Windy Tops

Category: musing

  • Duck and Cover! It’s an pyroclastic flow!

    This evening I was browsing the various RSS feeds to which I subscribe, and came upon this opinion piece expressed by Rosemary McLeod in the Dominion Post a couple of weeks back. I’m not exactly sure what she’s trying to say. (To put it in perspective, this is just an opinion piece in a newspaper and it’s about as irrelevant to anything as the blog post you’re reading right now.)

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

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

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

    I mean, Wow!
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  • Topo50 map boundaries and Wellington

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

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

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

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

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

    After a first effort, this was the result.

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    Several amateur insights occur following this cooking expedition:
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  • Fairness in paying for search and rescue

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

    [Edit 29-April-2013: If you’ve stumbled upon this post when searching for information about how Search and Rescue is charged (or not charged) in New Zealand, I’d also strongly recommend reading this much more recent post, in which I’ve provided more detail about how the system works.]

    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, Kerry L at Kayak & Kayaking, and even (added 22-12-2010) a discussion provoked by James on Geekzone.

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  • Te Araroa to avoid Oriwa Ridge in the Tararuas

    New Zealand’s Department of Conservation has decided not to establish a track along Oriwa Ridge in the Tararuas as part of Te Araroa — The Long Pathway. Instead, DOC is recommending that Te Araroa go via the exposed tops in the Tararuas, via places like Te Matawai, Dracophyllum, Nichols.

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

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

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

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  • Perspectives from Laos, and mining the Conservation Estate

    I’ve just returned from a few weeks in South East Asia, much of which was spent in Laos, albeit mostly on the tourist trail, and it’s a wonderful country. Much of what’s recently been in the media, as well as reading one of Robb’s recent posts regarding our government’s new policy of “stock-taking” the conservation estate in preparation for mineral extraction, has prompted some thoughts.

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    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.

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    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.
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  • Wellington [anti] smoking petitions battling it out

    Nearly two years ago I wrote about how I often find the lingering smoke annoying when I go for walks around town. It’s difficult to walk along a main street in Wellington’s CBD during certain times of day without having people in front breathing out cigarette smoke (much worse than campfire smoke), holding cigarettes venting smoke in the faces of people crowded behind, and throwing used cigarette butts into the city’s drainage system, causing even more problems [Ref 1] [Ref 2]. Anecdotally, I think this has become more of an issue since the Smoke-Free Environments Amendment Act of 2003 came into force. The act made it illegal for people to smoke inside most workplaces and also any cafe’s/restaurants (because they’re other people’s workplaces), but didn’t do much to account for the changes this would cause in outside environments. It forces people to smoke on the streets rather than inside, and it means virtually all restaurants, pubs and cafe’s (not wanting to lose customers to competitors) have pushed their smoking sections onto tables outside. Frequently these outside areas around footpaths are specifically designed with extra shelter from the elements, which helps cigarette smoke to linger for a very long time.

    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.
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  • Origin of The Rain

    People in Taranaki are proud of their mountain, and they’re also proud of it’s usefulness as a forecasting tool. A popular saying is that If you can’t see the mountain, it’s raining. If you can see the mountain, it’s going to rain. When I visited DOC’s Dawson Falls’ visitor’s centre in 2007, they’d pinned a very funny and typical poem on the wall, all about rain and attributed to an anonymous tramper in 1984. I neglected to write it down at the time, but I made a point to transcribe it when I visited again early this year once I found it still there:

    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.
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  • My new GPS and digital red-lining

    I’ve spent the last few weeks playing with GPS receivers, initially with Craig‘s old one and very basic Garmin eTrex which he loaned me. (Thanks Craig!) A basic eTrex was certainly nothing flash at all. Having only a low-sensitivity antennae, it barely works when there’s a tree on the horizon let alone being under bush cover. This aside, it was great having something to play with to simply get an initial idea of all the basic GPS terms and ideas. A little over three weeks ago, I finally bought my own more sophisticated Garmin eTrex Vista HCx. This new extension to my tramping hobby has also manifested itself on this blog, which is why several of the trips now have Download GPX and Load map links. (The former downloads a GPs eXchange Format file, and the latter opens a Google Maps box with the described route overlaid.) I’m hoping to keep this up in the future, and I suppose time will tell how it works out.

    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.
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  • Benefits of self-arrest

    A couple of very lucky people have been in the news in the last few days. Both involved slipping, sliding for hundreds of metres down icy mountain slopes, and unusually getting away with it. Reading about them both prompted a few thoughts. This post is not a criticism of either of these people, but I think their accidents help to illustrate some useful things about what can go wrong.

    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.”

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