Windy Tops

Tag: media

  • Tararua Southern Crossing Track Centenary, March 2012

    March of 2012 will be a quiet 100th anniversary in the Tararuas, in a sense. It might as easily be very windy and rainy. This March, if you’re attempting a Tararua Southern Crossing, or maybe if you’re competing in the Tararua Mountain Race which could be about that time (Edit 6-Feb-12: actually the next race won’t be ’til March 2013), consider taking a moment to remember that 100 years previously, the Tararua Southern Crossing track had just barely been completed and followed from end to end for the first time. (It’s only arbitrarily significant if you like counting in base 10, of course.)

    Between the 30th and 31st of March 1912, Messrs W. H. Field (local MP for Otaki), B.C. Aston, E. Atkinson, and Frank Penn successfully crossed the range on foot between Otaki and Greytown, walking from the Taungata bridge to Bassett’s hut in two days. It involved “21 hours 20 minutes actual walking”, just in case you were wondering. They were all members of the track committee, which had just completed building of the Tararua Southern Crossing Track intended to make the route feasible for regular people. They were the first to use it, and it’s what made all the difference. Their time over two days was a record for the day. They were the first people recorded to cross the range at all since investigations for a stock route in the mid 1890s.

    The initial success was buried as part of the Local and General News on Page 4 of the Wairarapa Daily Times. There was no headline, and the section had begun with a paragraph noting that the local carpenter’s daughter had broken an arm having fallen from a swing. Publication had come nearly a week after the event:
    (more…)

  • Not much to say

    I won’t comment much about the recent tragedy to befall one of the Wellington-based clubs over the new year, except that my thoughts are with them and the affected families and friends.
    (more…)

  • A Storm Brewing in DoC Intentions

    There’s an interesting storm brewing in Canterbury over DoC’s decision to phase out paper-based intentions forms in favour of instructing people to use the AdventureSmart website instead, which either helps people to create their own intentions forms with their own trusted contacts, or (after many clicks) appears to eventually direct people to the RoughPlan website as the only “approved provider” for recording intentions via a website. Kingsley Timpson, of DoC’s Waimakariri area office, stated (to The Press) that it isn’t DoC’s role to manage people’s intentions, and DoC’s head office has stated the new web system is “safer and easier to use”. [Edit 7th May 2012: Radio New Zealand’s Nine To Noon hosted a panel this morning to discuss this change.]

    Graeme Kates, the now-former chair of Arthurs Pass Search and Rescue, has just resigned his chairing position, and also his front-desk DoC visitors’ centre position, in protest over the change, claiming that the decision will cost people’s lives. Mr Kates is well known in SaR circles, running a comprehensive website for Arthurs Pass Mountaineering on which he continually documents accidents and rescues, and which I’ve cited from here on several occasions. He’s documented his concerns on his site in more detail.
    (more…)

  • Te Araroa to open (officially)

    If you’re in Wellington on Saturday December 3rd, you could pop over to Shorland Park, Island Bay at 10am for the official opening of Te Araroa—The Long Pathway.

    Te Araroa is a magnificent effort that’s been in progress for decades now since it was conceived as one of the goals of the NZ Walkways Commission in 1975. Since 1994 the goal has been administered through the Te Araroa Trust (combined with several regional trusts), to link the length of New Zealand with one continuous, officially recognised walking trail. People have walked (or run) the length of New Zealand using various routes and for many reasons throughout history, and in the last few years the unofficial Te Araroa route has been walked more than a few times. This official opening is symbolic of the route’s “completion”, after nearly endless work, frequently by volunteers, covering manual labour, legislative changes, negotiations with national and local government entities, private landowners, clubs and organisations, and any number of other problems, to allow for public walking access along the entire route.

    It’s an impressive feat by all involved that this connected walkway exists at all. Few people will walk the entire length of New Zealand (although some certainly will), but countless people will benefit from all of the walking access opened as a consequence of the project.

