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.

I commented to Craig and a couple of others earlier this afternoon that to me it seems the most embarrassing kind of tramping accident that didn’t necessarily involve idiocy might be to become trapped inside a sleeping bag. It’s just been a pet fear of mine for a while now and something I might one day like to produce a horror movie about. I find something disconcerting about completely zipping oneself up inside a sleeping bag on a cold night without the certainty of being able to locate the zipper in the morning, or having the zipper get stuck on something and refuse to move. For some reason this leads to mental visions of a giant sealed sleeping bag bounding out of the Tararuas.

The reason this topic of conversation arose was because I’ve taken the claustrophobia one layer further and bought myself a nice little bivy bag, primarily for emergencies and as a possible alternative to carrying around my Huntech 2 to 3 person fly as backup shelter when I’m not planning to camp.

I spent two or three weeks scrutinising the options, only to decide there really weren’t very many because New Zealand’s such a small economy, these days nearly everything’s manufactured overseas, and it’s uneconomic for the (usually) one national importer to ever import more than a few models of anything. Eventually I settled on what seems to be the cheapest and lightest bivy bag easily available, which is the Vaude Active Bivy that retails at around $150 before whatever discounts you might be able to get. Apparently it’s not active enough to be listed on the international Vaude website, and mostly seems to be being retailed in New Zealand and the UK from what I can tell. At 500 grams, though, it’s quite nifty for an emergency bivy bag. I’ll see how it goes, and hopefully I won’t get too tangled up inside.

For a while I had my eye on some of the Outdoor Research Bivy Bags. The two most easily available in New Zealand of the current range are their “MicroNight Bivy” (also very light at about 550 grams, and around $250 in NZ — Craig loaned me his to try out) and their “Alpine Bivy” (heavier, slightly more heavy duty with a pole, and about $500 in NZ). The latter seemed overkill for my needs and I wasn’t sure about the former, and after much scrutiny I decided I really wanted their “Aurora Bivy“, which is in the middle. I’m not sure exactly why, possibly that marketing principle of which I forget the name whereby given three options, people will often naturally go for the middle one. I searched around for about a week though, only to discover that it’s not actually being imported into New Zealand, and to do so would be far too complicated and expensive to bother with.

It’s all done now, anyway, and I have a new toy to play with. As with many things, I suppose if it turns out to be not exactly what I want, I won’t have thrown away too much money and I can make a more informed and experienced decision about something else later on.

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.

For several months I’ve been using a baseplate Coleman compass that I found at Rebel Sport for a quarter of the price, and for me at least it works just as well as the Silva Field 7. It’s slightly larger though, if only because it includes extra features like a magnifier that I never use, and ultimately that’s why I decided to replace it. It’s only after I’d been using a smaller Field 7 compass for a while that I noticed the Coleman compass was actually quite heavy, and that’s why I bought myself another Field 7.

It’s a shame they’re priced at about $35 for something so basic, which I think is more of a branding thing than anything else. If I could get a cheap un-branded compass of similar specifications then I would, but they’re hard to find on short notice. I suppose that all you really need is a magnetically sensitive needle inside a nicely divided circle. It probably helps some people to have a few features like a better grips on the dial thingee and a magnifier for maps (which I’ve personally never used), but I’ve yet to see anyone using something like a typically expensive sighting compass for tramping navigation in New Zealand. Perhaps it’s a consequence of the circles I associate with. They’re in the shops a lot so they must sell, and I’m quite interested to know what sorts of activities people use them for.

For a while now, I’ve been keeping an eye out for a new pack to replace my disintegrating Macpac Glissade. It’s not really disintegrating, but I’ve patched it up with tape in a couple of places despite it only being a couple of years old. The major problem I’ve been having is that if and when I replace it, I want to make sure I’m getting something that I really want, and honestly there’s not a lot of selection in Wellington retailers right now as far as packs go. Just about everything is the same basic design, with pockets and openings all over the place. This is unfortunate because in essence I’m looking for a simple, relatively light single-access-point tramping pack without lots of zippers (which add weight unnecessarily) and without lots of bits hanging off it (which add more weight, and get caught on things).

