Windy Tops

Tag: musing

  • Torches, boots, hills and Wellington

    For all of today, Wellington was doing a cute thing that it does several times a year. The clouds come in low over the harbour and drift over the city. Living in the hills, it’s possible to either be inside the clouds, or above them and looking down over a flat desert of smooth drifty white. In Northland, on the western side of the Tinakori Hill, our view of Otari Wilton’s Bush was relatively clear but for the walls of fog creeping around the end of the hill and making their way towards us, but always evaporating before they reached us. Many people living in the cloud would stay at home for the day, believing it to be dreary and depressing weather, but I find walking through this subtle kind of environment fascinating.

    Stacey and I went for a walk down into the central city, 20-50 minutes away depending on urgency, and the view over the harbour was iconic of these kinds of days. Much of the mist would have evaporated by the time we saw it at 11.30am, but with the Orongorongas highlighted by their contrast in the background behind the city and the harbour as they lead towards the southern extent of the Tararuas, it’s a good sight all the same.

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  • Evolution of the new Atiwhakatu Hut

    Through some strange set of circumstances I’ve found myself walking past Atiwhakatu Hut in the Tararuas on 5 separate days of 3 weekends in the past 6 weeks. None of it was very planned in advance, but it happened to correlate with the hut’s replacement, giving me an opportunity to take some photos of its evolution, and the eventual destruction of the old hut. The new Atiwhakatu Hut is the same design as Roaring Stag, and although I haven’t had an opportunity to see inside, it looks great from the outside.

    No doubt people involved have their own much more complete sets of photos, but I’m quite chuffed to have my own. This is the first time I’ve had an opportunity to watch a hut being built in this way.
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  • The right to walk from A to B

    I’ve found it interesting reading about the events in Auckland over the last few days, during which several thousand protesters broke through police barriers to walk and cycle over the Auckland Harbour Bridge. This was against the wishes of the New Zealand Transport Agency, which operates the bridge for vehicles only and had told the group they couldn’t walk over the bridge on its 50th anniversary. The protest was arranged by the GetAcross campaign, although the organisers claim they never asked people to break police barriers.

    I’ve never lived in Auckland and it’s not a place I know much about, but I was very surprised to discover that it’s not actually legal to walk over the Auckland Harbour Bridge. After all, if it’s illegal to cross the bridge without a vehicle then it seems like a very long way to walk between St Mary’s Bay and Northcote Point. Google Maps tells me that it turns a 7.1 km walk straight over the bridge into an estimated 12.5 hour 60.8 km walk, complete with warnings from Google Maps about possibly not having adequate footpaths along the way! Perhaps someone with a better knowledge of Auckland could confirm if this is accurate? It seems very strange, though. Several other bridges that come to my mind all have free walking routes — these being the Sydney Harbour Bridge (in Sydney), the Brooklyn Bridge (in New York), and the Manhatten Bridge (also in New York). Not having something similar for an iconic bridge in a place such as Auckland seems to be a confounding oversight!
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  • Positive news for New Zealand walking access rights

    It’s been good news that in September 2008, the Walking Access Commission was established (thanks to the Walking Access Act) with the role of facilitating walking access within New Zealand. Some key commitments of this commission are to help negotiate walking access where there is none, to help resolve disputes, to work on an acceptable code of conduct, and to provide useful information for recreational walkers about where they can actually go. WIth respect to the last commitment, as has been noted recently in the NZ Tramper forums, the commission has recently put out a Request for Proposals (RFP) for the development of a system that, if it works as intended, will make it much easier for members of the public to access information about specifically where in New Zealand there is public right of access.

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  • A snapshot of New Zealand conservation history

    The sanctity of any conserved area, be it national park, scenic reserve, or historic reserve, can be violated at will by the State acting under Sections 7, 32 and 39 of the National Parks Act, under Sections 16, 34 and 97 of the Scenic Reserves and Domains Act or, if either of these avenues by any mischance should fail, under Sections 13(a), 311 and 312 of the Public Works Act. Neither Parliament, nor, least of all, the public at large, need be informed of what is proposed to be done. The first they know is, all to often, heralded by works activity or accomplished fact.

    — Dr J. T. Salmon, Senior Lecturer in Biology, Victoria University of Wellington. Heritage Destroyed — The Crisis in Scenery Preservation in New Zealand. 1960. Page 11.

