It’s been quiet on the blog post authoring front lately. This is not because there hasn’t been much to talk about, so much as because I’m presently on holiday in the UK and Ireland. Apologies to those people who’ve left comments which I haven’t yet had time to address. I’ve also spent a while trying to research and author an opinion piece for the FMC bulletin (which has been an experience in itself) regarding the word “closed” as it is sometimes applied to parts if the New Zealand conservation estate. That probably won’t come out until about November and I don’t want to undercut it, but I’ll post it here some time after that and probably decorate it with some lengthier detail and references which didn’t fit very well in the Bulletin edition.
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Historic Relationships
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Te Araroa and skimming the edge of the Tararuas
For people who, like me, are interested in recreational walking areas in the vicinity of Wellington and the Manawatu, I noticed this morning that Matty T of the Wellington Region Cycleways blog, has an interesting photo heavy post which shows off the Levin to Palmerston North section of the Te Araroa trail.
Matty walked the route in reverse from how it’s presented on the Te Araroa website, so it’s necessary to sort-of read each of the following pages in reverse, but the sections covered from south to north were (I think): The Arapaepae Lookout Track, The Mangahao-Makahika Track, Burttons Track and Fitzherbert Bridge to Burttons Track.
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Completing a Kaiwharawhara Stream Walk
It’s good to read (via The Wellingtonian and Stuff) that some positive effort is being made to open up a small section of land on the harbour side of Wellington’s incoming motorway. The article doesn’t mention it, but the beach being referred to is, I think, just around the corner from the harbour outlet of Kaiwharawhara Stream. Although it’s public land, this stretch (here’s a map) has been almost completely cut off from public access thanks to the barrier of 4 lanes of moderate speed regular traffic on the old Hutt Road, 6 lanes of motorway, 4 railway lines, and some Centreport land in the vicinity of the Interislander vehicle loading area on the south-western side. Presently, the only legal way to access the coastal section is from the sea.
Several years ago, I made an effort to walk the greater part of the Kaiwharawhara Stream, down from the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary (aka Zealandia), through Otari Wilton’s bush, a feast of suburbia and Trelissick Park around the Ngaio Gorge. It’s a very nice and relaxed journey which tells a story of history and local ecology. For me, it was rather frustrating to discover that after all this, the entire thing ends behind an ugly and impregnable industrial wall, just before the stream enters the harbour. The stream flows underneath all of this and through a channel between the various commercial/industrial properties, but sadly no provision has been made for any practical form of walking access.
If an access way can ever be created so that people can see where the stream finally enters the harbour, it’d make it possible to have a nice sense of closure for the journey.
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Safety In The Mountains (review)
I’ve never read a copy of Safety in the Mountains until now. It’s a booklet, first published in 1937 by Federated Mountain Clubs (FMC), to collect important points of safety for exploring the back-country, and designed as a carry-with-you reference guide. Over 75 years, 130,000 copies have now been printed. The 11th and latest edition of 2012 was launched earlier this month.
Not having read previous editions makes me inadequate to comment on changes or make other comparisons with what came before, so here I express my impressions of the 11th edition from an isolated viewpoint. I’ll also state a disclaimer for a potential conflict of interest, because I’m indirectly a member of Federated Mountain Clubs (via the Wellington Tramping & Mountaineering Club), and tend to be aligned with much of its advocacy.
About the book
The text says it best: “This booklet is intended as a collection of reminders for use in the field rather than to replace any instruction manual, or textbook. They are for the guidance of readers and are binding on fools.”
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Cooking gas to be removed from some Tararua Huts
I realise there will be concerns about the Department of Conservation’s Wairarapa Conservancy deciding to remove cooking gas from several huts on the Wairarapa side of the Tararuas. DoC’s current Wairarapa Alerts page lists three of the affected huts as Mitre Flats, Totara Flats and Tutuwai. I’d guess Powell Hut and Jumbo Hut will also be targets, but can’t find this officially stated. The reasoning for the removal of cooking gas is that budgets are tight, and providing cooking gas for these serviced huts is quite an expensive operation.
Personally I’m not concerned about this move. To me it seems that cooking gas (if required to cook one’s chosen meals) is something that should really be carried by a party already, even if they expect to find cooking facilities at a hut, simply for self-sufficiency. If you happen to fall over or otherwise get stuck part way to an intended hut, and don’t have the necessary equipment to cook your meal, you could very well be going hungry and find yourself in danger.
