Windy Tops

Tag: tramping

  • Trip: Rangiwahia, Sawtooth and Pourangaki

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    Distant silhouettes after Sawtooth.

    Dates: 11th – 13th April, 2008
    Location: Ruahine Forest Park, Rangiwahia road-end.
    People: Alistair, Sarah, Illona, Jane, Amanda, Dirk, Paul, Harry, Craig and meeeee.
    Huts visited: Rangiwahia Hut (1 night), Pourangaki Hut (1 night).
    Route: Past Rangiwahia Hut to Maungamahue, over to Te Hekenga and around to Taumataomekura and Tiraha. Over Sawtooth Ridge to Ohuinga, then along to point 1632 and down the official track to Pourangaki Hut for Saturday night. Straight up to point 1614 on Sunday, then back along to Maungamahue, and out via Rangiwahia Hut.
    [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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  • Outdoor First Aid was fun

    Last weekend I hopped onto a first aid course being run by the Mountain Safety Council, which I thoroughly recommend. Thanks to Bridget and Richard who ran the thing, as well as everyone else who would have been involved behind the scenes. Among other things, I reinforced my belief that I’m not a very good actor. My worst effort was when I was supposed to be playing a person with a broken leg. When asked about my age, I somehow accidentally pulled age 14 out of nowhere, momentarily forgetting that another aspect of my character was that he was supposed to be suffering from angina. Overall it was a good weekend, though. There was a lot to it and I’ll really only learn things properly with experience, but I’m hoping I’ve picked up some good ways to structure my thoughts rather than panic if and when bad things happen. (Acronyms like DRABCS, SAMPLE and WRAPT are good ones to remember.)

    In other news, I finally busted my relatively cheap altimeter a couple of weeks ago (during the Renata trip), which isn’t entirely unexpected given I haven’t been going to great lengths to look after it. That particular one was a bit unreliable on occasions in any case, including when compared with other altimeters on the same trips, and more of an interesting toy and something to practice with rather than something I’d want to rely on for an accurate reading. Now I finally have a good excuse to go shopping for something worthwhile.

    Anyway, we’re off to the Ruahine Range this weekend, to make another attempt at getting from Rangiwahia over to Sawtooth, and back around via Pourangaki. We first attempted this about 6 weeks ago in March, but it just rained and rained and a couple of things unfortunately went wrong.

  • Trip: Fenceline, Kapakapanui and Renata Hut

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    Marie and Allen walking down
    from Kapakapanui.

    This weekend was going to be a great navigation trip, which I’d been looking forward to because I’m really keen to get some good navigation experience. A couple of people had to pull out on late notice so there were only the three of us in the end. We hadn’t decided exactly where to go until Friday night at the railway station, but the basic idea ended up being an approximate anticlockwise loop starting and ending at Otaki Forks. I’d looked at the forecast on Thursday afternoon and it hadn’t actually appeared too bad, maybe with a bit of rain around Saturday night or so. It didn’t quite turn out that way, though.

    Dates: 28th – 30th March, 2008
    Location: Tararua Forest Park, Otaki Forks Road End.
    People: Allen, Marie and me.
    Huts visited: Kapakapanui Hut (0 nights), Renata Hut (1 night).
    Intended route: Up the Fenceline Track to point 476 above Otaki Forks, then south-west around the ridges to Pukeatua, past Kapakapanui and down to the saddle near point 822. Cross the road and head on to Renata Hut for the night. On Sunday, walk along the Renata Ridge Track to point 925, and head north up the ridge for about 1km before hopping west onto another ridge and going north to Waiotauru Forks. Jump over the footbridge, and back out to Otaki Forks.
    Actual route: Well the first day went okay, but we ended up walking down the 4WD track towards Waiotauru Hut until we could see that the river was well up after a lot of recent (and continuing) rain. At that point we turned around, and hitched a ride out to the Akatarawa Road in a grunty Toyota LandCruiser.
    [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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  • Trip: Aorangi Crossing, Pinnacles to Cape Palliser

    I enjoyed the weekend about a year ago when we crossed Aorangi Forest Park from the Pinnacles to Cape Palliser… so much so that finding myself without much to do for the weekend, I ended up joining a group of nice happy people who were doing exactly the same thing all over again. Of these people, Sarah and Alistair had been part of the same trip a year before.

