Things Ain't too Bad

We have been stuck somewhat in the throes of work, play and exhaustion. Parenting is hard, even if it is only of a feline variety. Sherpa Tenzing came into this world four months or so ago, he has been with us for a month. He's a cutie...

Today for the first time in a while I saw all the beauty in the world. The tooth I got pulled out yesterday must have done the trick. Sunrise from the deck probably helped as well...

At lunchtime Penny rescued me from work and we went running around the Ataturk memorial at the head of the Wellington harbour. It was such a still, mild day, that it felt great just to be alive , to be running. No pictures today from there, but the words from Ataturk on the memorial inspired me. A perceptive recognition (if unwitting) on the foolishness and universality of the human condition.

"Those heroes that shed their blood
and lost their lives;
You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country.
Therefore rest in peace.
There is no difference between the Johnnies
and the Mehemets to us where they lie side by side
here in this country of ours.
You, the mothers,
who sent their sons from far away countries,
wipe away your tears;
your sons are now lying in our bosom
and are at peace.
After having lost their lives on this land they have
become our sons as well."

Our sport has been a highlight recently. Grit occasionaly triumphing over fitness. Greig Hamilton and I won the New Zealand 24hr rogaine champs in the Akatarawa forest in April. The highlight being rough and tough bush navigation in this terrific little chunk o country.

While earlier in April we journeyed down to Central Otago: Alexandra, Cromwell sort of way for a long awaited National Orienteering Champs. We ran on the old sluicings of the old timers in Roxburgh, Bannockburn, Earnscleugh and Naseby. A terrific weekend of competition and camaraderie. Here's a couple of maps...

And theres been the odd other trip as well. Chamberlain Creek in the Tararuas was a bit of a blast. Abseils and deep pools discouraged the camera. Its a shame as we would have been a site walking into the Roaring Stag Lodge in our wetsuits. A hut fairly full (30 people in a ten bunk hut) of VUWTC punters.

And before that Caspar and I took on the Carkeek picnic (courtesy of Greg Thurlow hospitality) and were whipped. The Carkeek picnic is is a highly regarded traverse of the Northern Tararuas in a day, via the parks spiritual heart Carkeek Hut, ridge and Park Forks, high up the pristine Waiohine. Caspar took some photos of this trip. He was looking a bit nervous for a start...

But as we got the South Ohau and then Arete under our belts he started to pull through, it was a bit foggy and I got us briefly lost coming off the summit of Lancaster, but by Carkeek ridge the fog began to clear...

And Carkeek hut showed up.

After this it was a wonder down to the lovely Waiohine and a long trudge up thickening regeneration to McGregor and Jumbo. The others met us there and the mission was over bar the pain of the final little walk out!

Apart from that I don't know what is there to blog? Bus and babies? I guess theres the failed trip to the Gardens in February still hovering around. I will have to dig up some good photos of southern rata flowering...,

Grandad

My Grandad passed away a couple of weeks ago. He's the one on the left below (I'm still lucky enough to have the old looking guy on the right ;-)).

He was an amazing man who rose from humble origins, growing up through the Depression to become a PHD, Professor and Knight, Principal of Lincoln College, a fine rugby player and most importantly a fantastic husband, father and grandparent. He achieved his goals with dignity, determination and a minimum of fuss. He leaves a big gap in our lives. A gap to hopefully be filled by memories, dreams and closer relationships within our remaining family.

At the funeral held in a packed Knox Church the family pulled through well with great speeches, poems and even Karanga (little sis) from the following generations. Nana asked me to read Psalm 121. This is a verse which I had never connected with previously but is now so special to me. The image I conjured in reading it was my Grandad as a young man, working the hill country of Putere behind Wairoa. A land burned and probably still metaphorically smouldering. A harsh land with little shade recently exposed to the sun. What shaped the young man during this time, what were his challenges and his hopes for the future?

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help
My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth.
He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber.
Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.
The LORD is thy keeper: the LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand.
The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.
The LORD shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.
The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.

The best online obituary I have found is here. An obituary written by Mike Crean was also published in the Press and Dominion Post on the weekend.

Rest peacefully Grandad, your journey was a marvellous one and we will look after Nana (when she is not looking after us).

Just some photos from the Weekend.

Filling in the pieces of missions to do around Wellytown. This one was Titahi Bay to Makara Beach, and a bit of a walk back. Jenny, Mark, Chris, Rachel and I started early at Wellington Station catching the train and bus to Titahi Bay. On the way the going was good and the weather improving to scorching so swimming was de rigeur and sunburn post facto.