The Dominion Post article quotes a manager of the Kuranui Outdoor Education Academy as saying that loss of cooking gas could be a safety issue because he might need hut gas to heat up a brew for students, and that carrying their own cooking equipment will make students’ loads heavier. If it’s an accurate quote, however, I have serious trouble accepting this reasoning. Children or not, if the party isn’t carrying self-sufficient cooking facilities on the way to a destination, it’s a safety issue already.
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Risks of Experience
Recently an incident in Auckland’s Hunua Range provoked a discussion in parts of the outdoor community. It wasn’t a discussion about a man’s getting lost for four days when intending a 4 hour daywalk so much as a discussion about the way he was repeatedly described in media as ‘experienced’, despite many of the things he did having been categorical opposites of what is typically recommended for those stuck in his situation.
Once eventually found, an exciting story emerged. The man had at first made a mistake by following a trapping line off the main track on which he’d intended to remain. Despite having two maps (I’m unsure what sort of maps they were), neither proved useful. Intent on saving himself because he knew he could get out…
…A determined Fong barely rested for the next four days as he followed water courses in the park, picking himself up from falls down hills, losing his map and running out of food.
Unable to catch the attention of the searching helicopters, he even tried unsuccessfully to use an old tree trunk as a raft to paddle himself to safety, all the while never entertaining the thought that he would not make it.
“I knew with my fitness I could get out, it was just a matter of time. In my head I just put one thing in my head and said I’ll get out and that’s it.
“When I saw a mountain, I just thought ‘I’ll bust through that mountain and just keep going and going’.
“I never felt tired, I just kept walking and walking. I never thought that I would die in the forest.”
[—snip—]
The bush was so dense that searchers could have passed within two metres of Fong and missed him if he was unresponsive. Duthie [the SaR coordinator] said it was a massive relief when Fong was located because there’d been little sign of him and as more time passed the chances of him safe decreased.
Even after it was clear to him that a search was underway, he walked roughly 50 kilometres through thick bush where he would not have been visible from the air. He didn’t remain in the same place, and was eventually located in a region that had already been searched.
This post is meant to be about the general media’s interpretation of experience within outdoor contexts more than any specific incident, but I’ll refer to this and a couple of other incidents for demonstration. There’s another discussion about similar things on the NZ Tramper website. As usual this is all just my own musings, and thoughts are welcome.
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DoC Track Time Calculation Nightmares
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! Sometimes it’s
just fun to leave the sign there.I found it really interesting to read Alistair Hall’s article in Wilderness Magazine, which describes a recent Official Information Act Request to the Department of Conservation regarding how it estimates the track walking times that are typically advised on signs around the place. If you’ve spent any amount of time in New Zealand’s conservation estate track network, it’s likely you’ve experienced inconsistencies in the accuracy of such times. It shouldn’t really be unexpected, given that every sign presents a single time whilst people clearly walk at different rates. No stated time can be correct for everyone.
Most interesting for me from the article, I think, was not the revelation that estimated times aren’t pulled out of thin air so much as the mish-mash variety of different methods that various conservancies use. Some conservancies have slow staff walk the track and time it at a leisurely pace. In the Marlborough Souds, a fit staff member walk the tracks, then times would be weighed slightly downwards… unless they were shorter walks in which case they’d find a staff member near retirement. (No mention of how fast this older person might be—many “physically mature” people can still crack it through the outdoors pretty fast.)
Some conservancies make informal guesses and then consult staff from their experiences. Times on signs around Egmont National Park were estimated by paying a contractor to walk every track in the park and time distances between signposts, and the times were then adjusted depending on the track type. Conservancies throughout the central North Island use a formula based on the Naismith Rule of thumb, basically looking at a map and taking hill ascents into account, and then weighting the results further for the kind of track and expected type of visitor.
None of them, however, allow for variation in the type of person who might be walking on a track. They all produce a single time for the signpost next to any stretch of track, and typically don’t indicate who it’s for. Irrespective of how much calculation occurs for variations in the track, an assumption is always made about the visitor. It might be an assumption that people are very fit, or alternatively that the visitor could as easily be pushing a baby stroller, but the signs don’t say.
