Windy Tops

Category: musing

  • Tararua Plane Wreckage Stolen

    This is quite bizarre and rather concerning.

    [Edit 22-Jan-2012: This post seems to turn up quite often in search engines. For the more complete media narrative of what happened after I posted this, you should also read Stolen Shingle Slip Knob Plane Wreckage Found in Masterton and Tararua Plane Wreckage to be returned to Tararuas]

    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.

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    3333952293_df0f8106d3_o-1983734
    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.

  • I always knew they were crazy people

    Not that it’s a bad thing.

    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.
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  • Recreational impressions of New Plymouth

    I’ve been back in Wellington for a week now, but I suppose there’s one lasting impression I wanted to express about Taranaki and specifically New Plymouth which I’ve now visited quite a few times over the last several years. Even when I haven’t gone tramping, I’ve always found it an easy place to get around and to enjoy walking. New Plymouth was recently named the winner of a Top Town competition in North & South magazine, and part of this decision was thanks to the recreational opportunities. I’m skeptical of these kinds of lists on principle because to me they feel like publicity stunts that get attention without much cost, but I do agree that New Plymouth has a lot going for it. There are plenty of places to escape the asphalt and the one and only shopping mall, and to enjoy natural surroundings.

    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.
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  • Photo competitions are intriguing

    A few weeks ago we had our trampey club’s annual photo competition, which is quite a lot of fun and it’s an excuse to see photos people have taken throughout the year. It’s the second photo competition the club’s run which I’ve entered, and the third (and last) to be judged by Shaun Barnett, who’s decided to focus on other things. Shaun authors and co-authors a variety of books about NZ tramping, typically full of photographs, and just recently he’s taken over as editor of the Federated Mountain Clubs Bulletin, which I bet is a lot of work considering he already judges lots of photo competitions for other clubs.

    I’m not a photographer by any stretch (even as a hobbyist), but I do like to wave my camera around a lot on tramping trips, and this is typical for the demographic of our own photo competition where the majority of people (but not everyone) are primarily interested in tramping, but might pull out a camera from time to time. My own current toy is a Canon Powershot A720IS, which is almost exactly the same as my previous Canon Powershot A710IS, but the A720 has less water inside so tends to switch on. It’s not a typical tramping camera in the sense of being shock-proof or water resistant or extremely light-weight (it’s about 300 grams), but it takes the best photos on short notice that I’ve been able to manage for any camera in its range with which I’ve had a chance to experiment, so I just try to be careful with it and avoid damaging it.
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  • Walking your house through the land

    Earlier this evening I was listening to National Radio, on which Bryan Crump was interviewing Ion Soervin about a Walking House project called N55. The audio of the interview can be streamed from Radio New Zealand’s website for about another week. The website for the house itself, complete with photos, is also available, as is a short video clip of the prototype house walking.

    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.

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  • Flashy hydration systems

    Michelle recently posted thoughts about her Platypus hydration system, which inspired me to write something about my own experiences. I’ve been thinking about writing about this for a while, but hadn’t really formulated it in my head until now.

    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.

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  • I really hope I’m warmer from now on

    I’ve spent the odd night over the past winter feeling rather cold. The most “interesting” of these was that episode in the wood-shed between 3am and 6am on a Saturday morning. The absence of sleep before 3am and after 6am probably didn’t help, but I suppose I’d hoped that it would have been warmer during those 3 hours. I probably managed about an hour in total, which made for a very long and cranky Saturday of walking.

    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.
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  • Thoughts about river safety issues

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    The Waiohine River in flood,
    seen from Totara Flats.
    It’s probably not a good idea to
    attempt a crossing.

    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.

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  • Being hip and groovy, just like skiers

    Trying to help dig a snow cave during a blizzard a couple of months ago (during that training course) really made an impression on me. I realised that although handy at times, regular sunglasses can be seriously out of their depth in some conditions. For much of the weekend it was difficult to choose between being blind from perpetually fogged up glasses (thanks to warm breath coming up the balaclava) or being blind from a stinging and freezing wind in my eyes. In the end I guess it was fortunate that we were digging the cave about 30 metres from the club lodge, so it didn’t really matter.

    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.
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  • Reflecting on tramping and the transformation of New Zealand

    For a while now, the third floor at Te Papa has hosted an exhibition titled “Blood Earth Fire — The Transformation of Aotearoa New Zealand“. The exhibition looks at the effects that human settlement has had on New Zealand over time, and I think it’s one of the most insightful exhibitions I’ve seen. The whole thing is fascinating, but the small part I find most telling every time I visit is a display which shows three maps of New Zealand, side by side.

    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.

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