn’t have solved their problem, and by itself probably not even gotten them through another complete day, but it helped me to feel better. I really don’t know if that’s a very noble way of thinking of things, but at the same time I also don’t know what else to do.

An ironic note is that throughout all of history, we’re probably on average living in the best time one could possibly live in as far as prosperity, freedom and quality of life are concerned. Knowing this still doesn’t help people who don’t have that advantage of a reliable roof over their heads.

I was browsing Bob McKerrow’s weblog this morning, which is typically fascinating reading, and he’s pointed out a 2005 study by Erik Monasterio, a psychiatrist, who suggests that over a four year period, 8.2% of experienced New Zealand mountain climbers might have suffered fatal accidents — that’s a mortality rate of around 1 in 12 in four years. Bob has also noted, through several quotes, that New Zealand mountains can be exceptionally dangerous due to their proximity to marine weather patterns, but are often underestimated due to their low altitudes when compared with mountains overseas.

The details of Erik Monasterio’s study were published in the New Zealand Medical Journal some time ago, and although it was intended to collect psychological characteristics of climbers, it also produced interesting (albeit very preliminary) results about accidents.

The study involved a survey of 49 experienced New Zealand climbers. Between them, there had already been 16 moderate accidents and 10 severe accidents (the latter meaning hospital for three months or more). When the original survey was followed up four years later, seven had retired from climbing and a further four of the respondents had died in climbing accidents — two of whom were qualified mountain guides and all of whom had been climbing for at least five years. Two of these deaths were avalanche-related, and two died as a consequence of falls. Two more had had moderate accidents involving hospital admissions for between a week and three months.

The author correctly notes that the data is crude in several ways as well as likely to be biased, and more detailed and carefully collected data from larger studies would be very interesting to see, but 8.2% of experienced New Zealand climbers dying over four years is still a huge proportion compared with what I personally expected it would be.

Last year we had a tramping club talk from Lee Davidson, who spoke about her PhD topic of investigating the types of people who take up mountaineering as a sport. I joked about it during my report about climbing Mt Travers (technically very tame compared with what serious climbers do), but it’s true that these people who climb seriously are in a different category to be so devoted to a pastime that has such a high level of risk, and which routinely claims lives of people who are considered experts among their peers.

For outsiders, the obvious nearby recreation area is Egmont National Park, which has the usual range of back-country huts and trees and mountain scenery. Within New Plymouth, however, there are a lot of places where it’s possible to go walking.

In the last few years, New Plymouth’s waterfront area has been renovated to make a 7 km coastal walkway. It’s a good walk in the sunshine, but if you have warm clothes and a decent raincoat, I personally think it’s an even better walk being thrashed by the waves and salt spray of the Tasman Sea crashing every few seconds, keeping in mind that there are safety advisories for walking some parts of it when the weather is too rough. It stretches from the outlet of the Waiwhakaiho River (near Lake Rotomanu which is another nice short walk) on the eastern end to the Port of Taranaki on the western end, passing the town centre at the mid-way point. I included some notes about walking along the Waiwhakaiho River in an earlier post.

On the other side of the town centre, a few minutes from the coast, is on of the entrances to Pukekura Park, which in another town might be referred to as Botanic Gardens. The park exists around several recreational lakes and includes some good short walks. It’s a good place to visit to kill time, or to sit down and read a book. The main gate is near town, but the park reaches quite deep back into suburbia, which makes it a nice route to walk in. It’s actively looked after by volunteers as well as the local council (I’m presuming). The Friends of Pukekura Park have a website which is somewhat more descriptive than the local council.

Half a kilometer away from Pukekura Park, the Te Henui Walkway is another very nice way to walk from the suburbs into the town centre. It’s a river-side walk which follows the Te Henui river under the trees, through picnic areas, and eventually out to the Coastal Walkway east of the town centre.

Lake Mangamahoe from the main
lookout point at the northern end.

On this visit, I also went out to see Lake Mangamahoe for the first time, which is a 5 minute drive south of New Plymouth along State Highway 3. Lake Mangamahoe is New Plymouth’s main water supply, but it has a very nice walk around its edge. The walk is labelled as taking 2 hours, although it’s easily do-able in less or more depending on conditions and preferences. There’s a road subjected to pot-holes along the entire western side of the lake, with a carpark at each end.

The lake has a lot of bird life.

It was raining when I arrived, and if I’d planned I would have been wearing shorts because although it’s a nice walking track, some of it involves wading through long grass which quickly transfers a lot of water when it’s walked through. Apart from wet trousers and water-filled sneakers, however, the walk was really nice. Perhaps due to the rain, nobody else was visiting at the time except for a couple of people on mountain bikes, who quickly disappeared to the nearby mountain biking area.

I like the rain, and I enjoy walking through it. It brings out an atmosphere of a place which is often missed if one only ventures outside in hot and sunny weather.

Looking towards Mt Taranaki/Egmont from the northern end.
It’s a wonderful view, with or without the mountain back-drop.

The idea of this specific house began in Denmark. The house is a module that can be lived in, but it has six legs attached and is designed to slowly walk through the landscape in a nomadic fashion, challenging the ideas that a dwelling should exist in a fixed place. The house is powered by solar cells and small wind turbines. It even has a wood-stove, and photos of the interior remind me of a typical New Zealand back-country hut. At present it’s more an art project and an engineering prototype, but as Mr Soervin was commenting, the plans to build it are available and they’re willing to help anybody who might want to build their own.

What I find at least as interesting are the ideas that are being expressed in association with this house. The radio interview covered some of these ideas, but they’re also discussed on the website. Considering it’s a house that’s able to move, it should be no surprise that its creators are very interested in concepts of property rights of land, and how they’re seen. Specifically, the very concept of exclusive fenced-off property boundaries are not conducive to a house that’s designed to walk. Not surprisingly, the creators are keen to provoke discussion about whether land should be divided up and sold in exclusive ways, rather than keeping land accessible for everyone.

The concept of land being accessible by everyone and not subject to ownership is not easily compatible with the modern ideas of dividing and selling, but it’s certainly not new. Even in New Zealand, before European settlers arrived, “ownership” of land was largely a foreign concept to the native occupants. It’s land, after all. Land is live in, not owned, and the idea of telling people that they can’t walk on it because somebody happens to own a particular rectangle of space is an abstract and foreign concept to grasp. Treating land as any other form of property helps to make things nice and simple for commerce, because it provides a clear way for people to be able to buy their privacy, but it doesn’t come without side effects that inhibit other things.

The differences in fundamental concepts of ownership probably helped contribute to some early misunderstandings where Maori natives “sold” land to European immigrants, without initially realising that the buyers’ concept would then be to fence of access so it was no longer available. (Without going into too much detail, it would obviously be misleadingly simplistic to say that all of New Zealand’s historical problems were for this reason, of course.)

Ideas about property ownership have a lot of relevance to New Zealand. Much of New Zealand is publicly owned and available to everyone. Much of it isn’t, however, and especially in recreational circles, access rights to privately owned land are a hot topic. In the past I’ve already written about how irked I’ve been that so much of the Kaimanawas happens to be fenced off from casual access due to exclusive private ownership, and I see this as an example of the negative side effects.

