It’s time to get organised for summer. If you want to help shape the summer trip schedule mark Wednesday 6 November and come to the clubrooms at 6pm with your trip ideas.
The Club Journal for 2013 is largely complete and we hope to send it out to members in time for Christmas. If you would like to order an additional copy at $20 each, please contact Tony by Wednesday 30 October. Big thanks to Tony for producing another masterpiece and to everyone who contributed articles and photos so we all have something to read at the beach or swat flies in backcountry huts.
Bushcraft will run shortly, one of the key skills this course covers is navigation. Navigation is not just for trip leaders and newbies. To this end we run occasional nav training trips throughout the year. I had the privilege of attending a course run by Marie Henderson recently in the Eastbourne Hills. It was a humbling experience. Despite spending many hours in the hills my mastery of the art of using a map and compass to figure out where I am and how to get somewhere else is to put it kindly, a work in progress. I suspect I’m not alone in this. Navigation like tramping fitness cannot be achieved by just reading a manual. Sooner or later you have to get off the couch. Regular practice is the best way to improve your confidence and eventually get better.
Here are a couple of tips from Marie’s course:
1. You can download the 1:50000 map sheets using this link: http://www.linz.govt.nz/topography/topo-maps/map-chooser click through to the area you are after – download the tiff file and then work with that to get a larger scale map (for those times you need to see finer details).
2. For the theory side see the MSC outdoor manuals, such as the Bushcraft Manual which can be borrowed from the library if you don’t want to buy your own.
3. For the practical side, get into the habit of getting your map and compass out on trips, pay attention to navigation decisions as they are made on your trips and if you don’t understand them ask questions. Navigation is a team endeavour. Sign up for nav training courses and consider doing rogaines. The next Wellington after work rogaine is scheduled for 19 Nov. These rogaines involve working in pairs or larger groups and have the added benefit of allowing you to work on your fitness as well as your navigation skills. There is pizza available at the end of the evening – it’s worth turning up just for that! You can register a walking team, or go for the run option. They vary in amount of bush to urban they cover: http://www.mapsport.co.nz/wellyrog
We have launched the second edition of the WTMC cookbook. The new edition covers standard tramping recipes plus some tips for making dehydrated meals and some recipes for stuff you can bake at home and bring on tramps. It is downloadable from the club website. Big thanks to Illona and Megan for seeing this project through. Congratulations to those who won awards at the bake off we held for the launch – all 17 entrants were winners in my view – the quality of the baking on offer and the effort that went into preparation and presentation was very impressive. I’m looking forward to tasting some baking prepared by the male species next time. Only one entrant this year entered the competition and he was lucky that the judges who were obviously not selected for their baking expertise didn’t appear to realise that hummus requires no baking.
If you have been on an easy or easy medium trip lately you may have noticed that we are undertaking a trial of a digital sign-up platform known as MeetUp. We are doing this as part of a wider project to come up with ways to make trip sign-up easier for both trip leaders and punters. We have also been using this platform to advertise certain Wednesday night events and to get more people using our club vans to head up to the Club lodge to go skiing, boarding or just hang out. If you are interested in this project see: http://www.meetup.com/WellingtonTrampingGroup/.
We are interested in any feedback or ideas people may have on how to make our trip systems easier to administer without compromising safety. Contact or have a word to Mike Phethean, Debbie Buck or Mike Gilbert (MeetUp Mike) on a Wednesday night. Mike Gilbert is keen to hear from any trip leaders willing to try MeetUp for trips they plan to lead for the summer trip schedule.
We are also looking at tweaking the structure of the committee. In response to changes in technology, the growth of social media platforms and different ways of socialising we are considering introducing a new position of Communications Officer to prepare an annual communications plan and manage our website, journal, newsletter and website people with a view to better targeting our messaging particularly for the prospective member audience and those new to the club. Obviously a Communications Officer would need to work closely with the Social Convenor and the Promotions Officer to achieve good alignment. If we introduce a Communications Officer role we will vote someone in at the 2014 AGM in April with the option of the newsletter editor reverting to an off committee role as it has been in the past. If you have any feedback on this idea contact or have a word with Megan Sety on a Wednesday night.
Remember if you’d like to join the committee next year, now is an excellent time to talk to existing committee members to find out what is involved. I mentioned in the October newsletter that we will need a new President, Treasurer and Secretary for the 2014 financial year. Helen Law also intends to stand down after 3 years as Membership Officer. Helen has worked extremely hard in this role and done a fantastic job. She will be a tough act to follow but I’m sure there is someone out there who is up to the challenge.
We are still on the hunt for people to help out with website development. While you were off tramping or relaxing at home over Labour weekend Mike Gilbert and Steve Koehler beavered away on their computers looking at ways to introduce a blog style newsletter. This project has been a priority for some time now but we have struggled to attract anyone with the time and expertise to get it done. It would be great if we could spread this workload around a few more people. If you think you can help out please contact Mike at .
Meantime, check out version 2 of the cookbook and savour the breezy dregs of spring.