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Mokihinui River Saved
After walking from the southern branch a couple of years ago, it’s fantastic to see that the Mokihinui River has been saved from flooding by a hydro dam. The project was granted resource consent in 2010 pending a likely appeal and further permission from DoC and the Minister of Conservation. It’s been dragging through the Environment Court for some time now, but today Meridian Energy decided not to pursue it further. Further details are available on Stuff, or via the NZ Herald.
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Tararua Footprints Online
Many people who visit the Tararuas will have a copy of Merv Rodgers’ book from 1996, Tararua Footprints, on their bookshelf. Historically it’s one of the more authoritative guidebooks on the Tararuas, talking about river systems and valleys and how the routes fit together. It covers different territory from the more recently published Tararua Adventure Guide, which is a more specific guide to specific things to do in the range.
Lately, Tararua Footprints has become very hard to track down, but very awesomely the author has now donated the text to the Tararua Tramping Club for a new online edition.
Although it’s now 16 years out of date, geography doesn’t change much in that time and most of the information is still very relevant. The longer term intent of the TTC is to turn the online edition of the book into an up-to-date working guide to be edited in an ongoing fashion and be the “definitive Tararua Range route guide”.
It’s certainly worth checking out next time you venture into the Tararuas.
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Heuristic Traps of the Tongariro Alpine Crossing
Leaving South Crater near
the end of spring.A rescue that may have been inevitable occurred in Tongariro National Park on Saturday, when 16 people were rescued from the Tongariro Crossing, at least four of whom were in early stages of hypothermia. Present media appear to be pushing an angle that assigns much blame to a shuttle operator (who also has a side of the story) for giving the group incorrect advice about weather, although that’s something I struggle to accept. [Update 5/5/2012: This morning the Dominion Post also weighed in with an editorial, which largely blames the shuttle operator, but which I also think ignores much of the problem.]
“It got very nasty very quickly, and we became separated into three groups.
“We had the strong wind at our backs and we didn’t want to turn back into a headwind.”
Their hands became so cold that it became too difficult to open their packs to find food.
It was not until a woman collapsed with hypothermia that they decided to head back, he said.
Two Auckland trampers, Ghaz Jabur and Graham Plows, found the confused and hysterical group late in the morning and helped them off the mountain. They also contacted police by cellphone.
“The visibility was down to 10 to 20 metres; it was a freezing wind and we were crouching behind this boulder when we saw this hysterical person coming towards us,” Mr Jabur said. “We asked him if he was alone and he said he was with a big party who were trapped further up.”
The men grabbed their packs and climbed up to find the group huddled together. “They were hysterical; they had minimal clothing on – puffer jackets, hoodies, jeans, tights and sandshoes.”
The men gave spare clothes they had in their packs to the worst-affected and tried to get them out of the wind.
“All we could do was grab them and pull them down the slope. We did this for about 10 to 20 minutes, it was totally exhausting.
“Two guys and two of the girls were in a really bad way. They were shaking involuntarily, they had hypothermia and their eyes were rolling. They couldn’t put food in their mouths; they would have died for sure.
“The only way we could get their attention was to scream at them one at a time and tell them what to do.”
For me, it’s a reminder that the Tongariro Crossing is one of the wackiest places I’ve been in New Zealand in terms of seeing unprepared people in a wild, potentially very isolated, changeable and dangerous environment. I wrote about this problem of inexperience combined with popularity at the Tongariro Crossing a couple of years ago, and this TVNZ Close Up story from a few months before impresses the extent of the problem.
It’d be premature to try to comment on specifics of exactly what happened with regard to advice given, but I’m not entirely sure it’s relevant. While it’s good to have responsible people on the edges, assigning blame to operators for dropping off and collecting people who aren’t prepared also ignores the bulk of the problem.
That said, it also feels simplistic to just assign blame to people themselves and go no further—there are bigger things happening. Even if 16 people found themselves in trouble and had inadequate clothing and weren’t properly aware of the forecast and nearly died, and even if it is their own fault, they still weren’t doing anything especially different from what a substantial proportion of people have been doing before them and will likely continue to do in the future. In that respect, these people just happened to be the unlucky ones out of the crowd. For me, that is a much bigger problem, and this incident is merely symptomatic.
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