It’d be naive to expect that the ways of treating land ownership will radically change in the foreseeable future, and in many ways there are good reasons for it that help society to function. I do think it deserves continual consideration, however. Sometimes ideas just get so entrenched that people take them for granted. If I ever own a walking house, I’d like it to be able to walk further than the property that I can afford. It looks like a very fun idea, if slightly impractical for New Zealand in its current form.

In case you didn’t know, a hydration bladder is a water-holding bladder with a hose attached. They typically sit in a pack that you’re wearing, and the attached hose makes it easy to keep sipping water on an ongoing basis without having to stop and unpack a water bottle. In this day and age, a variety of backpacks are designed for use with hydration bladders, and often have a small gap through which a hose can be fed. Platypus is the brand-name for a well known line of hydration bladder products put out by a holding company called Cascade Designs, which also does a bunch of other well known outdoor brands like MSR and Therm-a-Rest. Their main competition in the trendy-looking shiny-hydration-bladder industry, at least in New Zealand, seems to come from CamelBak, which makes a range of backpacks designed to hold hydration systems, but will also sell the plastic bladders individually.

A plethora of more generic brands also exist, which are typically much cheaper and probably at least as good. Thanks to the name recognition, however, “Platypus” and “CamelBak” are often used as generic names, at least in the circles where I associate, to simply mean “some kind of water hydration system that isn’t a cheap and nasty plastic bottle”. I discovered this when I noticed that many people were referring to my Platypus as a Camelbak without really caring that it wasn’t. Ironically now that I have a Camelbak, I’ve already heard at least two people refer to it as a Platypus, and nobody has yet called it a Camelbak. They’re basically all water bladders, and for some reason not many people seem to like boasting that they’re drinking out of their bladder. Maybe this is why there’s a preference for using the brand names.

At first I didn’t have a special reason for buying a hydration bladder. I’d happily used a regular drink bottle for a lot of daywalks. When I decided to get more involved in overnight tramping, however, I saw them on the shelf and thought that it’d be neat to be able to just keep on drinking when wearing a bigger pack. Now that I’ve been using it for a while, I think it’d take some effort to adapt my routines back to using a regular bottle.

I began with a 2 litre Platypus Big Zip II Hydration System. There are several variations of Platypus to choose from, as well as many accessories. The Big Zip II version of Platypus has one end which opens widely in a zip-lock fashion. Being able to open the whole end makes it very quick and easy to fill up the full 2 litres from a river, typically by holding it horizontally into the current and just letting the water flow in, then zipping it up while it’s still underwater.

A few months ago, my Platypus finally succumbed to wear and tear. Actually, it mostly succumbed to tear, and specifically because the hose came detached. It was my own lazy mis-treatment that caused it, though. I was trying to yank it out of my pack by pulling the hose after it’d become jammed between the inside of my pack and the liner. I bought a 2 litre Camelbak bladder to replace it, since I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. The Camelbak bladder also has a large opening at one end to make it easier to fill. Instead of a zip-lock opening, though, it’s a wide screw-on lid with a radius that’s almost the width of the bladder itself. I haven’t found it quite as easy to scoop up water from a river using this, but when there’s no tap to hold it under, it still beats trying to fill the thing up through a tiny bottle-neck.

Over time I’ve heard some common complaints or concerns about hydration bladders which I haven’t (yet) experienced, notably:

• The hoses go black, implying that some kind of dirt or mould builds up inside it. Cleaning kits are available (although the official ones tend to be expensive), but personally I’ve never had this problem and I’ve never felt the need to clean my hydration bladder beyond the occasional rinse. A couple of times I did wash it out with dishwashing detergent, which I regretted on one occasion because I hadn’t flushed it out properly before I used it again. Generally though I am usually careful to avoid putting in anything except water, and perhaps the perpetually nice clean hose has something to do with this. Maybe I’ve just been lucky. I guess another possibility is that my standards are just low, and someone else might think that the hose on my hydration bladder looks disgusting.

• They look as if they might puncture easily. They do look flimsy, but I haven’t yet had a case where my hydration bladder’s actually punctured. On the contrary, my Platypus has been very durable and it survived far longer than I expected. This is despite having been thrown around a lot, and definitely having had its share of being dragged through thick branches and scrub. (I don’t strap it to the outside of my pack any more for other reasons, though.)

As far as problems and observations that I have noticed, there are several.

• The zipper can sometimes be hard to close. During the time that I had my Platypus Big Zip II bladder, I repeatedly had problems trying to get the zipper properly closed, especially on cold mornings. It isn’t an issue if the temperature’s okay, but the cold really makes a difference. Perhaps it’s because everything’s condensed a little more than usual and doesn’t want to fit together as nicely. The zipper stays shut very reliably once it’s shut, but trying to get it there has often been an exercise in frustration.

  On some mornings when my fingers were already numb, I’ve spent 15 to 20 minutes trying to find a nicely shaped rock to thump it with, because it’s taken ages to figure out the location of that final gap through which air was escaping before eventually being able to press it shut. Sometimes I’d just leave the bladder resting vertically against a wall for 15 minutes, and the zip would shut itself. Once or twice I’ve given up, thrown it in my pack (outside the pack liner), and simply hoped that it wouldn’t lose too much water.

  This is one of the nice differences I’ve enjoyed with the Camelbak system of having a screw-on lid. Although it’s harder to fill the Camelbak to the top, it’s definitely easier to get it to a state where it’s properly shut.

• The bite valves tend to fall off, although so far I’ve been lucky to avoid losing one altogether. Usually I notice that it’s gone missing because there’s suddenly water dripping down my leg. So far I’ve always been able to find the valve on the ground between leaves and rocks and branches, and re-attach it. They’re small and could be easily lost, though. It took 5 minutes to locate on one occasion, and I think it’s a matter of time until I lose one properly.

  The first time this happened, alarm bells began ringing in my head because I realised that for a whole weekend trip, the hydration bladder was the only thing I had for carrying water. In other words, if I lost the bite valve or if anything else went wrong with it, I could potentially find myself in a certain amount of trouble. Soon after the first time, I went out looking for ways to mitigate the damage should it happen again, and I almost decided to buy myself a shut-off valve to go in the hose. They tend to be attached much more tightly than a typical bite valve, and allow the water to be completely shut off to prevent any leaking out the end of the hose. As I looked at the shutoff valve in the shop, though, it looked more and more familiar until I realised that I actually already had one. The Big Zip II had come with it already attached, but I hadn’t noticed this because the tap on it was impossible to twist. I couldn’t move it with my teeth and in the end I had to find some pliers. After opening and closing it several times in this way, the small plastic tap finally loosened enough so that I could twist it with a lot of effort.

  Since then I’ve decided that I still don’t want to rely on only having a single thing to carry water. I now have a collapsible 1 litre bottle which weighs almost nothing when empty, and I take it everywhere as a back-up way of carrying water in case the main thing fails.

• It’s easier to run out of water when using a hydration bladder, and this is something I’ve also heard as a criticism beyond my own experience. Hydration bladders are typically stored inside a pack where they can’t be seen. If you’re not careful, it’s easy to just keep on sipping without realising that it’s running out. I’ve accidentally run out of water a few times, but I think the worst was during a drought in the Tararuas where we spent the whole day trapped in leatherwood on ridges in hot sunshine, and it wasn’t a fun experience. (Definitely worthwhile, though, as with any experience in the Tararuas.)

