Windy Tops

Category: update

  • Mokihinui decision appealed

    Following from this decision, it’s interesting to read on Stuff that the Department of Conservation is now appealing the decision to allow damming of the Mokihinui River. (That’s the river we went for a walk along back during new year.) I assumed the decision would be appealed, but was more convinced the appeal would come from an organisation affiliated with the Wild Rivers campaign. [Update 22nd May 2012: Meridian has now withdrawn its project from the Environment Court and will not proceed.]

    Even if the appeal is turned down, the Minister of Conservation (Kate Wilkinson) still has to finally approve Meridian’s plans to dam the river because it happens to be on conservation land, and she would have to do so in the face of her main advising department giving strong advice about how bad-an-idea they think it is. On the other hand, Kate Wilkinson ordered a review into the advocacy role of her department a couple of months ago.

    Anyway, enough of this, politics is boring. I’m going tramping this weekend, or possibly swimming depending on how things go.

  • Mokihinui to be dammed

    Well, probably. Several months ago I wrote about our trip along the Mokihinui River, which has been under threat of being dammed by Meridian Energy for some time. A few months later than planned, the Official Commission has finally released a (very long) report in favour of the decision to allow a dam. This will be a surprise for some, because late last year Gerry Brownlee (Minister of Energy and Resources, and Minister for Economic Development) let slip that he didn’t think it would go ahead, before he pulled back and claimed he didn’t get involved in local politics. [Update 22nd May 2012: Meridian has now withdrawn its project from the Environment Court and will not proceed.]

    The decision was majority rather than unanimous, with two of the three commissioners (John Lumsden and Terry Archer) finding in favour of the consents, but the other commissioner (Greg Ryder) considering “that the effects of the proposal on the ecology of the Mokihinui catchment were not only adverse but could not be satisfactorily mitigated”. Their full decisions can be read from page 296 of part one of the document linked from above.

    It is very likely that this decision will be appealed before anything happens. The New Zealand Wild Rivers campaign more or less echoes my thoughts on this.

    A media report from The Press is here.

  • No time to get out this weekend

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    Today I went for a walk with Shaun around Belmont Regional Park, starting at Korokoro and up to Belmont Trig, then over to Cannons’ Head and back through the valley. I’d taken annual leave from work, and it was a really nice day for it. More photos are over here.

    [map:https://93a12629bf06.ngrok-free.app/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/20100309-belmont-trig-from-korokoro.gpx%5D

    Shaun’s temporarily here from New York, to where he migrated (from Wellington) about 7 years ago, but it’s really cool that he’s come over. He did most of the work for organising a bachelor party last weekend, and I was able to drag some people along part of the Skyline Walkway. Everyone kept up.

    All this walking around, of course, was an ulterior motive to make it on topic for me to write that I’ll have a few other things on my mind over the next few weeks, and probably won’t get out walking or tramping much during that time unless things are hideously wrong. Not that this is a problem as far as I’m concerned. 😛

  • Tragedy near Kime Hut, part 2

    Also see Tragedy near Kime Hut and Tragedy near Kime Hut, part 3.

    Last winter there was a tragedy when two trampers died of hypothermia in blizzard conditions near Kime Hut in the Tararuas. One was particularly high profile, which is possibly why the story has gotten so much attention. I wrote some thoughts about it at the time, but reserved comment with the lack of information. The coroners’ inquest began a few days ago, and is now being reported on by the DomPost:

    It’s interesting reading, especially the latter articles, and seems to developing into some good examples of things they might have done better, but more importantly the presence of a culture that wasn’t a safe one to mix with the outdoors, yet also one which is very prevalent (in my opinion at least).

  • Just a little frightened

    It’s neat getting home and finding one of these inside the curtain. We get them outside from time to time, but I’m not sure how this one found its way in. We probably left a window open, and once inside I guess this was the closest thing it could find to an old damp tree-stump.

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    It seems they can pinch very noticeably when they’re crawling over your skin, or maybe it was just surprised at my waking it up to get it outside.

  • Short recovery walks

    A week ago I hoped to go tramping around the Camelbaks in the Tararuas, but wasn’t feeling well and ended up pulling out. By Sunday I thought I was doing better though, and was getting a little bored of sitting around. The weather was sunny and I found myself on a morning walk around the Karori Sanctuary Fence before ending up in Aro Valley.

    [map:https://93a12629bf06.ngrok-free.app/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/20091011-around-the-sanctuary.gpx%5D

    It’s probably just as well I didn’t go tramping in the Tararuas, though. At times it still felt as if I was only using 2/3 of my lungs. The last time I went tramping with a cold like that I had a rather bad time (also because of silly decisions I made about what to wear at critical times, to be fair), and it wouldn’t have been good for anyone in the group given the yucky weather on Saturday and all the bush-bashing in that region. Now two weeks later I can still notice the effects, and I hate the way the remnants of colds can just hang around sometimes, but I think it’s dissipating now.

    In unrelated news, Stacey and I are about to head overseas to South-East Asia for 3.5 weeks. (Specifically Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.) It’s the first proper holiday we’ve had for a couple of years and it’ll be fantastic to get away for a while. I suspect there’s not a lot of Wellington-based tramping in that part of the world, however, so I’m unsure how much I’ll update this blog during the coming month. When we return in mid-November I’m expecting one potentially stressful week and weekend at work, and after that I’m certain I’ll want to get out for a tramp or two.

