Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2021 i Wilderness

A LITTLE over two months ago, the nation was basking in its Covid-free status. My family had not long returned from a holiday to Waihi Beach and we were looking forward to another short break in September to Wellington, where a first-time visit to Zealandia was high on our to-do list. That trip never eventuated but after more than eight weeks of lockdown in Auckland, I’ve found my daily walk to be a sanity-saver. That said, it still took time to get psychologically ready to begin the Walk1200km challenge. Despite months of planning the challenge, and preparing myself to do it, many Wilderness readers started before me. I had the usual doubts many others face: am I ready to do this? Knowing that once I started, I had to keep…

Each month I walk about 20km, monitoring local trap lines. This is paltry compared with what some people do. Still, I live in the city and it’s great to play a small part in protecting Wellington’s special biodiversity. The birdlife around my Wilton home is incredible. Twenty years ago, we’d see magpies and maybe a tūī, while possums hammered the fruit trees. Now kākā, kererū, tūī, pīwakawaka, riroriro and ruru are always around. Korimako and kākāriki sometimes visit, and kārearea have attacked the neighbour’s doves. Zealandia, just up the road, and increased predator control in neighbouring reserves, have combined to achieve this remarkable turnaround. Predator Free Wellington is gaining huge momentum. I help on three lines. The first is in Ōtari Wilton’s Bush, a 100ha forest reserve and internationally regarded…

TUCKED AWAY and strategically hidden, the recently relocated and renovated Hooker Hut is the oldest in Aoraki/Mt Cook National Park. It’s less than a two-hour walk from the car park and is bound to become a popular destination, especially for families or those new to tramping. Although partly along the busy Hooker Valley Track, once the main track is left behind and the orange markers followed, trampers are soon meandering through the valley in relative isolation and with a feeling of being in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by the highest mountains in the country. It isn’t hard to catch sight of the bright orange roof as you close in on this humble destination. Hooker Hut has been lovingly restored. It has eight bunks, a gas cooker and one of…

AT NEARLY 1000m, the Makahu Saddle Road end is over halfway to the Kaweka tops – a welcome leg-up to anyone tackling the summit ridge. From here, it’s a stone’s throw to the Kaweka Flats track junction. Keep left – unless you want to call in at Makahu Saddle Hut (four bunks), clearly visible from the junction. A few metres further, the track splits with routes up Makahu and Trials spurs. Both lead to Dominie Bivouac and the summits beyond. Trials Spur (unmarked on the map, but a sub-spur of Makahu), is the usual route while Makahu is perhaps more adventurous and fun. Taking the right-branching (northern) Makahu Spur trail requires careful effort up a scree slope before reaching zig-zags and clambering over a few exciting, but not intimidating, rock…

A CARVED arch welcomes visitors onto the Paparoa Track Great Walk, a meticulous gravel highway beckoning beyond. But turn left instead, where the sign indicates the Mt Watson Route. This track scrambles up a muddy bank and over a narrow spur clad in regenerating forest. It leads along the spur as it steepens through podocarp forest, kahikatea shot through with flashes of flowering rātā. Orange markers are regular, though in places tree-fall or overgrowth can make them hard to see. After about 90-minutes, the terrain widens into a slope of beech forest. Moss in varying shades of green grows on every surface, from the tips of the beech trees to the fallen logs and the spongy track under foot. Abruptly, the forest opens onto a tussock slope which leads upward…

Dried mushrooms bestow a deep and hearty flavour to a basic miso soup base. By using fresh vegetables and proteins that don’t require additional cooking, this meal is as quick and easy as it gets. Profile Cost: $4 Serves 2 Time: 10min cooking, 20min prep/wait time INGREDIENTS 6 dried shiitake mushrooms 2 miso soup sachets Peeled ginger slices (just a few) Silverbeet (or kale or spinach), a big handful 200g tofu 180g soba noodles (or udon) 2 soft boiled eggs (do this at home) Fresh coriander, torn 1 spring onion, sliced Sesame seeds Chilli flakes METHOD Boil one-litre of water in a pot, turn off the heat and drop the mushrooms in. Finely chop the silverbeet, stalks and all (tear spinach/kale leaves if using), and cut the tofu into 30mm…