  Lately, I’ve developed a personal policy of always allocating at least some of my water to a separate place. If I want to take 2 litres of water, I’ll put a quarter of it inside my collapsible 1 litre bottle, and stash that somewhere else. If and when I do run out of easily accessible water in the bladder, I’ll still have an emergency supply and will know to be more careful about rationing what’s left.

• With large packs, it’s easiest to stash a hydration bladder on the top. This is really personal preference, I guess, and to some extent it depends on the design of the pack.

  When I first started using a hydration bladder, I wasn’t thinking properly about physics. I naively assumed that hydration bladder systems were somehow powered by gravity, and that the hose needed to attach to the bladder at the lowest point. Consequently I spent several months trying to invent ways of slotting it down the side or on the back of my pack. This led to no end of problems.

  Strapping it to the outside is awkward, and especially difficult when its volume changes over time. It was never very stable in such places, and liable to fall off when getting caught on trees and such. Packing well is also very difficult when it’s necessary to account for a variable weight of between 0 and 2 kilograms down one side. Some packs come with pockets or straps on the front, which are advertised as being for hydration bladders, but I have trouble understanding this. I’m not the world’s expert on efficient packing, but if there’s anywhere that I wouldn’t want to strap 1.5-2 kilograms of dead weight, it’d be onto the front of a pack where it’s going to induce the most leverage on my shoulders.

  Fortunately it all finally clicked when it occurred to me that sucking all day on a hose will simply induce a vacuum effect. Consequently, it works perfectly fine to simply chuck it on top in whichever way it fits. It’s not even necessary to take special measures to exhume out all the air before closing it, because the air will just be sucked out between the water.

I’ve found hydration bladder systems to very useful, and I’m glad I have one. If and when I buy another one, it’d be tempting to just go with a cheap one and see if it’s actually any worse. Both Platypus and Camelbak products tend to be on the expensive end, and much of that cost probably goes towards the marketing that told people to buy it in the first place. Accessories and replacement parts are also expensive, especially locally where the prices might be even higher thanks to low numbers of imports. Replacement parts are sometimes priced just barely cheap enough for it to be worth actually buying them rather than just getting a new one. I guess this is part of living in a smaller economy, though, where these days the majority of gear is manufactured and controlled from somewhere else.

This event, and some other recent events, have convinced me that maybe it’s time to fork out some cash and replace the Kathmandu PaceSetter bag that I’ve mostly used recently. I think some people would see the words “Kathmandu” and “Sleeping Bag” in the same sentence (or any gear for that matter), and immediately think that it’s a horrible product. I don’t want to criticise it too much if I can help it, because it’s served me pretty well. At this point I still plan to use it during summer because it’s adequate and probably better suited. It’s usually okay in huts and under an open fly at the low-ish altitudes where I’ve used it, but I can vouch from my own experience that for a sleeping bag that was marketed near the top of the Kathmandu range, I still thought it was… well… flimsy and unreliable, and sometimes cold, at least when it was exposed to places that weren’t under much other shelter.

Consequently, and just in time for mid-Spring (I’m brilliant at timing), I’m now the proud but uncertain owner of a new Macpac Sanctuary 700XP sleeping bag, which I hope will turn out to be more appropriate for some of the winter-like things I want to do in the future. It’s not the warmest bag in the range, but when looking at the relative weights and the loft and down fill, it already seems much warmer than what I already have and without being any heavier.

I say I’m uncertain because I still haven’t made up my mind on what to think about the new Macpac/Fairydown combination. Macpac and Fairydown used to be New Zealand’s two flagship outdoor brands. Unlike many of the imports, they both have a history of having designed and manufactured a lot of gear targeted and suited to New Zealand conditions. It’s also great having brands with relatively local repair shops in New Zealand. For all of this kind of thing they’ve earned a lot of respect from New Zealanders over many years. Having the two traditional competitors spliced into the same company for a streamlined business model just seems weird, though.

For anyone who doesn’t know, last year a company called Mouton Noir (that’s French for “Black Sheep”) purchased the remains of Fairydown, which had gone into liquidation. It aimed to re-design the manufacturing and distribution process and make it competitive once again. This resulted in Fairydown products no longer being available in regular outdoor shops, at least in New Zealand. Mouton Noir eventually opened a small collection of Fairydown retail outlets in major New Zealand centres. They began as Fairydown Liquidation Clearance outlets, but at some point morphed into Fairydown retailers that were selling newly-manufactured products. (I’m not 100% sure if Mouton Noir owned them at the time they were clearance outlets.) I wrote some of my thoughts about this a year ago. I still have mixed feelings about the whole thing, but I’m also coming from my own perspective which isn’t a business perspective, and it sounds as if it’d be difficult for the business to survive any other way, even if it’s sold its soul in a sense.

In February of this year, Mouton Noir also purchased Macpac. Macpac products were immediately withdrawn from all independent outdoor retailers within New Zealand. For a month or so it was sales and clearance galore for existingly-shelved Macpac products, and soon they were all gone. Practically overnight, all of the “Fairydown” retailers suddenly became “Macpac” outlets, to the extent that receipts were still printing with the “Fairydown” name while the signs outside said “Macpac”. Fairydown now exists as a product branding on some of the products in the Macpac shops and seemingly some products are still being manufactured under that brand, but the shops are all called Macpac. As of today, at least in New Zealand, my understanding is that Fairydown and Macpac branded products can now only be bought from the Macpac retailers which exist in various New Zealand centres, or via the Macpac mail order website. (If anyone can correct me on any of this then by all means please do.)

Like many other people, I still don’t have much of a clear idea of exactly what’s going on here or what the implications are, whether it be about the quality of the gear, or the long term business model. There have been a couple of obvious consequences for the Macpac product range since its change of hands, however:

1. Much of the range has disappeared, as Macpac has consolidated things into a few of its former models. This is probably to make things more efficient as the business was being made more viable. For example, since the 2006 catalogue, at least 6 of Macpac’s main range of Tramping packs have disappeared from the menu. (Specifically the Cascade, Glissade, Torre, Traverse, Nikau and Ravine.)

   Perhaps they’ll be back one day if and when the systems get sorted and there’s demand, but for now they don’t seem to be available. This is a shame because if the Macpac Ravine were still available, I think I’d have bought one. It’s a relatively light-weight cut down minimalist single-access tramping pack, which really is ideal for things like pack dragging and bush-bashing compared with all the junky imported packs available on shelves right now. I’ve independently run into quite a few people who swear by Macpac Ravines.

2. Things have gotten cheaper. Notably, my 2008 model of a Sanctuary 700XP sleeping bag is about $200 or $300 cheaper than the previous year’s model. In practice this is great for a consumer because they’re more affordable, but it has made me wonder if the bag being sold under the same model name is actually the same bag, as opposed to something with modifications. I asked the manager in the shop who assured me that it is the same, and that the cheaper price is entirely a reflection of improved and more efficient distribution. It’s made in China, but the old ones were also made in China at least for the last few years, and so is virtually everything that’s imported from overseas these days.

