Windy Tops

Tag: wellington

  • Pest Control and Social Licence

    Lately I’ve had some issues with getting out tramping, mostly with life having been usurped by a couple of bundles of life experience. I expect the hiatus will end in time.

    Last Thursday 28th September, however, I went to a Royal Society hosted expert panel discussion on the topic of gene editing and potential applications for New Zealand’s predator free 2050 goals. The resulting discussion isn’t up yet, but was being recorded by Radio NZ. It will be available sooner or later.

    It was a fab discussion to attend. It inevitably steered towards the realisation that getting a social licence from NZ’s population is very important if the predator free goals are to be met. Enough people who live in New Zealand need to be comfortable with what’s done, why it’s done and how it’s done, or it’ll never happen.
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  • Daywalk: The Complete Paekakariki Escarpment Track

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    Typical.

    Saturday 9th April 2016 was the official opening day of the Paekakariki Escarpment Track—a new connecting track between Pukerua Bay and Paekakariki, above the railway line along the coast. Intense interest meant that organisers had to restrict entry for the initial day, but it’s now fully open to the public.

    Date: 10th April, 2016
    Location: Paekakariki to Pukerua Bay.
    People: Just me.
    Route: Walk south from Paekakariki to steps under the SH1 road bridge, onto the Paekakariki Escarpment Track, then follow it to Pukerua Bay.
    [Photos]
    [map:https://93a12629bf06.ngrok-free.app/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/20160410-paekakariki-escarpment-track.gpx%5D

    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.

    I never felt the desire to follow a narrow, steep track with squillions of other people on Saturday 9th April… or 400 as it turned out. I did, however, spontaneously decide to jump on a train on Sunday the 10th of April, to go and check it out.

    For me, this track is a welcome addition to the network of walking options in the Wellington region. It naturally connects together two locations (Pukerua Bay and Paekakariki) which, until now, really had no practical on-foot connection short of walking alongside State Highway 1. I’ve walked that stretch several times. It’s not very exciting.
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  • This coming weekend

    I’ve been struggling to get out lately due to other commitments, and it’s likely to continue for a while longer. This weekend, though, I’m anticipating a short jaunt in the Tararuas with Tongue and Meats, in the vicinity of Mitre and Girdlestone if the weather plays nicely. Last time I visited Mid-King Biv was ages ago. The weather’s uncertain and I’m not sure if that will actually happen, but am looking forward to it regardless. Otherwise it might involve some navigation around Blue Range. I’ll write about it more properly afterwards.

    As some consolation for less tramping I’ve been exploring around Ngaio and Crofton Downs, where I’ve been living since the beginning of this year. Whilst I’m working from a home office lately it’s become a very accessible starting point for quickly escaping suburbia during my lunch break. There are frequent and steep hills available and plenty of native bush and reserves nearby, whether it’s Trelissick Park or Te Ahumairangi Hill (aka the Tinakori Hill), or Otari-Wiltons Bush or the Skyline Walkway, which is up behind where I now live, and noisy gangs of Kaka making themselves known every morning and evening. There have been good opportunities to explore and discover much of what’s around here beyond what I was familiar with last time I lived nearby.

    With the Skyline Walkway I’ve come across several [cough] unofficial but more direct routes up to the ridge, which must nevertheless be frequented by at least a few people given how well defined they are. It’s tempting to go up and trim back some of the gorse, of someone else doesn’t beat me to it. The accessibility’s paying off, too. Several weeks back on July 9th, I was able to hop up immediately when Wellington had one of its colder days for which the western hills received a rare dusting of snow, despite being very near the sea and only 300 metres above sea level.

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    Anyway, tramping this weekend!

  • Good LandSAR Publicity

    This morning’s Dominion Post has some fab publicity for New Zealand’s LandSAR organisation, derived from a couple of recent high profile incidents in the Tararua and Rimutaka Ranges in the lower North Island.

    The first article profiles a couple of people who volunteer their time and expertise to work with Police who usually coordinate their types of searches. The second article describes some of the mechanisms and processes of a systematic LandSAR operation in New Zealand, and a summarised history of how it came to be this way.

    Both make worthwhile reading.