    I remember growing up in the 1980s with the devoted belief that New Zealand was a clean and green, environmentally sound country. We had a wonderful conservation estate that was open for exploration and fantastic scenery, though it took me a while to discover it properly. New Zealand was completely anti-nuclear, unlike the French who were exploding test nukes nearby, and in related actions committed acts of terrorism in New Zealand, and it was terrorism according to France’s own condemnation before French agents were caught and its government was forced to admit guilt. France threatened wide-spread European Economic Embargoes against New Zealand until we gave back their secret agents, or something like that. This entire event was a major boost to sentiments against nuclear power, which New Zealand didn’t have and therefore New Zealand was clean and green. There was even a movie about the valiant New Zealand neighbourhood watch group catching two bumbling French secret agents (or something like that), starring well known New Zealanders such as Sam Neill and Xena Warrior Princess!

    My friends and I knew that New Zealand was clean and green because the French government was exploding nuclear bombs in our back yard, and we weren’t. And we also had earthquake drills in school during which we screamed and dived under tables, and mohawks were the new rage of fashion. If it were today, I imagine we’d be clean and green because we don’t like the way Japanese vessels hunt intelligent friendly whales in the southern ocean. Fallacies are a wonderful thing for self-assurance.

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  • Quietly passing the time

    It’s interesting how people pass the time in the dark. I didn’t indicate it at the time, but on this occasion Marie’s working on statistical formulae, and Dan’s working on circuit diagrams.

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    At Totara Flats in the Tararua Range, March 2007

    It was raining outside. A lot.

  • Te Araroa, National Cycleways and Recessions

    This morning I was reading Michelle’s latest post about the NZ government’s pending plans to help offset the recession by spending $50 million to build a length-of-New-Zealand cycleway. Michelle’s thoughts, which have been similar to mine, reminded me of how weird I thought the idea of a cycleway was when I first heard about it a few weeks ago. It’s not so much aversion to having a cycleway as the suspicion of why its has suddenly emerged now.
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  • Tararua Plane Wreckage Stolen

    This is quite bizarre and rather concerning.

    [Edit 22-Jan-2012: This post seems to turn up quite often in search engines. For the more complete media narrative of what happened after I posted this, you should also read Stolen Shingle Slip Knob Plane Wreckage Found in Masterton and Tararua Plane Wreckage to be returned to Tararuas]

    The Tararua Range is dotted with plane wrecks which make up much of the history of the region. A particular one of these wrecks is very well known to people who visit the area, as it’s clearly visible from Mt Holdsworth and the surrounding ridges. It seems that recently, this wreck has been raided and major parts of it have been stolen for unknown reasons.

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    The Shingle Slip Knob wreck of 1955 is clearly visible from the ridge between Jumbo and Holdsworth along the popular Jumbo/Holdsworth loop. (This photo from December 2006.)

    According to the linked article from the Dominion Post, an unidentified helicopter was seen making three trips to the wreckage, and further investigations have now found that the plane’s engine has been taken, and other parts have been moved to other places for easier removal.

    From the linked article:

    The wreckage of a plane strewn near the gravesites of two pilots killed in the crash in the Tararua Range more than 50 years ago has been stripped in an act damned by the Conservation Department “as daylight robbery”.

    “In the past week, parts of the plane’s remains, which are now owned by the Crown, have been whisked away and other sections have been moved into clearings for easier removal.

    [–snip–]

    Tramper Barry Durrant told The Dominion Post he saw a red and white Hughes 500 helicopter make three trips to the site of the wreckage last Friday.

    The Department of Conservation staff who administer the park are fairly dismayed, and I don’t blame them. So am I. It’s disrespectful to the pilots who died in the accident, and it’s disrespectful to everyone who enjoys the history of the Tararua Range.

    Update 8-3-2009, 9pm: There’s a conversation thread about this topic running over at New Zealand Tramper.

  • Final thoughts

    Travelling is a really fascinating thing, but something that gets me about it is that it’s a way to notice just how screwed up the world can really be. I’ve just come back from the USA where briefly I visited San Francisco, stayed 2 weeks in a hotel prison stuck behind a highway in New Jersey, and eventually escaped into the Manhatten metropolis of New York City for about a week at the end. This will probably be the last post I write about my recent trip, since I’d like to keep the focus of this blog on walking and tramping related topics.
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  • I always knew they were crazy people

    Not that it’s a bad thing.

    I was browsing Bob McKerrow’s weblog this morning, which is typically fascinating reading, and he’s pointed out a 2005 study by Erik Monasterio, a psychiatrist, who suggests that over a four year period, 8.2% of experienced New Zealand mountain climbers might have suffered fatal accidents — that’s a mortality rate of around 1 in 12 in four years. Bob has also noted, through several quotes, that New Zealand mountains can be exceptionally dangerous due to their proximity to marine weather patterns, but are often underestimated due to their low altitudes when compared with mountains overseas.

    The details of Erik Monasterio’s study were published in the New Zealand Medical Journal some time ago, and although it was intended to collect psychological characteristics of climbers, it also produced interesting (albeit very preliminary) results about accidents.
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