   Also, in this thread over on the Fishing and Hunting website, one of the Mouton Noir people (under the alias of ‘blacksheep’ on page 4 of the discussion) chipped in to re-assure people that it’s only the distribution changes which are affecting the price.

Well, now I have a sleeping bag suitable for colder conditions. Whatever the outcome, I do, at least, expect it to work much more nicely in the cold than my existing one. Since they’ve been shunted around so much, Macpac and Fairydown as brands will really have to earn my trust again, but so far they haven’t produced anything I really didn’t like. I guess time will tell for sure.

In the past few days there’s been another river crossing tragedy in New Zealand, this time at Eggie. Once again, as often seems to be the case, it sounds as if it was someone quite experienced who may have simply made a bad judgement call about whether or not to try and cross, possibly distracted by the bad weather, as well as the thought of being so close to home compared with possibly having to spend another night out.

Drowning accidents are one of the most common ways for people to be killed in New Zealand’s back-country, especially after cases of hypothermia have fallen with the advent of better gear for keeping warm. This is why, I guess, it seems a good idea for anyone who goes tramping a lot to get properly educated in river safety, and to get as much experience as possible. I’ve been working on trying to learn about river safety for a while now, partly through experience and I also signed up to a river safety course about 18 months ago. I’m still nowhere near being an expert, but I’ve noticed a few things I find interesting.

Note that in this post I’m writing about river crossings, and it’s entirely my own opinion. I’m not a qualified instructor (or even notably experienced) and what follows is definitely not authoritative. If you’re interested in learning about river safety, you should consider taking a course taught by an expert. If you’re in New Zealand then a good place to start is New Zealand’s Mountain Safety Council, or a club in your area.

A while ago I was on a club trip and we needed to cross a river, which often happens. This time it had rained overnight and although it wasn’t completely flooded, the river was more aggressive than usual and I quickly made up my mind that there was no way that I was going to get into it by myself. Fortunately this sentiment was shared by others, and we decided to do a group river crossing.

We had to back out of the first attempt. On that occasion I’d linked up on the right-hand end of a line of three people, facing into the current. I was caught unaware because the guy to my left, who was from another group and didn’t know us well, had reached for where the clip was on my hip-belt and it immediately came undone. He seemed as surprised at me having such a clip as I was surprised that he’d tried to grab my hip-belt at all. We eventually figured out that instead of whatever he’d been trying to do, he’d slot his arm between my pack and my back, which had been what I was expecting anyway, and we continued. We managed to get about a metre into the river before having to return to the bank, partly because on the end of the line with an uneven surface, I was having a difficult time finding my footing around some rocks. We eventually made it over in a group of 6, continuing to debate the technique quite vigorously as we were crossing, even though it was probably far too late by that time. So far I have to admit that’s the freakiest experience I’ve had when crossing a river. Although it still turned out okay, I was very relieved when we made it to the other side. Perhaps the best kind of good luck is the kind that you learn something from.

As I mentioned earlier, I took a River Safety course in early 2007, which relayed the current techniques (at that time) being promoted by New Zealand’s Mountain Safety Council. Please don’t actually try to do this unless you know what you’re doing or you’re with people you trust, and if you think I have this incorrect then please post something below and I’ll do my best to correct it, but the basic technique is as follows:

A group of 3 to 5 people (an ideal group size), should stand in a line with one end of the line facing into the current, and with arms linked between backs and packs. Hip-belts are fastened because as long as everyone has a pack liner (which they should), the packs will float people if and when the river gets too deep. Sternum straps are undone because if and when pack-floating begins, people’s packs will lift up and a sternum strap could potentially choke you or cut into your throat. Ditching your pack is something that can be done quickly if absolutely necessary by unclipping the hip-belt — apparently some people even cut off part of their clip to make it even easier to unfasten quickly. Doing this is generally supposed to be an absolute last resort, though, because packs typically offer a lot of protection in a river.

The weakest (or lightest) person goes on the end facing directly into the current, with the strongest person next to them, and everyone else lines up behind them in the shadow of the oncoming current. If the weakest person isn’t confident with being on the end, it may be necessary to re-arrange things. One person, ideally near the centre, coordinates the group by telling everyone what to do, and ensures that everyone stays in a straight line and in the correct orientation during the move forwards. This can be complicated if the ground’s surface is uneven, so everyone has to be prepared, both mentally and physically, to take things as slowly as necessary and to make sure everyone in the group is happy to move every step. There are several techniques for backing up if it turns out the current is too strong, beginning with a simple walking backwards, or alternatively performing a special technique which I think is called “the zipper” (if I remember correctly), and entails a careful and coordinated turning of the line mid-river such that everyone ends up facing back to where they came from.

The unusual trick with this technique of crossing, which can seem counter-intuitive at first, is having the weakest person on the end facing into the current. This contrasts a common variation, which is to place the strongest person on the end into the current. In the technique described above, the weak person on the end is there entirely to break the force of the river, and to make it considerably easier for everyone in their shadow to stay on their feet. Meanwhile, the stronger people in the group have a much easier time in moving the group forwards. Effectively the light person on the end could have their feet completely off the ground, held up by the stronger person next to them, and get a free ride to the other side. They’re fine, as long as they’re not released (accidentally or otherwise)… which is why it’s important to have someone strong holding onto them.

Despite having been in lots of rivers since I took the course, including several group crossings, I haven’t yet experienced a textbook group crossing that matched the techniques we were taught. This might be because I tend to stick to the lower North Island. With a few exceptions, most rivers in the Tararuas and Ruahines stay relatively low unless they’re seriously flooded, in which case nobody should be going near them whether in a group crossing or not. I think another reason why I haven’t experienced a textbook group crossing is that despite the currently promoted techniques being “current”, it’s uncommon for everyone to be up-to-date. This can be seen just by looking at the wide variety of literature on the topic, both from home and abroad. People also vary a lot in skill, experience and intuition of rivers. I’ve been near the occasional river for which my first impression has been that it looks quite risky, yet someone else who I’m with will cross it easily with their trusty walking pole before I’ve finished considering my strategy, as if it’s no problem to them at all.

A few months ago I picked up a book in The Warehouse called The Outdoor Book for Adventurous Chaps (by Adrian Besley) that was reduced to $8 on a bargain shelf. The book’s aimed at a North American market and had sections on all kinds of things, with one section explaining how to cross a river. The technique described in this book is one that’s nothing like I’ve ever encountered before. It suggests that groups of 4 people should hug each other in a kind of circle for stability, with the strongest person facing into the current but being shielded by the others in front of them. In contradiction to what I’ve heard everywhere else, it also suggests undoing all pack straps to make it easier to remove one’s pack in case of an emergency.

Closer to home, Water Safety New Zealand provides a website dedicated to River Safety, complete with a page all about river crossing techniques, which once again contradict other advertised methods when it comes down to some of the details.