    Various other links of relevance: New Zealand Land Search and Rescue, LandSAR Wellington, Police dog Thames found on High Ridge in the Tararuas, and Runner found in the Rimutaka Range.

  • Condensing the back-country into Wellington

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    Steve checks out Robin Hut, battered by
    wind on Wellington’s South Coast.

    Earlier today, Eamonn and Steve and I checked out some of the Miniature Hikes huts that have popped up around Wellington, and which should be around until the end of March, with a parallel display in the Courtenay Place Light Boxes. It’s a very cool idea.

    The project has recently received some media attention, both in mainstream publications and also in some tramping and outdoor channels. The exhibition’s main website gives a better idea of what it’s about, as does a short YouTube clip in which the artists explain what they’re on about.

    The idea is to “shrink the back-country into just Wellington”, giving people excuses to get out and find parts of Wellington’s back-yard away from the roads (but not too far away) which they might not otherwise have seen.

    Personally I hope that March won’t be the last we see of it.
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  • States of the air out there

    This is one of the views available from the top of Mount Kaukau. It’s not my favourite view from here, but it’s still quite good.

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    Panoramically, Newlands is mid-way to the foreground on the left. Lower Hutt is behind it, and identifiable here because it’s on fire. Panning across the harbour is Matiu Somes Island, one of our predator free scientific and historic reserves. The Kaukau transmitter, without which many of us could not experience the convenience of 24-hour shopping broadcasts directly into our homes, hovers above suburbs like Ngaio and Khandallah. Neither is visible here.

    Further along is Wellington’s CBD. The Tinakori Hill is in the foreground, with part of the town belt along the top and suburbs like Wadestown and Wilton on this side of it. Wadestown, as I understand things, is one of many suburbs which had its street grid drawn up on a flat piece of paper in merry old England of the 1800s. This shows in how amusing it can be to walk through. Beyond the end of this photo would be Karori, including deepest darkest Karori, but I didn’t swing the camera that far.

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    Sometimes the scene from the top of Mount Kaukau, this time seen from the other side, will look similar to this. From not far away there will be a faint outline of the transmitter, if even that, surrounded by its ever-diminishing orchestra of pine trees which become fewer and more bent-over after every storm. It’s also not my favourite view from here, but it’s still quite good.

    Fewer people visit the top at these times, but even last Saturday with rain equal to some of the heaviest I’ve experienced anywhere, I met a sizeable handful of drowning people. They might have been up for a run, being walked by their dogs, or simply out walking themselves. After a few occasions, you start to pick out familiar faces.

    Mount Kaukau is also one of the places where the MetService measures wind speed. The peak is exposed to the edge of all the air being channeled through the Cook Straight. From time to time we’ll see exclamations like these.

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    The Met Service measures the wind from right at the very top of the transmitter, and its facilities were originally installed to provide wind information for aircraft at an elevation of 2000 feet. This doesn’t seem to prevent the measurements sometimes being used to label Wellington in popular media as a very windy place, even if nobody actually lives on the top floor of the Mount Kaukau transmitter.
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  • Daywalk: Johnsonville, Spicer Forest, Colonial Knob to Porirua

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    Mooooooooooo!

    We’ve now been back in Wellington for a couple of months, and have finally found somewhere to live in Johnsonville. I’m enjoying being back, and I’ve already been for a few scouts up Mt Kaukau for some fresh air. It’s been a busy time getting everything sorted, but I’ve been trying to fit in some outdoor expeditions in-between times (a combination of just wandering around the nearby hills and more significant tramping), to the extent that I’m slightly behind in writing things up.

    Today, I went for a north-ish walk. We now live fairly near the official Te Araroa route, as it comes up Rifle Range Road and across Mt Kaukau, so I thought I might follow it back towards Porirua and discover how long it’d take. For me, this meant walking through a short stint of streets to reach the end of Old Coach Road, at which point I’d just follow the main route via Spicer Forest, up to Colonial Knob, and down to somewhere like Elsdon behind Porirua.

    Date: 5th October, 2013
    Location: Spicer Forest and Colonial Knob (Wellington).
    Route: Old Coach Road in J’ville, along Rifle Range Road and Ohariu Valley Road to Spicer Forest. Up to Colonial Knob, down to Elsdon, and back to J’ville via the front roads.
    [Photos]
    [map:https://93a12629bf06.ngrok-free.app/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/20131005-jville-colonial-knob-porirua.gpx%5D

    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.

