Windy Tops

Category: musing

  • Why can some huts be locked from the inside?

    Yesterday, Federated Mountain Clubs published an informal facebook post. It noted an experience at Blue Range Hut, in the Tararuas, where the overnight inhabitants had locked the door from the inside.

    Most of the discussion under that post has been about whether it was poor form for the people who arrived first to lock out late arrivals. General consensus, which I agree with, is that it’s very poor form if it’s done with intention to keep others out.

    More significantly, though, it’s had me wondering about why any public back-country hut can have its door locked from the inside. What’s the legitimate purpose, if any, of allowing those inside to lock others out?
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  • Taranaki exploration ideas

    16171535318_71ef43d7c5_n-8018488
    The two ends of what
    used to be the Pyramid Route.
    16172888069_f5990f07a6_n-6676951

    In the past I’ve dropped a few references to the various tracks around Egmont National Park which have been ‘closed’ (in official terms) in relatively recent times. Reasons have generally ranged between erosion and lack of maintenance.

    Here are a couple of recently-posted trip reports (not mine) on zoneblue.org, covering a couple of them.

    Note that these are not (any longer) officially maintained tracks of the Department of Conservation. You really do need to take sensible precautions and have the appropriate skills if you wish to investigate. Especially the Pyramid Route. The first of these, in particular, is most definitely not a beginner experience. If you stumble on orange triangles on either of these routes it’ll be purely coincidental.

    I just appreciate seeing information about them.

    I should add that it’s also a slightly contentious point to talk about this. DOC in Taranaki has had issues with people unofficially retaining old tracks.
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  • A Fortunate Outcome at Kapakapanui

    10565243633_321de4dd64_n-8070105
    Looking towards the inner Tararuas
    from near Kapakapanui Peak.

    Late last month, two women had a very fortunate outcome in the vicinity of Kapakapanui.

    In the past, I’ve written multiple trip reports describing the very accessible loop walk which the women were attempting. Here is the region on a map.

    The pair, an international student from the USA and her visiting mother, set out on Tuesday 26th April, intending to complete the commonly walked loop route which, under normal circumstances, is very accessible to anyone reasonable fit. They never checked out of their motel on Wednesday 27th April, but it wasn’t until they failed to return their rental car by 11am on Friday 29th April that Police were called.

    Police quickly located the car at the base of the Kapakapanui Track entrance to Tararua Forest Park, at the end of Ngatiawa Road east of Waikanae. By now, statistics were already not in their favour, but exactly how long they’d been missing was unclear and weather had been unmemorable during recent days.

    A Search and Rescue operation was initiated immediately. Several other trampers were located who’d seen the pair on the track on Tuesday, providing a time-frame for how long they’d been missing, but exact intentions remained unknown. Early on Saturday 30th April, four LandSAR teams entered the area. At roughly 1pm that day, the two women were spotted by a helicopter. They’d spent 4 nights outdoors, with the daughter in particular by now being extremely dehydrated, starving, and possibly within a few hours of death.
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  • Overseas tourists and park access fees

    It’s difficult to comment on recent calls for tourists to pay a larger share of maintenance of the conservation estate without detail of what’s being proposed. So far nothing’s been formally proposed.

    This is a recurring topic. The most recent iteration seems to have begun with a Listener article about Te Araroa. One tangent included the following paragraph. It’s derived from an interview with DOC’s CEO, Lou Sanson, when discussing the impact of international tourists on the New Zealand conservation estate:

    He hints at the possibility of a differential pricing system being introduced for backcountry huts to help protect Kiwis’ access. “We are moving to the stage where we have to look at this, because it may be quite unsustainable if you put another million people on top of it,” Sanson says.

    Fairfax’s Stuff website picked up the story a few weeks later, headlining “DOC may charge overseas visitors to enter national parks“. Three days after, the Dominion Post (also Fairfax) carried an editorial titled “Yes to a fee for tourist trampers“. Then, Fairfax also published “Fewer Kiwis doing Department of Conservation Great Walks“. (The actual numbers quoted at the end of that article seems to show more New Zealanders walking Great Walks, despite dropping in some and increasing in others.) Following this came “Conservation boards say Department of Conservation is facing crisis“. Next, with the recent public purchase of Awaroa Beach comes “Should we tax tourists to it?“.