MACPAC TITANIUM SPORK $29 USED BY: Contributing Gear Editor Mark Watson USED FOR: 10 years Simplicity, smoothness and strength sold me on this design of Spork over 10 years ago. My current one is my second. It has been a reliable feeding tool for adventures as varied as six months thru-hiking Te Araroa, to nearly four years of full-time bikepacking in the Americas. My first one was exactly the same style, but it was badged for a different company and I was gutted when I accidentally left it behind after eating mangoes with it at a roadside stall while cycling in Thailand. I’ve been in the ‘minimal’ camp for backcountry dining for years now, using just a spoon and bowl for all duties, including drinks. But there’s no denying that…

A WARNING TO ALWAYS TREAT YOUR WATER I have enjoyed tramping in many different parts of our beautiful country and have always appreciated our ‘clean, green’ natural environment. Staying at DOC huts and camping beside rivers or streams is one of the great things about living in New Zealand, especially as we don’t have to worry about things like wild animals that may eat us or poison us. We do, however, have an invisible parasite that, up until now, I thought was something very few people became afflicted with and was really nothing to worry about: Giardia. On a recent overnighter, I drank unfiltered water from the sparkling clear streams and rivers we passed, enjoying the pure fresh taste. I also ignored the DOC warning at the hut we stayed…

After spending six months in Holland looking after her mother, Ines Bruins found herself in managed isolation quarantine wondering how to fill the time. She says starting the Walk1200km challenge helped keep her sane and make sense of her days in MIQ. “I booked a walk every day at 12 o'clock so it became like a thing; I had to get 5k, if not more in 45-minutes,” the 56-year-old mental health professional says. “It was everything. In MIQ, a structured day is crucial to make sense of the day, to make sense of it all.” Unlike most others starting out on the challenge, Innes was restricted to a concrete car park which she did hundreds of laps around. The experience didn’t put her off; quite the contrary. Ines hopes the…

WE ARRIVED at Emilie’s 50th hut under the cover of darkness, clutching torches and laughing our way onto the porch. It was 8pm and my seven-year-old daughter and I had been on the track for almost five hours, the last two in rapidly falling dark, navigating piles of windfall and listening to the eerie creak of beech trees rubbing in the wind. To say we were relieved to see Wharfedale Hut was an understatement. Once snuggled into our sleeping bags and full of warm homemade kai, I lay back to reflect on the day’s walk and previous tramps that had lead to Emilie’s momentous achievement. It was mid-September and we’d been planning to bag Emilie’s 50th hut since the June school holidays. But a combination of horrendous weather and questionable…

IT’S A SPECIAL moment when Henrieta Tornyai pauses her live show to introduce her ‘band’. Dressed in a glittering homemade cape – inspired by the iridescent plumage of the tūī – she calls out the major players one by one. First, there’s the “greatest beatboxer of all” – the tūī – on drums, with screeching percussion notes from kākā and kiwi, and snappy hi-hat, courtesy of the cicada. The korimako is the “melodic hook machine”, while the mournful organ calls of the kōkako have been stacked to create chords. “The hardest role to fill was that of the bass,” Tornyai says. “That was until I discovered the mating call of the male kākāpō – they have a special air sac that they use to make this deep booming sound that…

UNLIKE the neighbouring Kaweka Ranges, which have more than 30 huts and bivouacs, Kaimanawa Forest Park has less than a handful. Of the four public huts, Waipakihi is perhaps the most appealing, situated as it is in the head of the delightful Waipakihi River. The 12-bunk Lockwood-style hut has two bunkrooms, and a central living area, connected by a veranda. It occupies a terrace with views downstream. An appealing three-day round trip involves tramping to the hut via the rolling, barren tops of the Umukarikari Range (marked by poles), which offers fine views of the Tongariro volcanoes when the visibility is good. After a night at Waipakihi, a pleasant day’s tramping downriver leads to a good place to camp at the base of the Urchin Track. Then it’s a simple…

AN 800M CLIMB sounds daunting but spread over 8km, the walk to Beebys Hut is relatively gentle compared to other tracks in the region. Beebys Knob Route meanders its way from the Korere-Tophouse Road through open beech forest. Road noise quickly dies, replaced by melodic bellbirds flitting between black honeydew-covered beech trunks. After the initial 300m ascent, a flat area between a saddle provides a brief respite before tackling the second half of the climb. Above this saddle, the track is shared with the occasional mountain biker. There is one steep pinch, gaining 100m altitude in about 300m but after that, it is a gentle stroll through stunted, mossy beech forest. Emerging onto the 4WD track at 1300m on the summit ridge, walkers can be exposed to icy winds. The…