Hans Willems (author of such interesting works as North Island Back Country Huts and North Island Back Country Dunnies) describes several techniques in his Tramping Smarter book — which is a beginner’s guide to tramping in New Zealand. One technique involves linking arms in a line while holding a pole to keep the line straight. Another technique (if a suitable rope is available) sends one person over the river at a time, making sure the rope is always anchored in some way by at least two people. The author quite correctly also warns readers not to start using the techniques based simply on the description in a book. This is important because, for instance, using a rope incorrectly can also add other elements of danger such as creating a situation where someone might get tangled up and held underwater. In fact, Water Safety New Zealand goes as far to proclaim on this page that “while ropes may appear to be a good life saving device, unless you have had extensive training it is dangerous to have them in rivers”.

I have to admit that early on I was surprised that there wasn’t simply a clear message about “how to cross a river”. When I first began to learn what I could about river crossing techniques, I’d assumed that the whole thing would surely be very standardised by now. People must have been trying to cross rivers for millenia, and the fact that respected authorities are still debating and discovering techniques for doing so is an intriguing thing.

There are often contradictions between what is advised by organisations between different domains, between countries, and especially by independent people who simply have experience. Add to this that in the space of decades, recommendations groups have changed, sometimes quite dramatically. The idea of putting a light person on the end of a line simply to break the current is a relatively new idea, as is the “zipper” idea that I mentioned for more safely turning the group around mid-river. This means that even for people who have had some formal training, a person’s belief about the correct way to cross a river will often be a reflection on the time when they received that training, especially if they mostly go out on their own or in the same small group of friends.

Underlying the contradictions, however, there are many similarities which transcend specific techniques for getting across. For instance, virtually anyone I know who’s experienced around rivers would advise that it’s silly to even try crossing rivers in certain flooded states because it’s too dangerous. The occasional person, even some very experienced people, won’t follow their own advice for the usual reasons, but nearly everyone will say that attempting to cross flooded rivers is a bad idea under any circumstances.

It seems that much of the skill of crossing rivers when using any system is about identifying when you shouldn’t be crossing at all, and being assertive enough to not try. Other important factors that lie outside the specific techniques include things like choosing an ideal location to cross, and assessing what’s likely to happen if one or more people get swept off their feet, possibly taking the group down with them. (In other words, where will you end up down-stream, and is there anything to stop you?) Irrespective of the technique for crossing, these are the sorts of things that I think predominantly come with experience rather than any kind of instruction, even though instruction is likely to be an important guide. There’s no match for experience, and from a personal perspective I think the experience angle is what I really have to work on at the moment. These days when I’m out with people, I make a point to try and ask them questions about the decisions they’re making.

Changes to the creek outside
Triangle Hut after overnight rain.

Usually I think we’ve been perfectly fine and safe around rivers during trips that I’ve been involved in, and we’ve made good decisions. From time to time there’s a good experience that can be learned from, though. At these times, I think nearly all of the complications that have come up have been either directly or indirectly related to misunderstandings between the people involved. Common issues might be that people don’t necessarily understand what the overall plan is (which is exactly what happened when that guy grabbed the hip-belt of my pack causing it to come undone), when there’s no clear person leading the crossing, when not everyone clearly understands the intended role of themselves or others, when people are pressured into doing something they’re not confident of doing, and when it hasn’t even been made clear what the actual plan is. This assumes, of course, that there even is a plan. There’s more to it than just good leadership, too, since everyone has to take responsibility. In hindsight when I had concerns about the crossing conditions that I mentioned earlier, I probably should have taken aside the trip leader beforehand and discussed them.

I have often wondered if much of it is simply that there’s so much information out there which is inconsistent. Advised best practices change so frequently that it’s completely feasible to have four people in a party who all have different ideas about which way is “best”, and they’d all be correct in their own way. I’m not sure what can really be done about this because obviously it makes sense to keep examining whether current best practices can be improved upon. Furthermore with the evolution of available gear and technology that people have on-hand, it makes sense to expect that this may also have an effect on what are considered best practices in the future.

It’s true that we were there on a weekend that was noted for its unusually severe weather, and as we were sipped hot chocolate in our toasty lodge, about 2,000 skiers were being hastily evacuated from the mountain. Perhaps I’ll never experience that kind of thing again, but one thing I learned was that the people with proper goggles protecting their faces were a whole lot better off than people like me who’d decided to try and put off getting any. It inspired me to buy some proper snow goggles before my next alpine trip, primarily for a safety thing I suppose, just in case. This will probably be a few weeks away, but I thought I’d try to go shopping now before all the stock’s gone, since it’s getting towards the end of the ski season.

And that’s partly it, I guess. They’re virtually all aimed at skiers and snowboarders, where fashion seems to be something that some people take seriously. Or, at least, the retail displays are designed that way. I was fascinated when I walked into a couple of ski shops and the displays were designed so the only way to differentiate between products was the differing colours and patterns. It wasn’t long before I started getting a little frustrated, though. I’ve never done any skiing or snowboarding before and I’ve never owned any real goggles, and the presentation made it difficult to figure out what the functional differences actually were, let alone choose anything based on features.

I’m not used to this. Lots of people criss-cross between tramping and skiing/snowboarding, but the stereotypical fashion goals, or lack of them, tend to be quite different. I think I’m one of those people who has trouble adjusting. At the very least, I’ve never heard of a recreational skier coming home after several long days of generating sweat and not only being proud that they didn’t need to change their underpants for three whole days, but contemplating if they can possibly cut down on weight to be carried in future because of it.

In the end, I was able to scribble down a few brand names and models, and I came home to research it. Even when I went back into town yesterday and today to have another look at some models, I was asked several times if I’d already been “up to the mountain” yet, which I suppose means Ruapehu. I guess they assumed I wanted them for skiing, which is a fair enough assumption. Maybe I’ll use them for that one day, but I received the occasional blank stares or surprise when I explained that I actually wanted them for alpine tramping.

I have some snazzy looking goggles now, and I went for the fashion choice that suits me best. It feels great to know that someone like me can still look hip and groovy when I scale a slope with an ice axe, crampons, and fashionable goggles. I don’t know for sure if they’ll work as I hope they will, but one thing I learned was that functionality is only a secondary concern with these things.

As you can see, I’m a regular fashion
dynamo when I combine my new goggles
with a trendy balaclava.

It’s likely to be a few weeks before I get a chance to test it out properly, but I’m thinking of wearing them to Kapiti Island next weekend, or possibly to work tomorrow.

The first map shows native forest cover throughout New Zealand before humans arrived, which is effectively everywhere except for certain alpine locations where trees won’t grow. The second map displays native forest after Maori settlement, but before Europeans arrived, at which point several large areas of native forest had been cleared. The third map shows the cover of native forest as it is today, by which time the vast majority of the country had been cleared, leaving behind a few delicate islands of native forest. Most of what’s left surrounds mountain ranges, and wasn’t cleared due to the difficulty of farming there anyway. The display very effectively expresses just how much of New Zealand’s original environment has been destroyed to make way for human settlement. It wasn’t only when Europeans arrived in the 19th century, although the European settlement had a major impact.

The rest of this post documents a collection of thoughts that I’ve had over the last few years about the state of conservation in New Zealand. It’s a fairly wide topic and I’m not really sure where it’s going, but I’ll see how things go in writing it down.

