News

Next Wanderlust Submission Date

The deadline for the March Wanderlust is Wednesday, 15 February.
Please send contributions for the magazine in electronic format, to wanderlust@aucklandtramping.org.nz. with Wanderlust in the subject line. Trip reports and photos are welcome.

@tracknews ...

Following the leaders’ meeting in November last year, concerns were expressed about visitors who joined day trips poorly prepared. We have now revised the club website home page to clarify requirements. I suggest you take a look at the home page and, if inviting friends or family, ensure they have the correct gear, etc.

Liz Ware, assisted by the Weekend Trips’ Officer and some good keen trampers, has planned an excellent weekend trip programme for 2012. The first proposed list was published in the December–January Wanderlust and will be regularly updated. Member participation on weekend trips has steadily declined over recent years and Liz and the group have put in a lot of effort to give variety and ‘what members want’. Now’s the time to get the diary out and pencil in some of those weekends.

I am very happy to report that the Kokako Project has been a tremendous success. Thanks to all those who participated. We are supporting the Howick TC’s ‘Northern Pureora Dawn Chorus Restoration Project’ and we will need everyone’s support again next year. We intend to make this an ongoing project for the club.

We also have quite a few club members who manage trap/bait lines in the Arc in the Park Project in the Waitakeres. Kokako are being transferred from the Pureora Project to the Waitakeres and, with good pest management, it’s hoped they will re-establish in the Waitakeres along with many other bird species that have benefitted from the project since it started in 2003. If you are interested in helping out, let me know and I’ll put you in touch with the organisers. Leone Morrow and I were recently trained and added to the group. It is very rewarding to become part of a project that is clearly making a difference to help restore the ecology in the area.

Graeme McGowan (President)

Mem Hut Winter Rates Update

Last year’s season was an especially busy one, with a number of full-week bookings from groups. As a consequence we are expecting at least to cover the operating costs for the year, for the first time in many years. Unfortunately, the operating costs continue to increase and we are mindful of improvements required over the next year or two.

As a result, we have decided on small increases in the winter rates for the 2012 season. In addition, to simplify the planning of the winter catering, we are now quoting the winter rates as ‘catering included’.

The new rates for 2012 are as follows.

Everyone: Please help us to keep this wonderful facility viable by using it for your own breaks, and also publicise it to your friends, families, social groups, education organisations and your work colleagues. There is so much to do in the area any time of the year, and the rates are still incredibly modest when compared with other holiday accommodation options.

Graeme McGowan

Seeking an Editor

Still looking for a new editor for the Wanderlust — please give it serious thought. (Do we still need a magazine?)

Consider taking this on either on your own or perhaps job-sharing — for example, alternate months; or perhaps one does layout/one does copy-editing each month.

Essential requirements: English language literacy; computer literacy; and a general interest in tramping.

If you are interested in finding out more, please send an email to: wanderlust@aucklandtramping.org.nz.

Jenefer Wright

@ FMC and DOC News

Want to catch up on what’s happening in the wider scene?

For FMC latest monthly news, go to www.fmc.org.nz home page.
For DOC, go to www.doc.org.nz/about-doc/news/newsletters.

ATC Nepal Expedition October 2012

Planning is moving along for this trip; we presently have seven confirmed starters, so there are five places still open.

We will have 30 days of trekking in the Annapurna region and Upper Mustang, with an alpine section crossing Saribung Pass and time to summit Saribung Peak at 6328m.

This is non-technical climbing; we will give you some practice during winter at Ruapehu.

DCXP Mountain Journeys are asking for bookings and deposits during February.

So!! Do we count you in?

DCXP sherpas and staff know how to make a trip great — I’ve trekked and climbed with them twice before.

Trip costs are now confirmed: Trek fees US$6350.

Airfares currently NZ$2800.

Leader: Jim Morrow, ph 834 4227 or 021 264 6085
email jwmorrow@slingshot.co.nz

What Are ATC Trampers Eating?

Two Back Country Cuisine Bulk Orders were placed this year for your convenience, and with almost $6000 worth of food delivered, it proved very successful.

All mains were fairly well represented. However, by serving, the vegetarians take line honours in the popularity stakes with Pasta Vegetariano the most favoured dish. Babotie put a hint of South Africa in at number two, while those preferring a little spice on their tramps made Thai Chicken Curry a close third choice.

Least favoured were Mexican Chicken, Chicken a la King and Cooked Breakfast — but enough were ordered to suggest they are still good eating. Plenty of you enjoy the Breakfast options, and, of course, a little Dessert at the end of the day.