  • Commercial Consents and Pest Control (watch that space)

    Maybe this is old news, but I was interested to discover tonight, through a press release of a speech last night, that the Parliamentary Commissioner of the Environment (PCE) is beginning an investigation into commercial use of conservation land.

    The PCE was in the news in June, at the release of an evaluation of the use of 1080 poison for pest control in New Zealand forests. The findings were very positive towards its use, and strongly encouraged a big increase in its use, as long as it were being done with due care. This inflamed criticism from some areas because 1080 poison is controversial in some communities, particularly parts of the hunting community.
    (more…)

  • Nostalgic Exposure (aka Such a Stupid Way To Die)

    I should have posted about this when it came out, but missed it at the time and have since not had a suitable excuse. I still don’t have one, so I’ll just post it anyway with the expectation that it may be new for some.

    Forty years ago, in 1971, the New Zealand National Film Unit produced this educational video designed to terrify young people with the horrors of “exposure” (aka hypothermia) and, with luck, teach them how to avoid it. I was never subjected to this film during my educational years, but as recently as 1997, some schools were reportedly still petrifying their youth with the words:

    “Thomas Cougan will tomorrow night be DEAD!”

    Two years ago, NZOnScreen digitised the film and put it online. (There’s a press release here.) Happily the entire thing is available for all to see, from mountain mules, disgusting breakfasts and fashion of the late hippie era, to a relatively young Ray Henwood who draws concise diagrams on a blackboard as he expertly pronounces the symptoms and causes of “exposure”.

    The digitisation comes in two parts, followed by the credits. (Part Two is below if you’ve clicked into the full post, or you can just wait for Part One to finish.)

    http://www.nzonscreen.com/nzonscreen-player.swf

    (more…)

  • Let’s acknowledge some Avoidable Mistakes

    Last week was a very media-busy time for people being rescued from the New Zealand back-country. That time of year again, perhaps?

    4741849268_7192a6f9cd-1053977
    Just a general kind’a day when the weather’s not so happy.
    This eventful day, where our actions were strongly influenced by conditions, was the 27th of June 2010, near McKinnon Hut in the Ruahines.

    For instance:

    There will have been other call-outs during the same time-frame which haven’t been reported. That last one, which involved an injury evacuation, occurred several days later and I just threw in for show. Out of all of these media reports that describe distinctly different incidents, the 30th July incident was the first to describe a rescue from a situation that probably couldn’t have been easily prevented. The rest all involved bad judgements or decisions, and people losing awareness of where they were. In short, big storms sweep the country and many people who are unfamiliar with the conditions make mistakes.

    I think it’s great to go out when there’s stormy weather, for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes I only notice it once I’m back, but I appreciate seeing places in ways that many people simply don’t see them, plus it can help to gain and retain familiarity and a better appreciation of what the environment can really be like when it’s not playing nicely, as well as how to cope with it. That said, stormy weather presents new risks and challenges that need to be managed very carefully. Decisions need to be taken with great care, and that’s a separate issue which I wrote about some time back in a post titled The Next Three Hours. I’m fortunate that I’ve been able to build up a collection of friends whom I trust my life with and learn from. In my case it’s been through my association with the Wellington Tramping & Mountaineering Club.

    With this post, however, I wanted to focus on the 25th of July rescue near Arthur’s Pass, listed as the fourth bullet point above.
    (more…)

  • PLBs and SPOT Beacons

    I’ve found it interesting to read about the search in the Waitewaewae catchment area of the Tararuas over the weekend. Summarised, a police officer was overdue when setting up a SaR exercise which had been intended for next weekend. He and his dog were reported overdue at 9pm, about 10 search teams went in the following day, a location signal was received at 2.40pm, and an Air Force Iroquois winched him and his dog out of dense bush shortly afterwards. It turned out that his intended route had been taking longer than estimated, being very wet and with lots of tree-fall. Despite being relieved to be lifted out, he’d be prepared to be stuck for longer.