    I began at about 10am. Visibility wasn’t terribly good, with clouds channelling over the ridges above about 200 metres, but this first part of the route which weaves around farm-land is fairly easy to follow. I passed a couple of people riding their horses up from Rifle Range, but that was it.
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  • The Shaky Isles

    I won’t make too much out of the recent effects of Seddon’s seismic activity on Wellington, at least until it gets any worse. Yesterday afternoon I was traversing through part of the Tinakori Hill, trying to determine how long it’d take to walk between the CBD and Ngaio. There’s still quite a lot of tree-fall and other storm damage up there, and elsewhere around the town belt, from that storm a few weeks ago, which made it interesting.

    On this occasion I coincidentally ran into a friend from the Wellington Tramping & Mountaineering Club (Michael L). We were chatting for a few minutes, and the ground started to shift in a way that either of us could have perceived as general dizziness if we’d not confirmed with each other that it was an earthquake. Neither of us knew if there’s a protocol of what to do in an earthquake whilst in a forested area—maybe a worthy topic for another discussion—and then it stopped. Later, when I bumped into a woman walking her dog as she played on a smartphone, I was very surprised to discover that the shaking had been measured as magnitude 6.9 although it was later revised to 6.6. Somehow I’d felt nothing compared with what I’d have expected that to feel like.
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  • You can’t beat Wellington on a good day

    All parts of New Zealand have great things going for them, but the target of my unending bias is definitely the Wellington region. This is the case even though I’ve been absent for the past 2.5 years, living in Melbourne for secondary employment reasons. I’m aware that the region gets its share of weather events which are sometimes unpleasant to live with, yet it’s events like last week’s relatively newsworthy storm which also cause me to feel most home-sick. It’s the type of thing I would have written about if there at the time.

    Sunny and consistent weather is okay for a few minutes, but I appreciate being able to walk around a hill-top in the town belt during a strong wind, or sit on the rocks during a southerly gale under the sheltered northern end of the Wellington Airport runway, watching the flights awkwardly drop to the runway from directly underneath. When living locally, it’s the type of thing I often enjoyed writing about between everything else which ends up here, but it’s been lacking during the time I’ve been away.
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  • Checking out the Paekakariki Escarpment Track

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    Iconic coastal scenery, albeit without the
    iconic coastal exposure to the elements.

    [Note, 23rd April 2016: If you’ve stumbled on this page whilst looking for an account of the newly-opened track, I’ve more recently posted a more complete trip report of the entire thing.]

    Another of the things I found myself doing during the recent visit, besides this Easter tramping trip, was to check out the new Paekakariki Escarpment Track, one of the contributing sections of the Te Araroa Trail. When completed, this route will provide a dedicated walking corridor between Paekakariki and Pukerua Bay, alongside the coast north of Wellington. It’ll make the most of both iconic coastal scenery and iconic coastal exposure to the elements, and it’s completely accessible at both ends by Wellington’s metropolitan commuter train network.

    I’d not even considered visiting this track until I noticed in the DomPost that the access was about to be partially opened, although its pending construction has been in the news since at least mid-2011. My only available day was Saturday 23rd March, so I bought myself a Day Rover ticket, hopped on a train to Paekakariki, and went off to hunt for it. As an aside, the Kapiti and Johnsonville metro lines in Wellington are both very interesting tourist lines when you’re not a daily commuter.

    As is typical for me when I do things on a whim, I messed this up. It was a few days before the Te Araroa Trust had posted this on their website, which would have been useful information to have had in advance. In my haste I’d assumed I knew where I was going without making the effort to check. I mean, I’ve been to Paekakariki heaps of times, and I imagined that the obvious starting point for such a track would be near the intersection of SH1 and the Old Paekakariki Road. There was nothing obvious there, however, and I spent an hour walking around Paekakariki searching for a vantage point on the hill across the road, thinking it must somehow begin from further north. Failing to find it, I then spent 40 minutes walking up the Paekakariki Hill Road before I finally decided I was going the wrong way.

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    Part of Kapiti Island.

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