    Dates: 7th – 9th March, 2008
    Location: Aorangi Forest Park, Pinnacles Road End to Mangatoetoe Road End.
    People: Sarah, Alistair, Sylvia, Jane, Kevin, Jackie and me.
    Huts visited: Washpool Hut (0 nights), Pararaki Hut (1 night), Kawakawa Hut (0 nights), Mangatoetoe Hut (0 nights).
    Intended route: Pinnacles up and over to Washpool, up and over to Pararaki to stay the night, up again and down again to Kawakawa Hut, then up the river, over the saddle and down to Mangatoetoe Hut and out via the Mangatoetoe River.
    Actual route: Hooray.
    [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.

    The whole weekend is a DOC-endorsed orange triangle track, but it’s very steep in places. The first day involves two climbs and two descents, with one of the climbs particularly draining of energy. The second day also stretches out and involves quite a lot of climbing, as well as pushing through over-grown river beds. It’s a great trip for people who like hut-bagging. Over two days, the walk passes 4 separate huts. Each hut is placed on a separate river which leads out towards the coast to the west, and the popular way for hunters to access the huts is by walking (or driving) up the rivers. For our trip though, we were traversing the track from north to south between all four huts.

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  • Trip: Rangiwahia, Maungamahue, Te Hekenga, Triangle

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    12 people in a 6 bunk hut.

    The weather report for the weekend indicated what looked to be quite a violent deluge of a front smothering the entire country all at once, from north to south. The met service was issuing weather warning’s galore. Forecast chart visualisations available through Jim McGregor’s metvuw.com website might have implied that all of New Zealand would be bathed under a combination of beautiful sky blues and majestic sunset reds during the weekend, but unfortunately the colouring on those charts was artificial, and in fact indicated quite the opposite. Our party was affected too, with two members pulling out late on Friday afternoon, having decided they were too frightened at the prospect of spending a whole weekend playing cards against the rest of us at Rangiwahia Hut.

    Dates: 29th February-2nd March, 2008
    Location: Ruahine Forest Park, Rangiwahia Road End.
    People: Alistair, Sarah, Marie, Jeremy, Dirk and me.
    Huts visited: Rangiwahia Hut (1 night), Triangle Hut (1 night).
    Huts seen: Pourangaki Hut.
    Intended route: Up to Rangiwahia Hut on Friday night, then past point 1635 to Maungamahue. West to Te Hekenga, around to Taumataomekura, along Sawtooth Ridge to Ohuinga, then down to Pourangaki Hut for Saturday night. Up to Pourangaki on Sunday morning, then back along to Maungamahue, and out again via Rangiwahia Hut.
    Actual route: Shortened a lot due to weather and injuries, we reached Te Hekenga then followed the spur down to Triangle Hut for the night. Back up to Rangiwahia Hut via the main DOC track, and out.
    [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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  • 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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  • 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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  • Branders as retailers

    Lately it was announced that the Fairydown brand is under new management (again) for about the millionth time in its history, although I don’t feel as if I’ve been around on the scene long enough to really appreciate all the changes it’s gone through. (Ben of Cactus Climbing has a brief summary of the recent situation.) Well done to these three guys and good luck to them. The new business plan, rather than manufacturing quality NZ-made goods for NZ conditions, is to manufacture it all in Asia (as everyone does these days to be fair), and open New Zealand Fairydown retail outlets in the main centres. I guess I’ve been wondering from my limited perspective about some of the changes that have been going on in the Wellington retail sector of tramping shops.
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