I hope you’ve enjoyed the outdoors over the holiday period. If, like me, you were in the North Island, this enjoyment may have been tempered with slight frustration at the volumes of rain and wind. At Anniversary weekend, Richard and I were in the Ruahines and woke up to snow settled outside McKinnon Hut, with more drifting down through the murk. It wasn’t a great day to have forgotten the GPS… though even with one, I suspect we would have abandoned our traverse of the Hikurangi range. Time for plan b.
As we walked around from Kawhatau Base to the road end holding our car, we were lucky enough to get a ride from the farmer for the last 3km. He talked about the number of times he’d been called out when people came to navigational grief around Hikurangi and the amount of time this consumed. It was good to leave a farmer with the impression that not all trampers are idiots (unlike some of our previous adventures in the area!) and helped alleviate some of our frustration at watching the clag lift during the long gravel walk.
There has been navigational grief aplenty during recent months. In December, Richard, Kate and I were doing an in-and-out along the Three Kings to Tarn Ridge, in the Tararuas. When we reached Atiwhakatu hut on the Friday night, we encountered four members of another tramping club. For reasons that will become obvious, I won’t specify which, but it was not Wellington-based. We were slightly surprised at their initial lack of friendliness (or perhaps WTMC just has a more consciously friendly culture?!) but they did thaw slightly in the morning. They were pleased to hear that we were not, like them, off to Dorset Ridge hut, and they set off by 7am for their far-flung destination. Soon after, we were heading up Baldy and then started along the Kings. Lunch time saw us near Mid King, enjoying the calm but very misty weather. Three trampers approached – it was the other group, having taken a longer route via Jumbo and the Broken Axe Pinnacles. As they moved off, I said to the tail ender, “weren’t there four of you?” He replied that the other guy was somewhere ahead. We expressed our puzzlement at this, given that we had been on the range for at least 45 minutes and had not seen him. “Maybe he sneaked past you,” was the response.
We leapfrogged them when they had their lunch on North King, though they soon passed again, still having not caught their missing member. We mused on the unlikelihood of him having passed us, and on the risks inherent in letting someone get too far ahead in poor visibility, and on our belief that our club trips would be smarter than to allow this, especially given the conditions. At Girdlestone, we had some navigational confusion of our own that involved coming back to the trig twice in fresh attempts to actually head in the right direction…. Simple mistakes are so easy when visibility is nil. Each time we were relatively quick to realise the error and since we were all close together it was easy enough to turn around and retrace our steps. We arrived at Tarn Ridge Hut, maybe an hour wasted, but it was still relatively early so levels of contentment were high!
The next day, the story of the other group, which had become the subject of significant musing by us, continued to unfold. As we headed back along our route, on Baldy we spied some other, new people. “Are you the other ones from the [tactfully unnamed] tramping club?” they asked. “No,” we replied with interest, “but we know who you mean!” It turns out that the missing member had spent the night at Jumbo, and was described by this very friendly couple as acting “somewhat sheepishly”. We could only guess that in the clag he had made a significant navigational error and, by the time it was obvious, had only enough time to retrace to Jumbo.
The hut book at Atiwhakatu gave a happy ending to the story: all four were in it, reunited, having passed through not long before us. The Dorset hutters must have made a very early start to get down to Dorset Creek and up Jumbo, then down here before us. I thought of how I would have felt that night; worrying about the missing guy, what might have befallen him, and how we as a group had let this happen.
A couple of postscripts: when we got home, we saw news reports of some other trampers who had run into navigational confusion in the Arete/Tarn Ridge area that weekend and ended up being airlifted out. They had been due at Tarn Ridge hut the same night as us, but obviously we’d never seen them… And earlier this month, Richard and I were at Dorset Hut, and we saw that the other group had written in the “activity” column, “looking for [missing member]”… (and I have to note that during that trip, we met some very friendly trampers from other tramping clubs).
This story throws into relief some of our club values that are most important to me: being friendly and welcoming; functioning as a team; continually adapting behaviour to conditions. I was talking to one of our members currently based overseas, and her experiences of a club in her new city seemed totally opposite to the WTMC ethos. Having a “survival of the fittest” mentality, where people lagging behind are told to hurry up rather than being supported, and taking unnecessary risks, runs counter to any notions of best practice.
At this time of year, we get a lot of new people coming along on Wednesdays and heading out on trips. I hope that every member on a trip, leader or otherwise, takes the chance to demonstrate our values to newcomers.
Hans and Mika have kindly offered to run a Bushcraft course on the weekend of 24-25 March. This is a very basic introduction to tramping suitable for people without any experience. Feel free to point any potential participants their way.