Windy Tops

Category: musing

  • That’s great service

    A couple of weeks ago we visited Penn Creek Hut, and I noted in my trip report that there were a couple of leaks in the hut. Well, like a good little tramper I flicked an email to the Department of Conservation when we arrived back in Wellington to let them know, hoping that perhaps someone would add it to their list of things to expect next time a maintenance team was in the area. I’ve had mixed reception when reporting this kind of thing in the past (such as this time), probably depending on a lot of things such as how busy the office is, how important the issue sounds, and how much I might appear to be a pedantic troublemaker who’s exaggerating a problem.

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

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

  • Consultation of building codes for New Zealand Backcountry Huts

    As of a few weeks ago, it’s been possible to make a submission about proposed changes to the building code as it applies to New Zealand Backcountry Huts. If you have an interest in this kind of thing, I’d strongly suggest making a submission, even if you mostly agree with the proposal. The deadline for receiving submissions is Monday 23rd June 2008, and the consultation document is available online thanks to New Zealand’s Department of Building and Housing.

    A few weeks ago when I wrote my trip report about visiting Cattle Ridge, I made a comment about the apparent absurdity of DOC’s decision to remove a bunk from the 6 bunk hut. This is apparently due to some ambiguity in the various New Zealand building codes which imply that these days, certain kinds of structures that are intended for a certain number of people require a certain number of fire exits, as well as various other things that seem more suited to populated areas. The consequence? Well somewhere along the line, someone decided that back-country huts with 6 or more bunks would require at least 2 fire exits. Because the design of many back-country huts makes it impractical to add an additional fire exit (there’s simply not enough wall space), DOC adopted the policy, in some cases, of removing one of the beds to turn 6 bunk huts into 5 bunk huts. [Edit, 19/3/2012: It turns out the sixth bunk in Cattle Ridge Hut may have been missing for other reasons, but there remain other examples of Doc staff removing bunks from huts to meet safety standards.]

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  • Ambiguous measurement in the media

    A couple of weeks ago I was listening to the 7am news bulletin on National Radio and heard the phrase “five times deeper than”. It was part of a report about a new earthquake detector installed in West Auckland. The phrase caught my attention because it’s ambiguous. Strictly speaking, “five times deeper than” should mean “six times as deep as”, but I think most people would probably assume it means “five times as deep as”. Judging by the report, which states the depth was 250 metres, it seems likely that the actually did mean “five times as deep as”, which would have put the original figure at a nice, round 50 metres instead of a confusing 41.666666666666666666666666…. metres.

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

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  • Thoughts on the Barker Hut Trio

    I’m often behind on current events. I don’t spend much time listening to New Zealand’s news media, and I don’t have much respect for a lot of it. (Some of National Radio is an exception.)

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

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  • Legally winding through the Kaimanawa Range

    Last weekend I was on a trip with the Wellington Tongue & Meats to Kaimanawa Forest Park. I was going to post my thoughts about the whole private land thing as part of the trip report. My thoughts ended up being quite long, however, so I thought I might post them separately. (The report regarding the trip which inspired this is also available.) This post is mostly a collection of background material that I’ve looked up to do with getting access to the area of the park that we visited near the Urchin road-end, which may be useful in some way to others planning something similar, and is completely open for discussion since I haven’t been looking at this for long.

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

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  • Smoking through the streets of Wellington

    Something I’ve noticed, having been on a lot of trips with a tramping club in a short space of time, is that the people who go on such trips are almost never smokers. The only time I actually remember being on a trip with someone who smoked was the trip to Rangiwahia. The club rated it an Easy trip, and on that occasion we reached the night’s destination within two hours. The smokers stayed behind in the sun at the hut while the rest of us went further up the hill into the snow after lunch, for an afternoon walk.

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

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  • Branders as retailers

    Lately it was announced that the Fairydown brand is under new management (again) for about the millionth time in its history, although I don’t feel as if I’ve been around on the scene long enough to really appreciate all the changes it’s gone through. (Ben of Cactus Climbing has a brief summary of the recent situation.) Well done to these three guys and good luck to them. The new business plan, rather than manufacturing quality NZ-made goods for NZ conditions, is to manufacture it all in Asia (as everyone does these days to be fair), and open New Zealand Fairydown retail outlets in the main centres. I guess I’ve been wondering from my limited perspective about some of the changes that have been going on in the Wellington retail sector of tramping shops.
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