Windy Tops

Tag: huts

  • Tararua Range Hut-Bagging Board Game Experiment


    A loose symbolic representation
    of The Tararuas?

    A few weeks back, in a comment, I alluded to a thought that the Tararua Hutbagging Competition concept could make an awesome board game. I’m thinking towards the more complex and strategic Ticket to Ride kind of board game than the Ludo or Monopoly kind of board game.

    The thought hasn’t really gone away, and since that time I’ve been wondering how such a game might work. The rules could potentially be based on something like those of the recent LandSAR hutbagging competition. eg. Players get three “48 hour” attempts to enter the range, visit as many different huts as possible before getting out again, and tally up points in doing so. Strategies might be similar to what people and teams try to use in the real world competitions.
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  • Tramping Hut Users’ Survey

    2817263350_f78d341862_m-7993889
    Howlett’s Hut is one of
    my favourites.

    If you follow this blog (yippee!) or perhaps if you’ve just stumbled upon it, there’s a reasonable chance that you’re a user of New Zealand’s Back-Country Huts. You might like to consider taking part in an online survey for some researchers working on a project within the University of Auckland’s School of Environment, who are “seeking to understand the significance of tramping huts to their users”. It’s being conducted because they “are interested in the role of tramping huts as symbols and resources within New Zealand’s ‘back country’ landscape and the way they facilitate a particular type of tourism”.

    It’s 21 questions, with plenty of space to comment with thoughts about old huts versus new huts, obligations of hut users versus providers, Great Walk huts, hut prices, and various other aspects of New Zealand’s back-country-hut network and its use.

    Enjoy, and tell your tramping and hunting and tourist and other hut-using friends to answer it too.

  • Keep an eye on the Tararua hut books

    Don’t be too surprised if you get pushed over from behind by a few hut-baggers racing through the Tararuas during the next couple of months. Lower North Island LandSAR is running a Tararua hut-bagging contest for its members. (Specifically with entry being open to lower North Island LandSAR, the Police SAR Squad, and Airforce BCF.) Until 7th December 2011, entered teams will be allowed three 48 hour “trips” to clock up as many points as possible. This will probably encourage some non-stop no-sleep rogaining techniques by the more committed teams.

    The competition’s only open to people associated with LandSAR, but the rules and points table are amusing to read all the same. As well as bagging huts and points of interest, points are being awarded for providing GPS tracks, and for logging in Mountain Radio Skeds. There seems to be nothing in the rules to prevent a team from calling into all three of the Wellington, Central North Island and Hawkes Bay skeds in an evening, but I guess they might also need to decide if it’s worth another 10 points to stop moving for another 30 minutes, given how long it can take to properly get a mountain radio aerial up and down.
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  • Tutuwai Hut damaged

    I know a few people who follow this blog visit the Tararuas. If this is you, make a note that Tutuwai Hut is presently damaged thanks to a fallen tree in the recent stormy weather, and officially closed until further notice. If you go that way, you’ll be camping outside in your alternative mobile shelter option.

    The current alert from DoC is published as part of the Wairarapa Alerts.

    I’ve no idea to what extent the damage is. If anyone happens to know (or has any photos they don’t mind sharing), please feel welcome to comment here.

    Edit 24-July-2011: Ross Browne has posted a couple of photos [1, 2] (from a third party) on the Tararua Range Facebook page.

    Edit 25-August-2011: As Liam noted in a comment below, the hut now appears to be repaired (although the main track in is still as washed out as it’s been for a while).

  • Huts: Untold stories from back-country New Zealand, by Mark Pickering (review)

    Huts, by Mark Pickering

    This is the second book I’ve read by Mark Pickering, the first having been A Tramper’s Journey, which I liked (the review is here). He’s written many books, and this is a topic that Mark Pickering is especially suited to, having a strong interest in huts and having visited over 1000 back-country huts already. His latest book was released in time for Christmas 2010. Huts: Untold stories from back-country New Zealand retails for $50, or $49.99 if you take the effort to shop around.

    Production quality is generally nice, with good authoring and editing, although see my comment below about printing. This book is very heavy. It’s a paperback, but don’t let that fool you. It’s 384 big pages on good, glossy paper. Large numbers of photographs, often using half a page at a time, ensure the text isn’t too dense and the reading remains quite easy. Reading one or more chapters in a short sitting is very feasible. The weight and dimensions mean it’s not the sort of book that would typically be stuffed into a pack for weekend reading, except by people who like to show off.

    Background

    The title suggests that this is a book about huts. It is, but it’s even more-so a book about the history of the back-country, and how all of the 1000—1500 back-country huts (the exact number depends on one’s criteria for counting) came to be. The blurb on the back of the book begins with “If huts could talk, they could tell the whole history of the back-country”, and this is a good summary of what you’ll find inside. It’s a history built around the structures which, today, are mostly used for recreation.
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  • The Next Three Hours

    Last weekend, when four of us bailed out of our trip through Leon Kinvig Hut in the Ruahines, part of the reasoning was the weather forecast. All things considered I think we made a good decision, and it started me thinking about the role of weather forecasts in outdoor recreation, especially tramping.

    Something I’ve heard about New Zealand is that for the next three hours, a good judgement on the weather from looking out the window is likely to be more accurate than a forecast issued by the MetService. After three hours, probabilities switch around and the forecast becomes more accurate than what you can typically judge on your own. Coming from me this is just an out-of-context statement taken from anecdotal rumours of random research, but I find the essence believable. Obviously it depends on how you interpret statistics and the “correctness” of forecasts, not to mention how good you are at judging the weather. A more important point to draw from this is that there’s a lot of information available from observing what’s around you, especially regarding what’s about to happen during the next few hours.