If you find the following few paragraphs interesting, you might really enjoy Chris MacLean’s book titled Kapiti, which is probably the most definitive history of Kapiti Island currently in existence. It’s the source of much of the detail of what I’ve written below if it’s not sourced from elsewhere. (There are at least a couple of new copies still available in Wellington bookstores as I write this, retailing for about $50.) Much of this is my opinion obviously, so if you read it you should keep in mind that you’re reading the opinion of some random guy on the Internet rather than an acknowledged expert. My opinion is subject to change, and often does.

A very brief and opinionated history of destruction: Most New Zealanders today — whether in New Zealand or overseas — tend to identify with New Zealand as their home, but it hasn’t been that way until relatively recently. When mostly-European settlers migrated to New Zealand from the 19th century, leaving behind the only home they’d ever known, they brought with them the natural intention of making their new home like their old home, and building the land into something that matched their idea of success. As the New Zealand Company transported more and more immigrants from the far side of the world, with its goal of creating a new “model English society in the Southern Hemisphere”, it became an economic certainty that what was here would soon be gone. It was perfectly natural to wipe out massive regions of native bush so the new arrivals would have access to the land they needed. After all, native bush was everywhere and wasn’t in danger. It served no purpose other than getting in the way of what could be rolling hills that would be useful as productive farmland to help the newcomers survive and prosper, and as a reminder of “home”. In short, New Zealand’s early economy was built on destroying its existing natural resources.

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution was also a trendy topic around the turn of the century. Within New Zealand it may have been more often used to justify what was about to happen than to explain what had already occurred. The fact that native New Zealand species were quickly becoming rare or extinct was well known, but this often wasn’t treated as a serious problem by anyone with influence, because the strange and exotic New Zealand species’ of plants and animals didn’t play a part in the future visions of most newly-arrived immigrants. Old New Zealand was dead in the water, and would soon be built into something much better, and more resembling of the British Empire. Pre-existing species would either evolve to live in the new setting, or they would die and be replaced by the “superior” British species of birds and roaming ground mammals.

In the framework of today’s standards it makes me cringe to think about all of this, but it’s also important to realise that it was a different time. People found themselves in situations where survival was critical. It wasn’t New Zealanders, it was (mostly) British people who had migrated to New Zealand and were still tied strongly to their roots. Priorities weren’t always with figuring out how to be sustainable in a new land they knew and cared little about the history of.

Several of the country’s largest species had already become extinct soon after early Maori settlement, probably for similar reasons of the new arrivals not having immediately reached an equilibrium with the surrounding land. All ten species of Moa were hunted to extinction well before European settlers even arrived, which very likely contributed to the extinction of Haast’s Eagle around the 1400s, which wasa a massive beast that would be the world’s largest Eagle if it had survived until today. The most substantial damage definitely came after European settlement, however, when wave after wave of immigrants arrived looking for a place to make a new start.

Emerging thoughts of conservation: Conservation in New Zealand began as an afterthought, and it often meant something very different from what it means today. Early New Zealand ornithologists such as Andreas Reischek and Walter Buller were very interested in preserving New Zealand species of plants and animals, but for a long time they saw more value in killing the last remaining survivors of rare species while they could still be found, so they could be catalogued as specimens. The birds would soon be extinct, after all, so it was important to preserve their corpses as records of scientific interest in what used to be before the chance was lost. The final refuge of the Huia (now extinct), which used to flourish throughout the lower North Island, was in the Tararua Range. When Buller was given a breeding pair in the 1890s, he had a reasonable chance of saving the species, which by then was known to be critically close to extinction. Instead he took them to England as specimens to add to a collection.

The first official conservation efforts in the changed New Zealand were disorganised and unmotivated in a country whose government and people had other things to worry about at the time. They were mostly restricted to setting aside several “reserves” where there may have been restrictions on certain activities such as felling native trees, but without designing any structured way of ensuring those reserves were effective, such as by keeping them free of pests. Thomas Potts was one of very few people during the mid to late 1800s to make a serious attempt at challenging the wide acceptance of diminishing native forests and birds. Despite his efforts, not much was done quickly. In response to his requests, there are records of New Zealand parliamentarians commenting that native birds might be a nice thing to save, but were certainly not as important as promoting the economic value of farming, which should be given priority.

Introduction of pests: Badly thought-out attempts to promote New Zealand’s economy and recreation value have also had long-lasting severe effects on New Zealand’s ecology. Children in the 1920s were given the day off school to watch the release of the Australian Brushtail Possum in the Wairarapa, which was introduced to promote the fur industry. Today, possums (which eat the eggs and chicks of native birds) are one of the most widespread and destructive pests in New Zealand’s bush. Possums look cute but from a conservation perspective, throwing a rock at one is a good thing, as is aiming the front tyre at any possum to stray onto the road. Stoats are another menace, in this case having been introduced to New Zealand during the late 1800s to control rabbits (also introduced), but they’re particularly vicious, and now known to kill “up to 60% of kiwi chicks and wreak havoc on other native bird populations“.

The introduction of Deer into New Zealand’s native bush also caused unanticipated problems. It was supported by the government of the early 1900s to promote the tourist hunting industry, but Deer have since had a devastating effect on New Zealand’s bush. DOC’s official stance today on Deer in the back-country is basically that they’re still a menace to the eco-system, although the recreational hunting community that has grown since the 1930s argues that it’s better to control the population than try to eliminate it, and attempts to eliminate deer in the past haven’t worked anyway. Ironically, it’s largely because of the Deer problem that New Zealand has such an extensive network of back-country huts and shelters that have become interwoven with the back-country recreational experience. Most of the roughly 1000 huts were originally placed for use by hunters in an attempt to control the deer population during the mid-20th century.

Thoughts about forests: During the recent trip in the Ruahines, Alistair and I were discussing the area of land around the Kashmir road-end. An unusual thing about the Kashmir entrance to the park is that there aren’t actually any trees to walk through on the way to the tops — it’s exposed the entire way up to Longview Hut. This isn’t because trees have never been there, but until relatively recently the area was grazed as farmland. With much of the soil eroded, native bush isn’t easily coming back. According to a chap we met at Longview, the pine forests planted near the Kashmir road-end were put there to help reduce soil erosion, although it has the feeling of putting a problem off until later. Pine trees are a pet gripe of mine because as nice as they are to walk through at times, I’ve generally felt that they don’t really belong in New Zealand… except for the purpose for which they’re here which is to be factories for paper or timber. On the Abel Tasman Coast Track a couple of years ago, we met some French-Canadian tourists who’d been driving along State Highway 1 and were horrified to see vast forests of pine trees being chopped in a country they had probably been told was supposed to be a paradise for forests. As much as I thought it was a shame they’d seen plantation forests of Pinus Radiata instead of next to New Zealand’s main state highway, I couldn’t share their sympathies for the fact that the forest was being chainsawed. The truth is that plantation pine trees grow quickly and they’ll be back again within 30 years, unless the land gets used for something else.

