Windy Tops

  • Living in Northland

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    Views from half way up
    the Tinakori Hill.

    We’ve now lived in Northland for almost a month, and it’s great. Stacey likes it because she can get to the university without having to go downhill and uphill. I like it because I get to walk over the Tinakori Hill twice a day. The lease deal is a lot nicer than the one we had in Brooklyn, and for once we’re not in someone’s run-down investment property.

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    Wildlife around the Tinakori Hill.

    Anyway, I think we’re mostly settled in to life in Northland now which is good. I’ve decided that I’m quite enjoying living here. It’s about the same distance from everywhere important as Brooklyn was, and the walk to work and back is more interesting. There’s less traffic, less people, less concrete, more trees and bush to walk through, more wildlife, and a lot more vertical variation. I went out to survey the Tinakori Hill a couple of days after we moved in, and there are a lot of places to potentially get lost between the network of tracks, on both sides of the hill.

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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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  • South Coast Eclipses

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    George’s eclipse projection.

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    Matt’s eclipse projection
    (look at the shadow close up).

    Just to comment on something else that happened in the last couple of weeks during times when I haven’t been tramping, Stacey and I caught up with some astronomy friends on Wellington’s South Coast on Thursday just over a week ago. Specifically, we took a look at the 2/3 Solar Eclipse that was visible to some extent over most of New Zealand at the convenient time of 5.30pm’ish on Thursday evening.

    I went armed with a solar viewing screen that I’d picked up from an earlier eclipse, but several other people brought along several other methods for viewing it, including everything from filtered telescopes down to pin-hole projectors made from kitchen implements. I haven’t had a chance to do much astronomy stuff in the last couple of years, but it was great to catch up with a few friends again.

  • Trip: Waikawa and Waitewaewae

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    West Waitewaewae
    meets Prout Stream.

    The last time I visited Waitewaewae Hut (aka YTYY), I was on my first ever trip with the Wellington Tongue and Meats. This had been the easy-rated trip up Saddle Creek from Otaki Forks, and considering Andrew was in charge, I think as many people had gone for the cooking as for the walking. With a large group of 12 people, the track that was signposted as 4 hours ended up taking us more than 7, and several people on their first ever tramp were feeling almost dead at the end of it.

    This weekend there was another group from the club doing a similar trip to what I’d done earlier, but personally I was in a separate trip coming into Waitewaewae from the other end. Our basic plan was to start from the Waikawa Stream, meet the other group at the hut on Saturday night, and then we’d all walk back to Otaki Forks on the Sunday.

    Dates: 8th-10th February, 2008
    Location: Tararua Forest Park, North Manakau Road to Otaki Forks.
    People: Steve, Lesley, Kerry, Marie, Andy, Sylvia, Dave, Sue, Allen and me.
    Huts visited: Waitewaewae Hut (1 night).
    Intended route: Begin at the end of North Manakau Road, follow the Waikawa Stream and pick a spur towards the saddle north of point 673. Continue down the other side into the West Waitewaewae River. Follow it to Island Forks and along the main Waitewaewae River to the Otaki River. Carry on to Waitewaewae Hut. Then out via the main track over the plateau and along Saddle Creek back to Otaki Forks on Sunday.
    Actual route: Bingo.
    Related bits: Dave also wrote a trip report about this weekend.
    [Photos]

    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.

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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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  • We’re moving flat

    Not much has happened in the last couple of weeks. Work’s started again, and our lease is up soon, so Stacey and I have been out flat hunting to try and find somewhere with a little more space and more afternoon sun. On that topic, we’ll be moving to Wilton (from Brooklyn) in a couple of weeks time, where we’ve found a really nice 3-bedroom house that actually has an affordable rent. (They’re very nice landlords.) It’s really only over the hill from Brooklyn (and along a bit), but it might mean some good opportunities to wander around bits of the other side of Wellington more frequently.

    Next weekend, a week before we move, I’m planning to be on a club trip lined up in the Kaimanawas, and that should give me something new to write about. It’s over Wellington Anniversary Weekend so we’ll have an extra day to run around and get lost.

  • Daywalk: Belmont Crossing – Porirua, Belmont Trig, Korokoro Stream, Petone

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    Bird life at the Korokoro Dam.

    I’ve walked from Petone to Porirua a couple of times now, and both times I’ve gotten lost on a farm on the Porirua side and ended up walking down some random farmer’s driveway. This time I thought I might do it in the other direction, so that maybe I could finally figure out where I should have been going.

    Date: 1st January, 2008
    Location: Belmont Regional Park, Cannons Creek Lake Reserve to Cornish Street.
    People: Just me.
    Intended route: Start at Cannons Creek, walk up past Cannons Head and Belmont Trig, then down one of the routes near the Korokoro Stream, and out at the Cornish Street exit in Petone.
    [Photos]

    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.

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  • Back from Taranaki

    We returned from Taranaki on Thursday, after a nice (albeit short) trip away. I was quite keen to come back to Wellington via Palmerston North, mostly because I haven’t been that way for a very long time, and I really wanted to go through the Manawatu Gorge again. We stopped at The Greytown Gallery on the way back, which I thoroughly recommend for New Zealand Bird paraphernalia. I picked up the Birds of New Zealand CD (for NZ $30), and also a very nice clock, which plays a different New Zealand Bird’s Song every hour, although it includes a light sensor and only plays sounds when it’s not dark. It’s very cool.

    We heard the news on returning that Parahaki Hut (in the Uruweras) burned down, apparently due to some kind of gas bottle accident, and took a couple of fishermen with it. The hut was supposedly scheduled for removal anyway so presumably won’t be replaced, but it’s really sad when it happens this way.

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  • New street shoes from Newtown

    Usually I wait until Christmas Eve before doing the Christmas shopping. I figure there’s little point in prolonging the stress when it can be conveniently and efficiently crunched into a few hours on the day before Christmas. This year, I’ve had to take that period of stress and shunt it forward a few days, because Stacey and I are about to head up to Taranaki for Christmas with her family. I finally figured out what to get for Stacey, and all it took was for her to drag me into a shop and show me. The best part is that it’s not too volumous, so I haven’t had to spend extra money on more wrapping paper.

    I also had a few other errands to run. The primary one of these came as a consequence of Wellington finally having had some decent rain a couple of days ago. After a few pathetic attempts at rain over the last couple of weeks, we actually had a persistent downpour for several hours during the middle of the day. This event coincided with my discovery that I seem to have walked through the soles of my work shoes again, and this was the reason for the errand.

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