Yesterday, I was wandering through Bivouac in Wellington and noticed that they’re actually stocking a Deep Winter pack from Cactus Climbing. It’s marketed as an alpine pack, but it’s about the right size for what I want and for a large pack, it’s quite lightweight (1.75 kg). It’s intentionally designed without a frame, though, which is an interesting idea but also makes me more cautious about it without trying it or talking to other people first. Actually seeing it caught me by surprise because, especially with the demise of brand-independent outdoor retailers in Wellington over the last couple of years, it’s become difficult to find a lot of brands on shelves. I was almost thinking about buying it for a couple of minutes, but in the end decided not to.

Cactus Climbing, based in Christchurch, is a company that makes more simple packs of the sort that I’m actually interested. Unfortunately, because the packs aren’t very adjustable (that would add extra weight which is ultimately pointless if the owner will only ever use the harness on one setting), it’s important to get one that definitely fits from the start, and I’m not sure I want to make that decision without actually using it. With some great initial enthusiasm, I managed to borrow someone’s Hector pack some time ago, filled it with 15 kg and walked around the Tinakori Hill for a couple of hours, and it was only after that that I was able to tell the particular harness wasn’t really fitting me very well, especially once I started walking on different angles and sidling around trees and such. It was disappointing, but I’m glad I didn’t fork out several hundred dollars for something that wouldn’t have fit. A DeepWinter pack might be different, or an alternative harness size might be different, but I’m not sure I really want to make that choice on a non-adjustable harness without actually having an opportunity to try it.

Today (being Sunday) I went shopping for Spinach, which Stacey wanted for some reason relating to an idea for dinner, and through some kind of abstract thought process I decided it’d be a good excuse for me to check out the track that leads up from the flax clearing at the back of Otari Wilton’s Bush to the Skyline Walkway. I’d never been up via that route before, and I discovered that after a nice and short bush-walk, it joins on half-way up the Chartwell Drive entrance to (or exit from) the Skyline Walkway. I guess I’ll remember that for future reference. There were lots of flies around in the hot weather, but I noticed that for some reason they seem to congregate around rocky out-croppings. I tested this several times once I had a suspicion, approaching and walking away from a variety of different rocky areas several times, and each time I was buzzed by a small horde of flies as soon as I stood on the rocks, which promptly disappeared when I returned to grassy farmland. Weird — I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation. Maybe the rocks absorb more heat than the grass and they like sitting on them more.

I kept walking to Mt Kaukau and eventually down to Johnsonville via the Old Coach Road, which I’ve only walked along once before. Coincidentally I met Alistair and Sarah along this stretch (from the Tongue & Meats tramping club), who were wandering up Bell’s Track onto the Skyline Walkway just as I got there, so that turned into a fun natter as usual. Today was one of those days when the views from Mt Kaukau and surrounding areas were exceedingly clear, including towards the northern parts of the South Island, and also with a very clear view of the snow-capped Mount Tapuaenuku, often known as Tappy and probably most famous because it was Ed Hillary’s first mountain. I sat down for a couple of hours near the top of Kaukau to read more of my book.

The only disappointment of the day was that once I reached Johnsonville, the Countdown supermarket in the Johnsonville shopping mall didn’t actually have any spinach, at least that I could find. This ruined my plans to ask the people at the mall’s free gift-wrapping counter to wrap up the spinach as my girlfriend’s christmas present. Maybe next year.

What a great day.

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.

It was a Silva Field 7, which is a very basic baseplate compass and it does the job perfectly. They retail for about $30 so it’s no great financial loss. It’s still a bit of a downer, though, since I make an effort not to leave junk lying around in the wilderness.

Other than that, it was a worth-while experience. I’ll write something and post photographs of the trip in coming days. Meanwhile you could read Robb’s account of his solo trip in the same area a few days beforehand.

Update, 27-10-2008: It seems I wrote the account of the whole trip faster than I thought.

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.