New Zealand’s native bush regenerates slowly. Most of what’s left in New Zealand remains because it surrounds mountainous areas that weren’t valuable for productive use when the country was first colonised. For a very long time, even into the 21st century, logging of New Zealand native timber has been a controversial topic. Massive trees can take hundreds of years to properly mature, but have been completely cleared from some areas because the immediate needs (or wants) of New Zealanders took precedence. For as long as a century there have been efforts to log native forests sustainably, most visibly through the NZ Forestry Service which existed until 1987. On the other hand, there has also been confusion about how to be sustainable, and how to design legislation and systems so as to most usefully balance whatever needs exist in the economy with the regeneration of the native forests. An entry on Rimu in the 1966 Encyclopaedia of New Zealand proudly proclaims that Rimu is the “main native timber” in use and “likely to remain indefinitely in this position”, but then confusingly seems to contradict itself in the next sentence by stating that “the quantities available will fall rapidly in the next one or two decades as resources become exhausted”.

Tramping outside mountains: Personally, I’ve sometimes wondered what things might be like for recreation if New Zealand had more low-land areas for tramping in. In other words, what would it be like if so much land hadn’t been cleared for farming? Most New Zealand tramping takes place within or near some kind of mountain range, simply because the vast majority of low-land areas have been cleared for farmland and other use for which native bush would get in the way. The longer I think about it, the more I wonder if the actual walking would be anywhere near as interesting as what we have at the moment, although this might be a reflection of what I’m already used to. What I really enjoy about walking around mountains is that the landscape is constantly changing. There’s always another corner just up ahead or another hill to climb, and it’s often a great surprise to find out what’s on the other side. It might just be another clump of trees, or it might be a whole new spectacular vista of mountains in the distance. Walking through low-land plains surrounded by trees and with less variation in the shape of the land, I don’t think I’d find the walking to be quite as interesting.

There are plenty of other reasons why it could be enjoyable besides walking, and lots of good reasons to restore it. When visiting the Peruvian side of the Amazon Basin last year, we spent a lot of time walking through flat, seemingly identical tracks that would have been completely overgrown within a week if someone hadn’t regularly gone through them with a machete. (Okay, if I’d been more attuned to it, they might not have looked identical.) The walking or lack of variation in landscape wasn’t the highlight, though — it was the incredible array of life that’s absolutely everywhere. New Zealand used to be like this, at least in a sense. It was so densely packed with bird-life, with few if any natural predators, that the noise on any given day would usually be difficult to ignore. This isn’t true any more because bird life is much more sparse, thanks largely to de-forestation of native bush and introduced predators. It’s really only reproduced in island sanctuaries, such as Kapiti Island (which I hope to visit soon), which have been freed of possums and rats and goats and stoats and any other introduced predators, to finally allow the bird life to flourish.

Conclusions: I’m not sure what my conclusion should be to this post, or if there even is one. After re-reading everything that I’ve just written, it seems to sound a lot worse than I thought it would. The truth is that I think it’s really cool that we still have everything we do for recreation, and all in our back-yard. At the same time, it’s a little disturbing how easy it is to lose it all, and the delicate state of flux that things are in right now thanks to the intervention of people and an international economy. If active efforts to control introduced pests stopped for a few years, the whole place would once again be over-run and native wildlife would once again be in critical trouble.

On the other hand, people will come and go. No doubt a million years from now there will probably be few signs that we were even here. The land will have re-claimed itself one way or another.

In any case, I’ve decided that this weekend I’m going out tramping to see a little more of what’s left.

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.

It’s unusual to hear this kind of ambiguous grammar on National Radio (at least the parts that I listen to), and to be fair they were supposedly quoting a GNS Scientist. Inaccurate, misleading and ambiguous grammar is rife in other New Zealand media, however, particularly around maths and logic. There’s an aversion to good maths and logic in New Zealand journalism, and I find that frustrating because it’s opening up information to be mis-interpreted when there’s no need for that to happen.

At least when it’s not selling viewers attention to advertisers, the media is supposed to be clearly communicating information. For instance, exactly what does “10 times smaller than 30 metres” mean? Strictly speaking, the only thing that the phrase could mean is -270 metres, but this result often won’t make sense. (eg. If your ladder is 10 times shorter than my 30 metre ladder, it makes no sense to conclude that your ladder is -270 metres long.) What’s probably meant is 1/10th of 30 metres, or 3 metres, and this is what most people will interpret it as, I guess. It’s still wrong – what should have been stated in the first place was that your ladder was 1/10th the length of my ladder.

On a related topic, Stacey and I have been watching the BBC Planet Earth documentary on DVD lately, narrated by David Attenborough, unless you get one of the later Americanised versions in which I’ve heard his commentary was replaced by Sigourney Weaver. This is the first nature series I’ve watched with Attenborough as a narrator during a time when I’ve been old enough to appreciate it. The BBC and Attenborough both have good reputations for educational programming, but I have to admit that I’ve been left wanting.

The series itself is impressive considering the amount of effort to which producers and camera crews went to get the footage and produce the show, but I have to admit I’ve found David Attenborough’s commentary really annoying to listen to. His enthusiasm’s obvious, but he’s very imprecise in nearly everything he says. To be fair, this is a series about extremes. The whole point is to show the coldest versus the hottest next to the largest versus the tiniest of the Earth’s extremes, and show how species have adapted to living in such varied conditions. David Attenborough’s commentary frequently uses superlatives, but it’s also needlessly imprecise, at least in my own opinion. This includes seemingly arbitrary switches between metric and imperial, superlatives every second word with no base measurement of comparison.

For an example, here’s a representative extract of the introduction to one of the episodes we watched recently: Seasonal forests.

This is the Taiga forest. There are as many trees here as in all the world’s rainforests combined. The Taiga circles the globe and contains a third of all the trees on Earth. It produces so much oxygen that it refreshes the atmosphere of the entire planet.

There are a couple of issues that I have with this passage already. The claim that the Tiaga contains as many trees as all the rainforests combined gives no definition of what constitutes a “tree”, especially since a tree in the Tiaga is unlikely to be at all similar to a typical rainforest “tree”. I’m not trying to suggest that the commentary should start giving pedantic definitions, but if it just gave a couple of numbers to make it possible to weigh the difference, it’d be more meaningful. Furthermore, the claim that the Tiaga “produces so much oxygen that it refreshes the atmosphere of the entire planet” is meaningless because there’s no context. A time-frame would be very useful here, because I could easily argue that given enough time, my back yard would probably produce enough oxygen to refresh the atmosphere of the entire planet.

Okay, so it’s not quite as awful as some of the earlier Disney Nature documentaries which were largely fiction yet presented under the guise of being factual, but I wonder if it’s getting that way. I have trouble seeing what’s so difficult about giving proper units of measure and bases of comparison. Planet Earth is good, but with some minor changes it could be so much better.

Anyway, that’s just my own impressions. The series seems to have a lot of support from all over the place, and this is just my own small gripe.

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.

Walking around town is quite the opposite. There are people smoking everywhere. Perhaps it’s just more obvious since the Smoke-free Environments Amendment Act was passed in 2003, making it a legal requirement that all workplaces be smoke-free as of December 2004. Naturally this has driven people who like to smoke out into the streets. It probably also means that people’s smoking tends to be more concentrated during the times when they’ll be outside for other reasons, such as during their lunch breaks, and before and after work. These tend to co-incide with the times that everyone else is outside, and as someone who walks around streets a lot, I’ve found the apparently lessened quality of the outdoor air to be off-putting.