    It seems fair to say that Fairfax, which controls a significant portion of New Zealand’s print media, has definitely adopted a theme, complete with a point of view. It’s triggered significant discussion in social media and elsewhere about whether international tourists, and particularly those who make use of New Zealand’s conservation estate, should somehow be made to pay more towards its maintenance.

    I’m not diametrically opposed to the concept of using tourism-sourced income to subsidise the conservation estate (particularly the part of it which is affected by tourism), but implementation is everything. There are many problems with implementation.
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  • Charting DOC expenditure

    Lately there’s been much discussion about New Zealand’s Department of Conservation not being well enough resourced to manage the rapidly increasing number of international tourists interested in parts of the conservation estate. Most recently, Stuff reports on concerns being expressed by Conservation Boards about a looming crisis “with tourists placing increased pressure on already stretched resources”.

    I might write more about it soon, but meanwhile here’s some data I’ve compiled from the last 13 years of DOC Annual Reports. It shows the division between recreation spending, natural heritage spending, and everything else. The combined total each year is funded from a combination of Crown Revenue (provided directly by the government) and Other Revenue.

    DOC Expenditure Chart

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  • Preserving Outdoor Access

    Radio New Zealand’s Insight programme has looked at public access rights and the conflict over paper roads in New Zealand. The 28 minute audio programme can be found at the end of the linked page.

    Paper Roads are legal rights of way, effectively public land, but some aren’t practically navigable as roads. Some also go through private property, and have sometimes been treated as inconvenient or non-existant by owners of surrounding land.

    Conflict between property owners and people who want access through their land via these rights of way has been a festering issue in recent years. Several years ago, the Walking Access Commission was created, with a general role of liaising between the sides. I wrote about this in 2009.

    From its beginnings, one of the early problems the Commission identified that recreationalists were having was not actually knowing where they had public access rights to go. An early success stories therefore, in my view, has been the Walking Access Mapping System. That system collates together information held by LINZ and countless local councils, and makes it clear where legal public access actually exists throughout New Zealand.

    The Insight episode tracks down people on both sides of the issue, and it’s worth a listen for its presentation of the problems being faced.

  • Groups Staying Together

    Stuff recently posted a story titled “Friends leave woman behind in bush — search and rescue called“. It refers to an incident in the Wairere Falls area near Matamata, suggesting that a group of friends selfishly left someone behind because she was too slow, resulting in both a SAR call-out, and prompting a particularly nasty comment thread below the article. More recently there’s been another odd-sounding case, of a group leaving a sick person behind having activated a PLB.

    I’ll state outright that I don’t consider it acceptable to consciously, or through negligence, leave someone behind because they can’t keep up, unless that person is complicit with splitting the group, remains well looked after, that both resulting new groups remain fully self-sufficient, and that each knows the other’s intentions. Being in a group means having a mutual responsibility to each other. Particularly if there’s enough of an emergency to set off a PLB, I’m struggling to rationalise splitting a group at all, unless the reason relates to the emergency, such as having part of the group attempt to walk out and get help independently.

    For various reasons I think the full context of the first event probably hasn’t been represented in the report, and the second case I’m struggling to justify from provided info, though a later report suggests they might have misunderstood certain things. I’m wary of judging people’s decisions under often-stressful circumstances based on terse media reports and I don’t care to dwell on either, but resulting discussion has veered towards tramping clubs and groups generally, and group safety techniques. It’s caused me to consider my own view of tramping in groups.

    It’s generally accepted tramping lore, at least within the club scene as it’s evolved through the decades, that groups should stay together when tramping, though there’s also some subjective inconsistency in what “staying together” actually means.

    When “staying together” how far apart is it acceptable to be? Must each person to be two-steps behind the person in front? Must everyone always be able to see each other? Should the slowest person always be at the front? Must there always be a person designated to always stay behind everyone else, also known as tail-end Charlie? Are there circumstances by which it’s acceptable for a group to split?