For all the wonderful support and contributions made to the ATC Oxfam Trailwalker fund raising appeal, a very big thank you! A much appreciated total of $761 has been raised for the Team. Now we just need to walk the 100 km!

Brent Rose

ATC King Country Kokako Project

We have completed our first season of baiting with some interesting results in the uptake of the bait by the rat population. It is experimental at the moment and we will continue to monitor progress in the years to come.
The new house at Olivers farm is nearing completion and should be an excellent incentive for people to come and see next year.
Many thanks to all our keen volunteers — I think everyone enjoyed their weekends at the farm in generally good weather. We will be doing it all again the on the first weekends of September, October, November and December, 2012, so mark a spot on your calendar.

Liz Ware

Auckland Associated Mountain Clubs Inc

(Extracts from minutes of November meeting)

Feedback on the President’s wish-list for Auckland trampers was received from AUTC, ATC, ASC and OAC. The President thanked them all.
Common interests:

All Auckland clubs are asked to start now encouraging members to stand for nomination to the FMC executive. Travel and accommodation provided. We need to get Auckland tramping issues aired more effectively.

Beveridge Track is complete from Mackies Rest to Jacobsons Depot. The remaining section to Arataki is still under construction.

Members report deterioration of new cycleways in Pureora and Uretara.

Energy Bar — food for your Xmas trip

Over Labour Weekend a number of people from ATC expressed an interest in this recipe. It is a basic, healthy energy bar.

You will need a food blender, one which has a spinning knife at the bottom of the jar. Note of warning: Most home blenders are too light to grind and mix all this together. Watch that you do not overload your blender.
An electric meat mincer would be helpful but is not essential.

Grind and blend the nuts, rolled oats and linseed in food blender until it is a sticky and flour-like substance. Empty into a large bowl.
Blend the dried fruit pieces, coconut, and molasses into a fine mixture and add to bowl of nut mixture. Briefly mix by hand.
Cut the dates into small pieces — if you have a mincer, put them through the mincer and add the date paste to the bowl. Otherwise, cut the dates as finely as possible and add these to the bowl.

Now blend all ingredients by hand into a large ball of dough. It will be sticky and semi-soft.

Line the baking tin with baking paper and spread the dough in the baking tin. Spend some time rolling the dough out so that is as flat and even as possible. (I use a glass jar for this.)

Place the baking tin in the fridge to chill — once chilled remove the dough from the baking tin and cut into suitable-sized squares.

Variations:
You can use raw nuts and roast these yourself for freshness. Use different mixtures of fruit and/or add cinnamon or chocolate (pieces or powder). Push all the dough through the mincer to save having to mix it by hand.

Robert de Jong (Hamilton)

Membership Report

Welcome to Ian Scotlock and Natasha Hulston. Great to have you along. Enjoy what our club has to offer.

I have been having some difficulty with direct deposits for membership, as the reference has been Mem Hut beside the deposit. If direct debiting, please email me as per the instructions. Please separate trip and membership deposits as the money is processed differently in the accounts. Otherwise, happy tramping everyone!

Colin Wright

Weekend Trip Booking and Refunds

Recently Liz Eden, Terry Chubb, Noel Ashton and I met to review the weekend trip booking and refunds process in order to determine how to make this easier for you and easier for the people who manage your bookings.

First off, a Big Thank You to all those people who do supply Liz with all the required trip and contact information and who do take the trouble to ensure that trip direct-credit payments show the information requested — that makes the job so much easier for Liz, for Terry (who maintains the Trips database) and for me when I do the trips-to-accounts reconciliations at the end of each month.

When booking a weekend trip, please remember always:

The contact and emergency information is really important for:

Before a trip starts, this information is sent to our club Search and Rescue officers.

We have now updated the details in the Wanderlust and, in a more major way, on the website.

So what has changed that you can see?
Improved wording for the website and Wanderlust for weekend trip bookings — to ensure everything is as clear as possible, making it a bit harder for people booking trips to miss out a vital step.

Cancellation and refund processing has been revised so that it is easier to understand the rules for when a refund may be provided, and how you go about applying for a refund for a late cancellation. This is explained in detail on the website (follow the Bookings link from the Weekend Trips page). Because of space restrictions, the detailed refund rules were removed from the Wanderlust some time ago.

Weekend (and longer) Trip Refunds — Summary

If you cancel more than two days before the departure time (or seven days for longer trips), you will get a full refund. All you need to do is provide the payment bank account, or name and address details for the cheque, to the secretary or treasurer.