For one thing, it’s quite difficult to walk along a crowded street without at least one person blowing stale smoke, at regular intervals, into the faces of people walking up to 15 metres behind. In the past few years, I’ve trained myself to get to the up-wind side of someone who’s smoking along the street. Other tricks have been to cross the road, to synchronise my breathing so as to take a deep breath just as the person in front is about to take a puff from their cigarette, or occasionally to just push ahead of them and hope there’s not another person smoking up ahead. It’s not always possible during peak times when the streets are very crowded, however. A while ago I might have guessed that vehicle emissions would be at least as annoying as cigarette smoke, but this doesn’t seem to be the case. I suppose that over the years, car manufacturers have been regulated into producing engines that convert petroleum into energy more efficiently, whereas tobacco companies have not been regulated into producing cigarettes that pump the toxins into their subject more efficiently. Consequently, the toxins just go everywhere, and that’s what second hand smoke is.

The smoke-free legislation also means that walking through many of the restaurant districts in the city centre, on an otherwise nice afternoon or evening, has become a worse experience than it used to be. Restaurants have been required to push all of their smoking patrons to tables outside, and on any evening when it’s worth sitting outside, the smoke lingers. (So much for smoke-free workplaces for the waiting staff, which was one of the champion claims of the legislation. To be fair, it’s probably much more smoke-free than it used to be.) This lingering effect is not just restricted to restaurants, either. Virtually any entranceway to an office block is likely to have quite stagnant air for most of the day, simply because the people who work inside have to come outside and find somewhere sheltered to have a smoke.

Yesterday, on unrelated occasions during the day, I noticed at least four people throwing their used cigarette butts away onto the footpath. Usually they weren’t completely out. A couple of these people took it upon themselves to trample their cigarette from an orange tube of glowing embers into a flattened powdery smoking mess, just to make sure it wouldn’t set the pavement on fire. They didn’t pick it up and put it in a rubbish bin afterwards, and I’m not sure if I ever remember having seen anyone do that. These were people who I doubt would ever consider littering with any other kind of rubbish, and most of them probably wouldn’t leave old cigarette butts lying on paths around their own property at home. A 15 minute walk around town towards the end of a typical day will easily find hundreds or thousands of old cigarette butts that have been disposed of on the footpath or in the gutter in this way, all from that day.

Wellington’s street-cleaning staff and sweeping machines will collect the majority of the gunk when they go through in the early morning, but I still find it disturbing that it’s tolerated and socially acceptable for people to chuck their cigarettes into the gutter, or onto the footpath, in the first place. One of my theories, which I don’t know how to test reliably, is that much of the permanent chewing-gum-like goo that builds up in clumps on footpaths is a direct result of the chemicals that get trampled and rubbed into the surface with the bottom of people’s shoes. The street-cleaners wouldn’t get it all, and what’s left possibly clumps together on the surface until such time until the footpath is next dug up and completely replaced with a new seal. If anyone can comment on this theory with more authority, I’d love to hear about it.

I can fully appreciate why people do this, even if I don’t agree with it. Realistically, there doesn’t seem to be much choice. In Wellington, at least, there doesn’t seem to be much that can be done with an old cigarette butt. The streets aren’t full of ash trays (perhaps they should be), and binning a used cigarette doesn’t seem very safe. In fact, on two successive days this week, I’ve walked past flaming rubbish bins; both were probably an unfortunate consequence of someone trying to be a tidy kiwi with their cigarette.

I’m ranting at this point, anyway. It’s not my place to criticise people who either choose to smoke or who are simply addicted to it, and I hope this doesn’t come across as if I am. On the other hand, I do think there are some issues that could be addressed more effectively with regard to making it easier for people to smoke without having as many negative effects on everything around them.

In other news, I don’t have any more trips planned until mid-January. Stacey and I are heading up to Taranaki again this Christmas. It seems hard to believe that it was less than a year ago that I ended up with 8 weeks of knee damage from gallivanting around Egmont.

The market has become much more aggressive lately, with several other much larger retailers having pushed their way into the local and national scene. Kathmandu is the obvious one, with an aggressive model of pricing things about twice or thrice what they’re worth, and then having heavily promoted seasonal sales in which prices are heavily reduced. During these seasonal sales, the number of customers in the stores appears to go from almost dwindling-empty to bursting at the seams. Kathmandu doesn’t actually sell dedicated tramping gear in the strict sense, and it’s easy to see when walking through a Kathmandu store on the first few days of a sale that the majority of customers are probably looking for practical, comfortable warm clothes and other gear to use around town. This is fair enough, and it’s similar to what I use most of my own Kathmandu purchases for. What it does specialise in is Kathmandu-branded travel things, comfortable Kathmandu-branded around-town clothes, and flashy catalogues full of Kathmandu logos and dominating photos of people fashionably enjoying themselves in other countries. Kathmandu gets close enough to the market, however, that it’s possible to get things that are usually satisfactory enough for tramping, and that’s all that really matters.

This would still be okay, but I suppose what bothers me is the increase in stores which are very specifically branded. It’s not just in the tramping market, either. For instance, there’s now a Levis shop on the corner of Customhouse Quay and Willeston Street. This is just down the road from the local Sony Style retailer, which will sell you any TV, laptop, camera, or whatever electronic goods you desire, as long as it’s made by Sony. (Interestingly it doesn’t sell Sony-branded music, however.) Telecom and Vodafone sell their network-locked phones and plans through independent retailers, but they also try to out-do each other in terms of who can get the most dedicated branded phone shops within the radius of the CBD. It’s entirely a marketing thing, since they want to make sure people remember to buy a new phone, and that they don’t forget the brand when they’re walking down the street. Somewhere along the line, manufacturers have discovered that rather than go through the proxy of independent retailers, it’s more efficient for them to force their way into the retail front line, market themselves directly in the face of consumers, and pick up retail prices while they’re at it.

Tramping shops probably aren’t quite the same, since they’re more like retailers getting into manufacturing rather than manufactures getting into retail. It seems as if it’s easier for the larger retailers to have their own products made cheaply overseas (possibly in the same factories as the branded stuff), have their own name slapped on it, and then sell it at a higher margin than they would if they’d gone through a manufacturer. These are the likes of Kathmandu, Mountain Designs (which does sell non-MD-branded things, to be fair), and apparently now the new Fairydown retailers which are coming our way. All of these are branded retailers focus on selling their own branded products, and it seems as if the new model is part of what’s been making it harder for independent retailers to survive. They’re also bigger retailers, and that often (but not always) seems to correspond with less experience in the retail staff.

What I guess I find most disturbing is that unlike the smaller independent shops, I don’t really feel as if I can go into any of these places and get an honest opinion about what’s actually right for me. It’s also becoming more difficult to actually see or play with products that don’t fall under a particular retailer’s branding umbrella, because there’s less incentive for a branded retailer to stock products that compete with their own stuff and which might sell at a smaller margin. It’s still possible to get other things by looking around a bit further, and hopefully the market will sort itself out in the longer term. Wellington now has an R&R Sport on Victoria Street. (This is currently a clearance store and I’m not sure if there are plans to change that.) There are also a couple of other Wellington retailers (Bivouac, Gordons, Dwights) which haven’t gone anywhere, and if that’s not enough it’s still possible to travel a bit further afield.

Anyway, food for thought.