THE West Coast has a strange power of attraction. Its wild coast, untamed rivers and dominating rainforests have attracted curious and determined visitors since Aotearoa was first settled. Māori visited the coast from at least the 1300s to gather pounamu, mainly from the waters of the Arahura River. By the 1840s, pākehā explorers such as Charles Heaphy and Thomas Brunner were venturing there searching for land to open up for farming. Yet, in spite of the draw the region has on people, it wasn’t until 1960 that the road linking Haast and Wānaka was finally completed. As with many before me, it was curiosity that drew me to the Coast, especially to the area south of Jackson Bay, near Haast. Our plan was to tramp to Stafford Bay before continuing…

Mental health is an important issue for New Zealanders as the country nears the end of the second year of the global pandemic. Lockdown, the inability to travel, job losses and uncertainty about the future have compounded to place people under untold stresses. Treating mental health disorders is complex. But increasingly, we’re learning that getting regular exercise in nature is a proven way to improve both physical and mental health. In 2019, associate professor Dr Liana Machado from the University of Otago’s Department of Psychology led a study examining the benefits of exercise on cognition and mood by getting participants to climb stairs. The study found that people felt “more energetic, less tense and less tired” following the stair climbing and that the higher the intensity of exercise, the better…

THE LOWE ALPINE brand was born from the hearts and minds of one of the greatest climbing families on earth. Greg, Mike and Jeff Lowe were raised on the move, spending their childhood climbing, skiing, hunting and hiking. By their twenties, the Lowe brothers were the leading climbers of their generation, but they hit a wall: the external-frame backpacks available to them at the time were too heavy and unstable to progress further in the mountains. They realised that they needed a new kind of pack that could carry gear more securely, whilst letting them move more freely on demanding terrain. In 1967, Greg Lowe designed, tested and launched the Expedition pack from Lowe Alpine Systems, a revolutionary backpack that gave climbers more freedom of movement in the mountains. It…

HERALDED as a ‘secret door’ to the Milford Track, Dore Pass has a legacy of rebellion. From its completion in 1908, the Milford Track was originally used exclusively by the Tourist Hotel Corporation. Frustrated trampers continually failed to gain independent access until 1965, when the Otago Tramping Club decided to hold a hiking protest – the freedom walk. Club members rebelliously marched over Dore Pass and onto the Milford Track. A few weeks later, freedom walking was allowed on the track. From the car park on the Te Anau/Milford Highway, first cross the Eglinton River, then scour the tree line until the bright orange triangle is visible. That’s the start of the Dore Pass Route. It’s a steady plod uphill until Murcott Burn is reached, where a brief respite from…

WITH MANY possible access routes, the trip to Mangamuka Hut can be made from either side of the Kaimai Range. The Ngamuwahine Track, on the eastern side, begins just after the parking area and toilet at Ngamuwahine Lodge. After a gentle climb through mixed native bush and pine, a junction marking the Ngamuwahine Loop Track is reached. Although either way can be taken, right is the most direct. Promptly after, the track crosses Mangaputa Stream, easily negotiated in summer but prone to swelling after sustained rain. It’s then a steep climb to continue right at the second junction with Ngamuwahine Loop and an intersect with the Leyland O’Brien Tramline. It’s about 1.5hr to here. Turning left, the next hour is easy, following the historic tramline towards the North-South Track. Rusting…

GEOFF WAYATT WanakaSAR, 48 years WHEN GEOFF WAYATT moved to Wānaka to open up a climbing school in 1973, he found a small rural town few would recognise as the climbing mecca it has become. “It was a farming and holiday community and we were the first of the adventure tourism operators,” Wayatt recalls. Back then, he says there was no local search and rescue (SAR) service. When people got into trouble in Mt Aspiring National Park, the operations were coordinated from Dunedin. “There was no significant tramping or climbing community in Wānaka. There were just three or four local people who would do the initial response.” So Wayatt got together with a few recreational climbers – a local plumber, a carpenter and a farmer – and established what would…