Not many necessary swims, just one I think for Mark who likes climbing, but plenty of opportunities for getting wet if you so desired. Highlights included the crazy rock, views of Kapiti/Mana/South islands, Boom Rock, Goats and milkshakes at the end.

Looking south towards Makara, and the crazy rock

Oystercatchers - Mana from Boom Rock and the team.

Photos of the day, credit Jenny Cossey

...and action photo, with close-up of perfect technique

Some Ski-O Photos

top heavy on skis

Sam Kane - The secret of our success

Matt and La - champions again

Ski-O happens once a year in New Zealand. July sometime on the Waiorau Snowfarm - Pisa Range - Wanaka. We try to get there when we can. Fortunately there are not many good ski orienteers in New Zealand and Penny and I are occasionally able to slip onto the podium...a particularly worthy achievement in my case as someone that can hardly stay upright on ski's - though I'm slowly getting better with a practice day most years!

This year the format was a three hour teams event. We teamed up with ski-o first timer Sam Kane, a cousin of Penny's who farms the Glenfoyle station near Luggate. It quickly became apparent Sam was the star of our team and he became the official check point visitor while we preceeded to cut as many corners as we could. Matt Scott and Lara Prince were our major rivals, well major stumbling blocks to success. With their North American and Swedish cross country skiing backgrounds they basically blew us away. But through sheer perseverance, courage and cunning we did hold onto second..

Ahuriri

The first time I ventured up the Ahuriri it was still owned by old Williamson, though little did I know it. The legendarily foul tempered old cocky would not have been impressed at my 1984 Ford Sedan that bumped and battered its way all the way up to Shamrock Hut. We were stuck, or at least hindered many times, and the girls were generally happy to jump out on any particularly nasty stuff. The gang was Aaron, La and me, with Sofia and Kajsa from Sweden. We were just starting out on a memorable road trip which included being attacked by big mother kea in the Matuki, Copland flat hotpools and finally running out of gas way down south of Haast. That may even have been the first time I camped on the fantastic Neils Beach where the mighty Arawhata meets the sea.

Looking out the Ahuriri 2009

The long and wild Ahuriri was new territory for us, and it really is a quick path to wilderness. Find the turn off south of Omarama before you rise over the Lindis and before long you are off the beaten track. That first trip I think we stayed at Shamrock Hut though I remember a fire outside, and the next day we climbed point 2038 on the Eastern side of the valley and introduced the Swedes to scree and rotten NZ mountain tops. I remember not wanting to go to the top because of the danger to all concerned, then watching them go, before joining them at least with my conscience clean if someone got damaged, which very nearly happened.

The next trip was with Aaron again and his Mum Viv, we just went for a poke around Canyon Creek in the middle of winter, going straight up the gorge we discovered the high track on the way back. This time old Williamson caught us on the way out, and we pleaded ignorance and raved about how beautiful his station was.

Returning recently not much has changed, although there is now a locked gate before Canyon creek preventing 4wd capers. Birchwood station was bought up by the Nature Heritage Fund and the whole area is now known as Ahuriri Conservation Park. Again we returned in winter, this time it was Penny and I with our friend Elo. With Elo's sprained ankle and other plans it was only to be a short trip, a little pop over from Ahuriri Base Hut to the Upper DingleBurn.

Penny, Elo and the Spaniard

Although an old bulldozed musterers track takes you most of the way up, an ice axe was necessary on the last steep section. The snow just held our weight. Down the other side and into the Dingleburn, a river I have long heard speak of but never entered, the closest was an ascent of Dingle Peak from the Lake Hawea side. The top Dingle hut is on the bush edge of some big flats and looks downriver where the sun was setting on the ridges leading over to Dingle Peak. Early rain lead to a nervous night as we pondered our short but potentially difficult journey back over the pass in new snow. As James K Baxter describes we "rested fitfully", "Besieged by wind in a snowline bivouac".

Penny on the pass

Fortunately it always sounds worse at night. We made it back over the next day in light snow and the potential for avalanches while there wasn't too bad, maybe. A moment I remember was on the top of the ridge when the wind suddenly changed. One second northerly wafting in snow, the next second a crisper southerly blowing it away. Mountains do strange things to the weather. We decended quickly through the hare infested park like forest, safe again on the valley floor.

Looking down the Dingleburn

Milton

We found some great light in Milton the other day...

Silverpeaks revisited.

As a kid growing up in Waitati I always longed to head into the Silverpeaks which I knew existed somewhere up behind the old shell station on the main road. We glimpsed them everytime we went over the Kilmog. I always tried to see "the gap". A prominent feature on the ridgeline above the Waikouaiti river. Later the first time I walked through the gap, was with Ben Powell, we must have been about 16. Up gap ridge and down bashing through the tussock to ABC cave, then the old jubilee hut. I visited this hut many times during my teens, so now they all blur into one. It was everything a hut should be. Shady, old and full of history. You could smell the latter growing on the mattresses.