Canon makes great cameras, in my opinion, both compact and SLR (although I’m more of a compact user myself). I bought my original Powershot camera in late 2006 after a lot of shopping around in the compact camera market, looking for something I could conveniently take tramping and which wouldn’t require me to spend much time setting up photos. The closest contenders at the time were a couple of the Panasonic Lumix cameras, but after looking at some of the sample photos they were producing, I wasn’t convinced that the Panasonic cameras were doing as good-a-job. It was something about the colours between pixels which looked a bit strange and out of coordination when the photos were blown up.

This particular Canon camera doesn’t make any special claims to being shockproof or waterproof, which are often advisable for outdoor use. Until now, though, I’ve still found it to be fairly durable as long as I take basic precautions such as always using the wrist-strap (which has saved it several times), and packing it away properly before river crossings. That’s even taking into account that don’t tend to go to obsessive lengths to look after my things when I’m using them. eg. I still take my camera out in the rain because as far as I’m concerned, that’s what it’s for.  It’s not ultra-light for a compact camera but is still reasonably light at ~200 grams + batteries, it has a good lens, it has a better-than-average optical zoom (6x) and incorporates an image stabaliser which helps a lot when you’re in a rush, it makes intelligent decisions for things I decide not to set up manually, although the manual option is usually there, and it takes both HD-SD cards and AA batteries. I liked it so much for the way I wanted to use a camera that when the old one broke, I went out and bought another one as identical as I could find.

The A710 died some time between Saturday night and Sunday morning on the recent trip to Mt Richmond Forest Park. It didn’t completely stop working but the digital display gave up, and particular formations showing on the display implied that water had probably gotten inside. So I went on through the trip taking photos through the viewfinder as best I could, but there are certain non-immediate things with a digital camera that you need the display for, such as for formatting the card and changing settings. The A710 might still dry out one day, but I’d still rather have a camera that’s not at risk of failing at a bad time. If it dries out, I’ll have two good cameras.

I’ve yet to take the A720 tramping, although the first occasion will probably be next weekend, somewhere in the Rimutakas.

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.

I then walked over to Noel Leeming, which didn’t have it but said they could get it on special order. Either way, it wasn’t available for me to actually play with. In the end I ordered it off Ascent late on Tuesday night, it arrived on Wednesday, and I’m really happy with it. I blew away Windows last night and installed Kububtu Linux. There are a few issues with the Suspend function, which so far I’m optimistic about, but otherwise it’s been working great. I’m now an owner of a Notebook produced by Sony, which incidentally is also one of the most evil media companies in the world. Yay for me.

Off to the Tararuas this weekend.

Meanwhile, I have to try and figure out if there’s any important data on it that I’ll need to try and get off.

I’m going away with the trampey club this weekend, although only to Cattle Creek (in the Ruahines). I signed up to this trip late after another one fell through. I’ve pretty much finished packing, but trying to fit in my own tent fly as well as the trampey club’s large one is a real pain. I have to put the big one at the top, because it’s the first thing everyone will want for camping at the road-end on Friday night. When I re-pack on Saturday morning, it’ll be going right down the bottom. I can guarantee that much.

As the first time out since arriving back, I hope it should be lots of fun.

Not that it matters for the next two months of course, because I’m going overseas and I’m not taking them with me. (Only because they’re heavy winter boots and somewhat inconvenient to pack.) I’ll see how they go when I come back, in any case. I still have about another six months after getting back before the warranty expires.

In other news, I’ve been playing with Google Docs seriously for the first time, using it for organising my packing list. It’s quite useful that Stacey’s able to edit the document from Chile and keep any notes or statuses up to date.

My biggest thing today has been figuring out which documents I need to get photocopied, and then what to do with the copies, which bits I’ll need to keep available around the airports, versus the bits I can stash away, and so on. I’ve also been busy taking photos of them all, so I have some electronic copies I can send around to people as a backup. Even as I write this, I’ve just realised that when I was at work today, I should have printed out a copy of the instructions for the language school. I have to buy another padlock too, and also a heap of extra chocolate because Stacey’s said that Chile doesn’t really do chocolate very well. If I’m not careful, I might turn up in Santiago with 10 kilograms of all the basic varieties of chocolate.