  • Windy on the Skyline Walkway

    I had the second half of an afternoon to kill earlier today, and went for a short walk down to Otari Wilton’s Bush, not far from where I live. Somehow I ended up on the Skyline Walkway, maybe because I forgot to stop and turn around, but it all worked out okay. This morning was calm and sunny, but by now there was an increasingly strong nor-westerly in the air, which makes sense given a southerly’s due here soon. (ie. Air circles around low pressure systems clockwise in the southern hemisphere so it was characteristic that the wind was coming from the north-west right now… I’m slowly getting better at this, heh heh.) I’d left my camera at home, but took my GPS and so ended up with this map.

    [map:https://93a12629bf06.ngrok-free.app/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/20091003-skyline-chartwell.gpx%5D

    Along the ridge-top of the Skyline Walkway, the wind was really starting to blow — not to a leaning-against-it level, but certainly enough to cause the odd stumbling. It also wasn’t enough for the turbines over at the Makara Wind Farm to be switched off. The area’s full of high-tension power lines, and they make a major racket when the wind’s blowing through them to that extent.

    Funnily enough, I notice that Erick Brenstrum recently wrote a short piece over on the Met Service Blog about ridge top winds, and how they operate.
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  • Daywalk: Rimutaka Rail Trail (Wellington side)

    It seems I’ve actually only been out tramping five times this year, and three of those times have been in nearly the same place (near Holdsworth and Mitre Flats). I find this depressing in a way, but I guess it’s what happens when so much else has been going on and busying up my life. It has meant I’ve spent more time getting out on daywalks to visit some of the places closer to Wellington, and the most recent of these was to walk up the Rimutaka Rail Trail.

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    A generic collection of river rocks which was
    not especially characteristic to this walk.

    The Rimutaka Rail Trail is one of those things I hear a lot about, but until now I’ve never made the time to go and check it out, mostly thanks to being busy with other things. The entire trail crosses from Upper Hutt to Featherston, crossing the gap between the Tararua and Rimutaka Ranges (or “the range” if you’re the sort of person who thinks of them as the same one). Historically, it’s the route that the railway line followed to connect Wellington with the Wairarapa, and special “Fell” locomotives, designed with low gear ratios and a centre grip track, were built specifically to slowly haul trains over the very steep (for a train) 1/15 gradient climb over the range. Building this long, snakey route over the range, including three tunnels, was a huge task for a lot of people in the latter part of the 19th century, but economically it was very important. The line was decommissoined and the specialised Fell Locomotives retired in 1955, at the opening of New Zealand’s longest railway tunnel of the day (8.8 km) which passes directly underneath. The Rimutaka Rail Trail was re-opened as a walking and mountain biking track a few years ago, and in that time it’s become very popular.

    Date: 9th August, 2009
    Location: Pakuratahi Forest, near Upper Hutt.
    Route: Walk up to the Rimutaka Rail Trail Summit from Upper Hutt, then back again. (Also see the map at the end of this post.)
    [Photos]
    [map:https://93a12629bf06.ngrok-free.app/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/20090809-rimutaka-rail-trail.gpx%5D

    This post is a trip report. You can find other trip reports about other places linked from the Trip Reports Page, or by browsing the Trip Reports Category.

    It’s common for people to visit the summit from either side, then walk back the way they came, although sometimes organised people will walk all the way across, and ambitious people might walk all the way over and all the way back in a long day.

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  • A snapshot of Search and Rescue

    The story of Liat Okin has entered the news again lately, specifically because the Southland Area Coroner has been unable to find any explanation of why she would have left the Routeburn Track, one of New Zealand’s Great Walks which is targeted predominantly at tourists. Back in May 2008, Liat sadly died when she left the Routeburn Track, apparently to follow an unmaintained emergency bush-bashing route for no clear reason and (apparently) out of character, before she slipped and fell. Photos from her camera implied that she wasn’t especially concerned about her situation, and there are still disturbing murmurings (though no solid evidence) about possible foul play, or at least that a person unknown may have shown her the route and encouraged her to follow it, then left her alone. It was a big story at the time, first because Liat disappeared without a trace, and second because after the Police-coordinated Search and Rescue team gave up the search, her family resorted to privately funding one of the largest Land Search and Rescue operations that New Zealand has ever seen.

    Shortly after the search concluded, one of those involved posted an amateur 4 minute video that shows an interesting snapshot of a SAR operation in progress. If you’ve not already seen it, it’s worth a quick look, and if you click through to the YouTube page you can read a better description about what’s going on.

    http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/WhhcaJMKfVY&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&border=1

    One outcome of the Coroner’s report seems to be that DoC review its branding of “Great Walks”, noting that the term “Walk” might create confusion for some tourists whose first language isn’t English and who might incorrectly interpret the term to mean that there’s no potential danger. On the face of it and without all the information at hand, I’m not convinced it would have helped in this situation, but perhaps there’s something to the idea.

  • Claustrophobic bivy bags

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    It’s bright orange!

    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.
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