    Forecasts in New Zealand are also fallible thanks to limited data, proximity to the sea, endless micro-climates, and the need to simplify the colossal amount of information and expertise into a way that can be conveyed to people not trained in meteorology. A sunny forecast doesn’t guarantee sunny weather, and vice-versa. Even the isobar charts, which I think can convey some of the most useful information if applied well with local knowledge (something for which I’d like to improve my skills), are a gross simplification of all the information considered by forecasters who draw them.
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  • In Search of Esmond J. Kime

    Here’s a slice of history:

    From Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 137, 13 June 1922, Page 8:
    MISSING TRAMPERS

    Two Wellington youths, who set out to cross the Tararuas last Thursday morning, have not since been heard of, and their long absence has aroused anxiety for their safety. They are Mr. Allan Bollons, son of Captain Bollons, of Wellington, and Mr. E. J. Kime, of Rongotea, and both are employees of the Post and Telegraph Department. They expected reaching Otaki on Saturday night or Sunday morning, but in view of the amount of snow on the ranges, it is considered that they may have taken shelter in the Mt. Alpha hut, and remained there.

    Mr Vosseler, the chief guide of the Tararua Tramping Club, has organised two search parties to go over the range from each side, and the parties left the city this morning.

    The year of 1922 was probably a turning point for how the Tararua Range was seen and treated by people in outdoor recreation circles. At a time when best practices for visiting the back-country were in a comparative infancy, two serious accidents, first in January and then in June, were a catalyst for improving tracks and the building of a new hut on the Tararuas’ Southern Crossing route.

    1425662741_39bea50ee8_m-6583631
    Kime Hut as it currently stands. The current
    hut is the first replacement on the current site,
    having been built during the 1970s.
    [Update 12-Dec-2013: Kime Hut has been replaced
    again, so is now in its third incarnation.]

    Tellings of both accidents are given through Chris MacLean’s history of the Tararuas titled Tararua: the story of a mountain range, to which I often refer on this blog because I think it’s such a great book. It was only when searching for more information after a query that I noticed the National Library has very recently added another 30 years of issues of The Evening Post to its public online and searchable archive called Papers Past. This makes it easier to view another perspective through the Evening Post as things unfolded. It also reveals additional information that isn’t widely circulated, especially around Alan Bollons’ side of the story as was related through interviews in the Evening Post, which I wasn’t very aware of until now.

    Below, I’ve reproduced a batch of newspaper articles about the search for Esmond Kime as it occurred, and some of the consequences that eventually led to the improvements of tracks and hut facilities along the Tararua Southern Crossing route. Thanks to the National Library for resourcing the Papers Past service and making this possible, and thanks to Ms Hamilton nee Bollons for starting the discussion that led to me coming across this. I’ve found reading the whole lot really fascinating.
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  • Rising hut fees, the price of being honest

    I woke on Saturday morning to the Radio NZ news that back-country hut pass fees are to rise, or more to the point that they’ve already risen as of last Friday when the announcement was made. The base cost of annual hut passes rises from $90 to $120, and Great Walk Hut bookings (for those who use them) are also rising by $5 per night. The price of individual hut tickets (for those not using passes) stays the same at $5 each, although the Department of Conservation increased the number of tickets required to stay in many huts during mid-2008, when the “serviced hut” cost went from 2 tickets to 3 tickets per night.

    The story hasn’t made it far through the media, and most places where it’s visible show as a regurgitation of DoC’s press release pulled off the news-wire. One media organisation that investigated further was the New Zealand Herald, although the Herald’s story doesn’t offer much further information except to get a quote from a Mountain Safety Council representative who “welcomed the increase”. The article’s thin on detail about why the MSC welcomed the increase, just as it’s thin on why the MSC was consulted before organisations that more directly represent use of back-country huts (as opposed to outdoor safety) such as FMC, the NZ Alpine Club the NZ Deerstalkers, or any number of local outdoor recreation clubs for that matter.

    Hut fees were introduced in 1988 by the newly-founded Department of Conservation. They’ve taken time sink in, with many people early on finding it offensive for the government to effectively usurp facilities they’d helped to build, and then charge for their use. Chris MacLean’s Tararua history book quotes John Rundle during a 1991 taped conversation as follows:

    “I, with a lot of other people, have put a lot of voluntary time in cutting these tracks, building these huts — which DoC hasn’t done — going on searches, instructing schools, Scouts, Girl Guides and things like that — all voluntary. For them to come and ask me for a hut fee is an insult.”

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  • The Hut Fallacy

    1426537098_47ac3b8445-5531718
    A clouded in Kime Hut on the exposed tops of the Southern Crossing, Tararua Range.

    fallacy [fal-uh-see]. 1. a deceptive, misleading, or false notion, belief, etc.: That the world is flat was at one time a popular fallacy.. 2. a misleading or unsound argument. 3. deceptive, misleading, or false nature; erroneousness. 4. Logic. any of various types of erroneous reasoning that render arguments logically unsound.

    The Hut Fallacy. 1. a deceptive, misleading, or false notion or belief prevalent in New Zealand outdoor circles that the objective of reaching back-country huts can reliably replace additional measures of safety. 2. a presumption that plans work, judgement is always perfect and/or that accidents only happen to other people.

    I hope nobody minds me defining this term, at the very least for my own purposes. Despite this kind of thing happening often, I don’t know of a quick and easy term to describe it. I think The Hut Fallacy is something that pops up often in New Zealand’s back-country.
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