    What I find most interesting is the media’s reporting of his use of a “Spot-Me” device, although I think it’s far more likely that they meant to say he was using a SPOT Beacon. (Google tells me that a “Spot-Me” device would be a kind’a dumb thing to take into the Tararuas.) The technology in use is interesting because whilst PLBs and SPOT Beacons both report positions and can be used for locating a person, they work differently and are generally intended for different purposes.

    Unfortunately the reporting’s been unclear and inconsistent about exactly what technology was in use here, but it seems clear that a SPOT Beacon was in use, although a Herald article from this morning specifically states that he also had a “Personal Locator Beacon”, which probably means a 406 MHz Personal Locater Beacon (PLB), the current standard for requesting a rescue. Some sources (such as that article) state that both beacons were activated on Friday night despite no signal being received until the following afternoon, whereas other sources (such as this article from the DomPost) state that the “Personal Locator Beacon” wasn’t activated until Saturday afternoon. [Edit: Thanks to Heather, there’s now a more complete and detailed description of the sequence of events in the comment thread below.]

    Whatever actually happened, it’s a nifty excuse to discuss the differences between a SPOT Beacon, and a 406 MHz PLB. SPOT Beacons are sometimes touted as drop-in replacements for PLBs, but they’re really not. Despite having learned informally, I’m not an expert on the differences between these two devices, so if anyone notices any errors or omissions in what’s below, please feel welcome to leave a comment and I’ll do my best to correct things. (In this respect, thanks Craig.)
    (more…)

  • FMC Bulletins now available online

    Something I meant to write about a few months back (but became distracted) is the recent achievement of Federated Mountain Clubs in managing to get all of its FMC bulletins online, and available for download, all the way back to FMC Bulletin 1 of May 1957, when then-President Bill Bridge introduced the newsletter almost as an anti-climax.

    As of late last year, all older bulletins have been scanned from paper to PDF form, and the current online archive now contains 182 issues and is growing.

    The archive is available here, and a complete downloaded collection of bulletins from the beginning amounts to approximately 360 Megabytes. Most of the older bulletins are only photo-scanned at this time and thus aren’t text searchable with regular tools, but it’s still a great resource.

    This is awesome. It’s a great history of many things back-country in New Zealand, and browsing through the bulletins I’ve found it interesting to compare what made the issues of the day (mining, roads, dams, fears of user pays with Rogernomics and the new Department of Conservation, support for the re-naming of Mt Taranaki), and how the style has changed over the years. Accident Reports, for instance, were once presented in a somewhat more direct way (often naming names) than today’s bulletin’s Back-Country Accidents section.

    There’s a lot to get through, and I think the lasting benefit of this will be a large library of information on back-country issues now being more easily available when researching past events.

  • Remembering the LandSAR Yeti

    I guess it’s partly a consequence of not watching much TV (too much tramping) which meant that I never caught this advertisement for Land Search & Rescue when it came out in about July 2009 — so apologies to everyone for whom this is old news.

    I’m not entirely sure what the purpose is. It’d be great for raising awareness of LandSAR and hopefully attracting volunteers, but the advertisement seems to be specifically aimed at people who might get into trouble as opposed to attracting LandSAR volunteers. People in trouble probably don’t need to know that LandSAR exists so much as the Police, who’d then call in LandSAR and volunteers when needed. I suspect that if there was money allocated towards resolving outdoor accidents (without the charity bias), LandSAR wouldn’t have had a mention and the money would have been aimed at encouraging people to be safe in what they do in the first place, and then to know that the Police are the ones to go to first when there’s a problem.

    Still, it’s a treat to watch and kind’a neat. Kudos to LandSAR and to the people who made it.

    Thanks to davidm in the NZ Tramper forums for bringing it to my attention. As was later pointed out in that thread (by mrfizz), the ad was made pro-bono by Colenso BBDO with the help of Weta Workshop, and then given free airtime on TVNZ, so it’s not exactly money out of LandSAR’s budget.

    In addition to the ad itself, there’s a 2 part behind-the-scenes video, also up on Youtube, that describes the making of the commercial, about 16 minutes total: