Windy Tops

Tag: news

  • Thoughts on another Tararua rescue

    The Southern Crossing of the Tararuas has been in the news a few times lately. Shaun Barnett wrote this nifty description of the Southern Crossing for the April 2018 edition of Wilderness Magazine, although a feature on the Tararua Range in NZ Geographic from around mid 2016, by the same author, is much more comprehensive.

    Meanwhile the RCCNZ stated that last Sunday night, 25th March, and leading into Monday morning, a man’s life was undoubtedly saved by a group he met at Kime Hut after he arrived in a hypothermic state. A Stuff report provides further information, adding that he’d been with a companion.

    A PLB was triggered, and a LandSAR team walked up to Kime overnight. Low cloud meant a helicopter couldn’t safely reach Kime at the time. He was eventually assisted to Field Hut, at a lower elevation, and air-lifted out. His condition meant he stayed overnight at hospital. It’s good news in the sense that things could have been much worse, but weren’t.

    This case is interesting because the Stuff report suggests that the man mightn’t have been well equipped for the conditions in which he found himself. It reports that he’d previously competed in the Tararua Mountain Race, and it reads as if some of the gear he carried might have been more consistent with that sort of event.
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  • A fuller narrative of the Taranaki alpine tragedy

    In 2013 I wrote briefly about the (then) recent alpine tragedy on Taranaki.

    A very detailed, and interactive, report about that event has now been published by Stuff.

    The article is sourced from multiple in-depth interviews with people directly involved. It covers both the accident and the rescue operation, and its narrative flows from the beginnings of decisions which combined to cause things to unravel into a disastrous situation, through the attempts to plan and deploy rescuers, and eventually to the eventual musings and hindsight of what people wished had happened differently.
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  • Otaki Gorge Road Closed, Also for Foot Access

    Just quickly, for now at least, it looks as if Otaki Gorge Road has been closed. Not just for vehicles due to the usual slip, but also to foot access. At this time, it also appears to be indefinite.

    Alternatively, here’s the announcement from the Kapiti Coast District Council. The latest status of the road can be checked here.

    The reason? New cracks found above when clearing the road from an earlier slip. It won’t be until next year before more detailed survey work can be carried out to determine the scale of the problem.

    This sounds potentially serious and hopefully it doesn’t result in long term blocking of access to Otaki Forks from outside the Tararuas. That entrance is, by a substantial margin, the most major entrance and exit point on the western side of the range.

    [Edit 23-Dec-2015, 5.50pm: Further information from Radio New Zealand Checkpoint.]

  • The tragedy over the long weekend

    People who read this may have heard about the climbing tragedy up Mount Taranaki over the weekend, within Egmont National Park. I’ve wandered around the park a few times, and I walked to the top of the mountain in late 2010 (via the most direct and easiest route). I guess this accident feels closer to home for me than some others, despite me not being an alpine climber.

    So far, this article is the most down-to-earth media collation I can find of what is and isn’t known.

    I’ve checked my photos from my own most-recent visit. The following two photos respectively show the area near the top of The Lizard, standing with the camera at 2435 metres, but on a nicer day. The Lizard veers around to the right (in the second photo) below this rocky spine. The two climbers reportedly chose to dig themselves into the ice, located at about 2400 metres, slightly below where these photos were taken, having climbed the East Ridge and come down from the summit. On a topo map, that would have placed them about here, give or take.

    5295509263_75408263db_z-5459048
    Looking up.

    Looking down.
    5296102492_2faae34ce7_z-7008548

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  • A New Trusted Contact Service for Outdoor Safety in New Zealand

    About a year ago, DoC announced that it was pulling out of the business of taking intentions for visitors to New Zealand’s back-country. It was only ever doing so inconsistently anyway, through ad-hoc arrangements at various visitor centres, but the announcement still created controversy. One way or another, all of the nominated alternatives (encapsulated by directing people to the AdventureSmart website) required people to have their own trusted contacts.