If you cancel after that time, the bookings have closed, and the trip details have been finalised and provided to the bus/trip leaders/SAR, so if you consider a refund is applicable, you must apply to the committee. To do this, send an email or letter to the Secretary, and this will be considered at the next (monthly) committee meeting.

We are now able to pay refunds via direct credit to your bank account, if that is more convenient for you. It reduces our costs too.

Tony Walton (Treasurer)

ATC Oxfam 100 km Trailwalker 2012 Team

The annual Oxfam Trailwalker (31 March–1 April 2012) is a challenge event in Taupo (and many other countries) involving teams of four people walking 100 km in 36 hours. As well as being a team-building and motivational opportunity, the Trailwalker is a fundraising event in aid of the great work carried out by Oxfam around the world.

All four team members must complete the entire 100 km together, passing through seven check points in an epic journey around the Taupo district. Starting at 6.00am or 7.00am on a Saturday morning, the last teams will be trooping into Tongariro Domain in central Taupo up to a day-and-a-half later.

However, the team is much more than just four footsloggers! Without a support crew of at least two people scrambling between check points to feed, water, provision, and tend to the needs of the walkers at all hours of the day and night, the achievement would not be possible.

The club has been represented in this event by various teams over the last few years, and in 2012 the enthusiastic (or mad?) team of Jim Morrow, Carol Exton, Hideo Yoshihama and Brent Rose will be proudly fronting up in their ATC livery to give it another go! This is a significant commitment, from an extensive training schedule in the months leading up to the event, to registration fees of $325, travel to, and accommodation costs in Taupo, plus a minimum $2000 fund-raising obligation to be met by the team.

Please support us in this endeavour. A great way to do this is to take advantage of the Back Country Cuisine freeze-dried food offer (see below). Otherwise, please make a donation to us directly, or via our Team Page at http://www.oxfam.org.nz/oxfam_trailwalker/ by entering ‘Auckland Tramping Club’ in the team search box. Your support will be greatly appreciated.

Brent Rose

The Future of Auckland Tramping

The area north of Lake Taupo holds half of the country’s population but just six per cent of the outdoor facilities in the way of huts. Part of the reason for this is the lack of political will to bring some of DOC’s recreation money within reach of the biggest centres of population. I feel a number of new projects could be undertaken in the Auckland/Waikato area which would increase recreational possibilities. These could include:

Coromandel Ranges
A walkway the full length of the Coromandel. This could include coastal lands and/or swing in to go along the main spine of the Coromandel. This could link to the Kaimai North–South Track.
Tracks which get to the headwaters of the main rivers of the Coromandel such as the Waiwawa and the Rangihau. This would be a low-cost way of making a lot more tramping available.
Huts. A replacement of Moss Creek and Waiwawa Huts and a new hut or shelter on the main range south of the Pinnacles.

Kaimai Ranges
A replacement for the hut burned down above Wairere Falls.
The Mamaku Ranges could be looked at to develop more recreational features such as opening up the old logging tracks to provide good overnight tramps.

Waitakeres
Improvement of the camping areas within the park, eg, the site on Odlin Timber Track. Some sites are very poor and are used by young people who need to have a good, positive experience when they go to the outdoors.

Hunuas
Improvement of camping areas.

These are just a few ideas but I would really like to see more ideas from the trampers of Auckland. Once we have our wish list we can start lobbying. I don’t expect these wishes to be granted overnight but eventually at least some of the wish list will come our way. After all, if politicians and bureaucrats don’t know what we want, how can they deliver it?

Bryan Dudley (Auckland Associated Mountain Clubs)

Please give your feedback to our AAMC delegate, Liz Ware, email trips@aucklandtramping.org.nz

Are you over 65 and physically active?

A Masters student at the University of Auckland, Natasha Low, is seeking participants for her research study. She has some people already but requires three or four more who fit the following description:

‘People over 65 years of age who choose to participate regularly in physical activity (moderate to vigorous intensity). I’m interested in those impressive and inspiring people who buck the trend and are still really active.’

You would be involved in an individual interview and later in focus group discussions on the North Shore.

If you are interested in taking part and would like further information, please email Roy Carlin, secretary@aucklandtramping.org.nz as soon as possible.