I tried to clean some of the dried mud off the bottom of my pack last night. I thought I’d gotten it off, but then it dried a little and it became obvious there was still quite a lot of dirt there. My concern isn’t so much getting it into Chile as it is getting it back into New Zealand on the way back. NZ customs is very strict about dirt from other countries (especially farm dirt) because of the biological threat, and I wonder if convincing them that it’s really good old New Zealand mud that’s just followed me around the world for a bit could be a slight problem.

Anyway, I’ll see how things go.

This trip was the first proper trip that I took them on. I had a couple of blisters by the end of it, but otherwise they were okay. On the following weekend though, I went for a daywalk over the Skyline Walkway, and by the end of it, I noticed that some glue was coming un-stuck around a seam in the rubber lining on the inside of the base of one of the boots. What was worse was that having come un-stuck, the loose bit of rubber was catching on the hook for the lace of the other boot, which made the problem even worse. On closer inspection, it also became apparent that a very similar seam on the outside of the other boot was also coming apart.

I took them back to the retailer on the following Monday who took a quick look and agreed about the problem, took some details, and arranged to get them fixed with an estimated time of about 5 days. This was a bit annoying to hear, because it’d mean I probably wouldn’t have them for my High Ridge trip the following weekend, but there wasn’t much option so I just lived with it. In the end, I waited two weeks without hearing anything, and it was only because I’d drowned my phone in the Rimutakas that I went in again on Monday and asked to leave a different phone number, that I found out they’d just arrived. So essentially this flaw in the boots cost me two weekends of trips, pretty much so they could fly to Christchurch to get a dab of glue, then fly back.

I finally had them back again for the trip to the Pinnacles in the Aorangis, and they worked okay. As I was in the middle of the Lewis Pass trip the following weekend, though, I noticed that one of the seams had come apart again. So on Tuesday (Monday was a public holiday), I took them straight back to the retailer, wanting to get them fixed as quickly as possible, as I had another trip planned two weekends later. I was told that they were too damp though, and that the distributor in Christchurch would growl at them if they tried to send them back in that state. For as much as I don’t really blame the retailer, being told this was incredibly frustrating. I was basically being told that having used them for exactly the purpose for which they were marketed, and having them fail due to what seems increasingly like a design flaw, that the manufacturer wouldn’t fix them immediately. To add to this, nobody except me would probably count the extra four days that it took to properly dry them out.

I finally returned them on the next Saturday and asked for a refund, but I don’t think I’ll get it. Two weeks later, I’m still waiting to hear anything and I’m about to go overseas. For me at least, Salomon Alp 7 GTX boots have lasted an average of two weekend trips before needing to be returned for maintenance, and then I lose between two and three weekends. This is very very frustrating, and I’m regretting ever having bought them.

I’m not 100% sure if it’s because I’ve been walking up and down a lot of steep hills, or if it’s because they’re not really up to getting submerged and mudded up a lot on a weekend (after which I dry them out during the week). Both of these are common things in New Zealand’s back-country, and any boots sold here under the guise of “tramping boots” should be fine with that, but these ones don’t seem to have handled it very well. It’s possible I may have just been unlucky and ended up with a bad pair. My confidence in them is gone, though, and I wouldn’t buy the same pair again unless the glued seam problem is properly sorted.

Yesterday I bought some shiny new boots. Someone told me a while ago that New Zealanders don’t have a very good reputation for looking after their trampey gear, so I thought that perhaps I should take a photo of them before I trash them.

Here they are.

They even still have the label attached.

In any case, I’ll make an effort to keep a record here of any misfortune they might happen to suffer under my ownership, and make notes of how they cope with it. This afternoon, I’m planning to take them for their first walk, if my broken knee can handle it okay. (Nothing too strenuous, just a walk up to the air traffic control radar dome behind Wellington’s wind turbine, and wandering around that area for a while.) I expect to suffer a blister or two as a result.