    I’ve met people with very strict, non-negotiable rules, and could collect a diverse range of answers to all of the above questions. I think my own response to all of these group mechanisms would be that it usually depends on circumstance.
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  • Mountain Biking Between Holdsworth Road and Atiwhakatu Hut

    The Tararuas hit the news a few days ago, not for the most flattering reasons.

    The Tararua, Rimutaka and Aorangi Huts Committee, which forms the representation of local tramping and recreation clubs in DOC’s consideration of local park management issues, has expressed concern that DOC issued a permit for a “one-off” mountain bike ride event between Holdsworth Road and Atiwhakatu Hut.

    The event is the Huri Huri 2016 Wairarapa Bike Festival, with this particular ride to take place on Thursday 21st January. Here’s the promotional Youtube video (also embedded in that page), which I’ll presume they also had DOC’s permission to produce because it clearly shows mountain bikes being ridden in that region. The event is being billed as a “one off”, but it seems reasonable to expect that if DOC’s seen fit to permit the activity once, it could easily do so again whether for this festival or not.

    The complaint of the Huts Committee isn’t without merit. Under normal circumstances, it’s illegal to enter a Conservation Park (Tararua Forest Park included) with a vehicle unless it’s in a place that’s been designated for that type of use. This rule is embodied in Regulation 19 of the State Forest Parks and Forest Recreation Regulations 1979 (which are deemed as valid for modern Conservation Parks under section 65(5) of the Conservation Act).

    DOC can grant permission, of course, but it’s always meant to be adhering to the local management plans and strategies in place for the parks, which have been developed in accordance with consultation of park users and everyone who takes an interest.
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  • That Paparoa National Park Great Walk

    In September I wrote about precedents around Great Walks seeming to become skewed. This morning I think that’s finally happened. Nick Smith has announced that a new Great Walk will be created in Paparoa National Park, to commemorate the 29 people killed in the Pike River Mine accident of 2010.

    I do not for a moment wish to belittle the obvious tragedy for the people who died in the Pike River explosion, their families and their friends. But purely as justification for a Great Walk, I really don’t understand this at all. If there’s to be a new track, then why a Great Walk instead of a regular track?

    In 1992, DOC itself justified the Great Walks concept as being “to manage impacts on New Zealand’s most highly used tracks” [FMC Bulletin 111, Oct ’92, page 18]. This was stated at a time when all of New Zealand’s current Great Walks were either in place, or planned. 23 years later, the newly-planned Paparoa Great Walk is not highly used. Therefore what has changed, why has it changed, and can we expect the same new principles to be applied for a new batch of Great Walks?

    In recent years, Great Walks have become a major brand. Tourists seek out the Great Walks because they’re great walks. The only rationale I can detect in this is to latch on to that brand and attract tourists to a local area, and in fact Nick Smith’s raw press release stresses that “it will bring tourism and economic development to the West Coast”.

    Smith’s press release also mentions a couple of other things (protecting the area, ensuring access to the resting place of 29 miners), but neither of those other two actually require a Great Walk. They could be achieved with a simple track combined with applying protection already available under existing law. Therefore those claims are really just government spin.

    If generating local tourism and boosting a local economy is the real reason for creating a new Great Walk, we should be asking some serious questions around what impact it will have on future decisions, because this decision seems very politicised.
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  • Streetview on Great Walks

    Several days ago, Google announced that it has adapted its Streetview technology for use on most of New Zealand’s Great Walks (also from Stuff, and from the Herald). Thanks to some guy who was employed to walk most of them with an 18kg camera on his back, it’s now possible to see a glimpse of any point along the walks from a web browser.

    Crossing Awarua Inlet.

    Streetview has potential to be a very useful tool. I have a couple of concerns about how it’s come to be (mentioned below), but there are several potential uses which I like.

    The most obvious is simply being able to see a place without going there. Since Streetview on Great Walks was announced, I’ve seen this very advantage criticised in social media. It’s been declared a waste of time, or people have expressed outright offence that certain places which some consider to be personal experiences might suddenly be so easily available on the web to people who aren’t actually going there themselves. Popular media’s framing of the whole thing being about “armchair trampers” and little else has probably encouraged some of this view, but I’m sure there’s more to it than that.
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