    For a New Zealand local, arranging a trusted contact is generally manageable. People here know other people here, and those people are generally in the same time zone, speak the same language, know the important phone numbers, and are usually familiar with New Zealand’s systems, conditions and expectations. For visitors to New Zealand, however, finding trusted contacts is often not so easy, especially for visitors who simply don’t know someone who can be trusted to reliably report if they don’t return on time. Some visitors don’t even realise how important it is to have a trusted contact.

    I’m perfectly happy with DoC not being in the business of taking people’s intentions. It’s a very time consuming and expensive thing to do, especially when many of those people were never bothering to properly sign out, resulting in needless efforts to chase up and ensure they’d safely exited. It’s never been a clear statutory requirement for DoC to look after people in this way. Nevertheless, the fact that the staff of some DoC offices in touristy places have been acting as trusted contacts until recently has ensured more reliable oversight for some people visiting the outdoors than would otherwise have existed.

    A year ago I wondered if there might be room for a business to set up for taking and managing people’s intentions as a trusted contact. Very happily, it seems that someone else had a similar idea, and actually acted on it. This afternoon a random press release popped out, from a company/website called Safety Outdoors.

    According to its press release, the Safety Outdoors service, due to launch tomorrow (Thursday) and accessible via http://www.safetyoutdoors.com, will allow people to sign up for a trusted contact as a service, with a fee per activity. [Edit 9-Dec-2012: It seems to be taking longer than advertised for the SafetyOutdoors website to get underway. Meanwhile, you could also check out Adventure Buddy, which is an alternative (and free) service which is also now available.]

    From the Safety Outdoors press release:
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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.

    3051254847_476a627851-6943208
    Goodbye, Kaiwharawhara Stream!

  • 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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  • Kime Hut Replacement is Actually Happening

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    Visiting Kime Hut at 9pm
    on a winter’s night.

    For several years now there have been rumours that Kime Hut would be replaced, and they’ve been subsequently quashed or pushed back for one reason or another. (Budget issues and such.) This summer, the rumours seem to be formulating into something that actually occurring. Kime Hut is in a very exposed part of the Tararuas, and serves as a stopping point for some as part of the Tararua Southern Crossing. The hut has a big internal space and its reputation is one of being a very cold place to stay, and although it can keep off the most harsh aspects of a storm, it’s also sometimes referred to as the refrigerator—on this occasion in 2009, Craig measured the indoor temperature to be approximately 1°C warmer than the outdoor temperature. It’s fairly common to hear people pleading for some form of heating in the hut, but that’s never happened.

    Last week (after I asked) I was very helpfully informed by one of the local staff at DoC’s Kapiti Conservancy that yes, Kime Hut is going to be replaced during the summer of 2012/2013.
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  • Suggestion of Charging Overseas Visitors for National Parks

    The Otago Daily Times has recently been pushing a story (parroted in the NZ Herald) about a suggestion of charging tourists for entry to National Parks in New Zealand. A further ODT story from the same day (last Thursday) briefly interviewed several visitors tramping some of New Zealand’s Great Walks, and there’s also an ODT online survey requesting people’s opinions. The story’s also being followed by Queenstown’s Mountain Scene. (Update 13-Feb-2012: At the time of posting, it looks as if I missed this analysis from the Nelson Mail; Update 17-Feb-2012: Wilderness Magazine also has a look at this.)

    This isn’t a Department of Conservation thing, at least in any public way. The suggestion comes from the Ministry of Economic Development, as part of its briefing to the incoming Minister of Tourism, who just happens to be the country’s Prime Minister on this occasion. Such briefings are standard for most government departments after an election, reporting on their current state of affairs, even if their minister hasn’t changed. If you want to see the actual briefing, it’s available here. The relevant area is between about paragraphs 39 and 46, titled ‘Capturing greater value from international visitors’.

    It’s important to recognise that it’s nothing more than a suggestion at this point in time, and might easily amount to nothing. Personally I think it’s a bad idea. Something I find most attractive about New Zealand’s back-country spaces is that fundamentally they’re not run as money making tourism juggernauts, although that’s about what MED is suggesting should happen given that part of its proposal mentions taking advantage of people’s “willingness to pay”. Surrounding businesses and concessionaires do that by providing extra things on top, but the land itself is available to all for entry.
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  • 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.
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