Windy Tops

Tag: tararua tramping club

  • The Hut Fallacy

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    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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  • Daywalk: Makara Beach Loop

    With a need to find a reasonably easy place to walk in my new shoes, I thought I might go for a wander around the Makara Beach loop. The last time I tried to do this I discovered I was a week too late, and the farm-land section of the loop had been closed for lambing (which happens between 1st August and 31st October). So thanks to transport difficulties I’ve had in the past, this was the first time I’d actually walked the ridge part of the loop.

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    The Makara turbines of Project West Wind.

    It’s hard to talk about the Makara Beach Loop these days without talking about Project West Wind — the initiative of Meridian Energy to build a giant wind farm on Wellington’s south coast. It took years to get through the consent process, and my most vivid memory of this was one of the few meetings I attended of the Tararua Tramping Club back in 2007. The meeting involved a representative of Meridian who described the wind farm proposal with a slide-show decorated by a large photo of a cute and happy dog basking in the wind, many noisy people whom I was later informed were not regular attendees of TTC meetings, and a lot of angry heckling.

    Date: 14th June, 2009
    Location: Makara Loop Walk, from Makara Beach.
    Route: Just doing the loop clockwise starting from the beach.
    [Photos and Videos]

    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: Kiriwhakapapa to Cow Creek, Mitre Flats and Holdsworth Lodge

    There’s a certain feeling one can sometimes get when looking at a weather forecast the day before going tramping, to realise the entire country is be converged on by unavoidable freezing heavy rainfall from all directions. It’s a feeling that corresponds with thoughts of wanting to avoid river travel, and thus I was very surprised last Saturday to be happily wading down the Waingawa River in the Tararuas. But then, you can’t really beat the Tararuas on a rainy weekend. As is generally known, the Tararuas and rain are like two magnets with poles reversed. Yep, the Tararuas are awesome.

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    Crossing the Waingawa under Cow Creek.

    It seems weird going back to somewhere where I’ve been as recently as a week earlier, but that’s what I did last weekend. This time it was with the trampey club, and it wasn’t quite the same place. Instead of just walking from Holdsworth to Mitre Flats and back, we began further north at Kiriwhakapapa, then walked back to Mitre Flats before coming out at Holdsworth.

    Dates: 8th – 10th May, 2009
    Location: Tararua Forest Park, Kiriwhakapapa to Holdsworth Road-ends.
    People: Steve, Daniel, Andrew, Justin and me.
    Huts visited: Blue Range Hut (1 night), Cow Creek Hut (0 nights), Mitre Flats Hut (1 night), Atiwhakatu Hut (0 nights), Holdsworth Lodge (0 nights).
    Route: Kiriwhakapapa to Blue Range Hut (Friday night), down to Cow Creek Hut via an old track to Cow Saddle, then to Mitre Flats Hut for Saturday night. Out to Holdsworth road-end on Sunday.
    [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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  • Daywalk: Walking the length of the Kaiwharawhara Stream

    I was supposed to be going up to Mt Ruapehu this weekend, but pulled out at the last minute because I’ve not been feeling too well over the last week. I wanted to try and get some fresh air when I woke up yesterday morning, though, so I thought I might have a go at walking along as much of the Kaiwharawhara Stream as I was able to.

    http://www.flickr.com/apps/video/stewart.swf?v=63881
    Bird songs near part of the Kaiwharawhara
    Stream in Otari Wilton’s Bush.

    The Kaiwharawhara Stream is one of the main water catchments flowing into Wellington Harbour, and it’s named after the suburb of Kaiwharawhara, where it finally exits into Wellington Harbour. It collects most of its water from around Karori and (especially after joining with the Korimako Stream) from many of the western suburbs of Wellington below Mt Kaukau. Its path through that part of Wellington is quite diverse. Some parts of the stream have a mildly remote feel to them, whereas others are heavily affected by built-up areas and the engineering projects that have caused it to be diverted and re-routed. Walking along it is a joining-the-dots exercise that I’ve wanted to do for a few months, and I’ve been waiting for a convenient time. Ultimately I found several places where it was impossible to follow because it was piped underground for long distances. In several places the stream had no formed track, and I gave up on following it directly once it seemed unlikely that it’d go anywhere except into another underground tunnel.

    Date: 22nd November, 2008
    Location: Wellington’s Western Suburbs, from Karori Wildlife Sanctuary to Kaiwharawhara.
    People: Just me.
    [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 main part of the catchment starts well up within the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary. There’s a charge to get into the sanctuary, and I’m also not 100% certain how accessible the stream is, so I instead decided to begin from just outside the sanctuary where the stream enters the free world. Note that I’ve put a lot more photos directly in this article than I usually do, because I think the photos tell much of the story of the changes in the stream from beginning to end.

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