Free Online Topo Map

www.topomap.co.nz
Enables you to get free online topo maps. I’ve briefly tried the website and it looks extremely good. It’s faster and easier than the last time I used a similar NZ topo online. We'll put the link on the club website under ‘Links’. Gavin Harriss from NZTopo points out the following features:

Graeme McGowan

Trip Reports and Photos — please copy to Publicity Officer

Trip reports are a valuable record for the club and an important way to communicate information about club activities to prospective members who check our website.
Please send trip reports as usual to wanderlust@aucklandtramping.org.nz together with four of five photos (if available), and put publicity@aucklandtramping.org.nz in the copy line.
When trips are published on the website, I will put the photos and a brief summary of the report on Facebook, and refer people to the club website for the full report.
Why? We fully appreciated the power of the website when all 18 participants on the December club open day said they learnt of the trip from our website. Facebook is another potential ‘catchment’ but we want to redirect net surfers from Facebook to the club website. A few good photos will help get people interested.
In case you hadn’t realized, Brent Rose is doing a fantastic job of getting trip reports onto the website (see Trips/Trip Reports) and is working away at putting old reports on the site as time permits. The website is our most powerful tool for attracting new members.
Graeme McGowan

Great Walk Bookings

Remember you now need to pre-book all huts and campsites on Tongariro Northern Circuit and Round the Mountain track at www.doc.govt.nz.

Training Sponsorship

Subsidies are available for members wishing to attend selected Mountain Safety Council courses - see the Training Scheme.

If application numbers are high in a specific subject the club will consider running a course internally. We would be very interested to hear from club members who are prepared to give their time to such training.
Phone Liz Ware on 524 7409 if you would like to help.
The scheme will be run in parallel with a Federated Mountain Clubs Scholarship scheme for young (under 30s) trampers but applicants cannot apply to both the club and FMC for subsidies. The committee supports the FMC initiative - to learn more of this, see the August 2010 FMC Bulletin, and for applications go to www.fmc.org.nz and check out ‘Scholarship’.
Graeme McGowan

Rob’s Lightweight Tramping Blog Site

I have just built my new Lightweight Tramping Blog Site — lots of gear info and growing by the week. My lightweight gear list and trip photos are also posted. I am sure our club members will get a lot of useful information from it.
www.lightweighttramping.blogspot.com
Rob McKay

Membership

At the discretion of the committee, membership is considered for people who have not completed two tramps but who are nominated and seconded by ATC members. The purpose of this is to encourage membership from skiers to enable them to participate fully in the club.
If you know people who regularly use Memorial Hut during the winter but do not tramp, please make them aware of the committee’s policy.
Graeme McGowan

Wanderlust Advertising

The committee has recently reviewed the Wanderlust advertising policy and decided that tramping-related advertising for the benefit of members should be encouraged. For no cost, members may place short advertisements to sell equipment or endorse services and equipment. We will also advertise, for no cost, specific deals offered to the club by businesses for the benefit of members and/or the club. Generic advertising by businesses is available at competitive rates. The Publicity Officer and the Editor have the right to edit or reject advertisements. Members' advertisements should be sent to publicity@aucklandtramping.org.nz. Please be concise, and include your name and contact details.

Any budding writers out there?

We plan to communicate our activities in the Central Leader and Western Leader in the 'What's On' column. I would also like to try to get editorial space two to three times per year with some good tramping stories, to link with 'What's On', and I'm looking for one or two keen writers. Here's an opportunity to release that hidden talent. Please contact publicity@aucklandtramping.co.nz.
Graeme McGowan

Promote Club Membership — to all members

ATC Intro Card

To help you promote the club the committee decided an introduction card would assist and we are very grateful to Rosalie Morrow for designing a card.
What’s the purpose?
When you meet someone interested in the club, write your contact details on the back. Encourage them to check out our website and give you a call if they have questions.
Where do I get cards?
Club night and on Big Blue. Please take no more than five at a time.
The one ‘do not’:
Please do not leave them in huts, etc. We don’t want to be accused of littering.
Graeme McGowan

Kauri Disease

Mark cleaning boots

Trampers will notice some new and improved cleaning stations in some Auckland Regional Council parks, which have been installed to fight kauri dieback disease.
In the Waitakere Ranges there are eight large stations, with barrels of Trigene, (a biodegradable disinfectant), and a scrubbing brush installed over a crate in the ground. These stations are designed so visitors can walk across the grate and use the brush to remove excess soil from their shoes or boots, then spray the footwear with the disinfectant to kill any disease spores. There are also nearly 80 smaller cleaning stations with scrubbing brushes, and spray bottles of disinfectant. These are at track entrances and exits, and between tracks in the network, aiming to protect areas of healthy trees. There are also smaller stations in the Hunua Ranges, where there is no sign of kauri dieback disease so far, and we would love to keep it that way.
For more information visit www.kauridieback.co.nz. Amanda Peart (ARC)

Our very own Mark Lewis, park ranger, shows us how it's done. (Photo: ARC)




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