And there were only a few rats, it wasn't infested like the notorious yellow hut, or the ancient possum hut. Their footsteps running and jumping in the night still exist in my restless dreams, or when I am tossing or turning in a hut full of wood smoke, like last week in the Ahuriri. I remember I went through a stage of carrying an old camp oven around tramping, and the old fireplace at Jubilee was the scene of at least one successful roast dinner. It wasn't often we found other people in there. Once we bumped into Bronwyn Strang, sister of Jim Strang who I was acquainted with only through Dad's copy of "Jannu: Wall of Shadows" my favourite mountaineering book growing up.

The Silverpeaks perhaps isn't for the faint hearted, on the only other time Penny and I have been in there together we found a tent washed down the creek. Then in the hut book, there were pleas for help from a lone traveller who had failed twice to find her way out of the deceptive ridge and valley systems. Just this May eight people were airlifted outin what sounds suspiciously like a University tramping club trip, while in the past there have been fatalities.Though I get the sense some of this aura is protected by the local powers that be, as in key places the track is not well-marked and user friendly routes have not been developed. In short the whole place is exactly like it was probably 50 years ago...fine by me, but expect people to get into trouble when this is the only tramping location on Dunedins doorstep!

We headed in from Double Hill Road, it was only intended to be a short walk, but as we sat down at the old Green Hut site and I bashed around looking fruitlessly for water, Penny got a call on her cellphone that our planned engagement was cancelled and we were free to roam. Up past Pulpit Rock and the painted forest sat there, a plane of green with the Maniototo skies behind.

Curling around the Silverpeak trig we forged through snow to the top of the Devils staircase. the new Jubilee Hit could be seen down valley on a high terrace, which I remember ploughing through the tussock of en-route to watch a falcon at its nest. The old hut satin the shade at the crook of the valley.

The gorse is still hanging in at the bottom of the Devils staircase. One thing you notice in this icy part of the world is the slow rate of revegetation, the forest may return in a couple of hundred years or so, but to the naked eye there is a permanence to this place to equal that of Dunedins fading city centre. I point out to Penny the easy step across the creek from rock to bank, where once, fully laden, I had fallen back in my youthful weakness. It won't be long I guess before it will be a big step once again. The last steep grunt up to the hut is worth it. I could certainly spend some time here in the sun, but today regrettably only a quick lunch was on offer.

With time just on our side we decided on a route out via ABC caves and Rocky Ridge, but first it was down and through the forested glen of Silver Beech to the old hut site. I now officially feel like part of history. A sign declares it. And the stone chimney remains. I learnt to build hut fires in that chimney, with wet smokey wood, scraps of paper and my old camp oven squashing the lot - probably before the fire even got going! I can see the woolen socks hanging beside the fire and the upturned boots shoved so close, and dried so quickly that the soles cracked away from the boot. Haha classic.

From the hut site you can still follow the old shortcut that leads up towards ABC cave. The 4WD track you join is steep and fast before it peters out in a wall of tussock. We looked back, to the west, down Christmas creek to the Lammerlaws, where Anton Oliver, Brian Turner and co are/were fighting their battle against the wind farms

We were getting worried about daylight, so shot through ABC cave, and its great sleeping platform and up through tussock to a high point, finding ourselves just behind the gap, less impressive from this angle. To the north the catchment of the South Waikouaiti rolled away from us in a series of ridges and the odd volcanic point. The ridge on the horizon is the Kakanui's, always obvious from the Dunedin hills on a clear day and site of another potential windfarm.

Our route from here was back via Rocky ridge to the Silverpeaks and with this track not been familiar or offically marked we continued to share some concern over darkness overtaking us. It was sweet as though. Years of use has worn a pleasant track typically, especially on the more defined ridges. And it was beautiful in the sunset with the light glowing over the little communities of Blueskin Bay to the left where I grew up, and the golden tussock of the Silverpeaks and their rocky sentinels heightening the aesthetics. Before we knew it, and with just a little twang of crispness in the air we were back past Pulpit Rock and the Green Hut site to Semple Road and the rental. Great day out in the Silverpeaks.

Beyond the Political

And up on the hills. I went geo-caching with an old friend Mark Hudson, who is addicted. Geo-caching is a global sport where people race each other over their life times to visit as many geo-cache sites as possible. Sites are places where people have hidden little plastic boxes with notebooks which you record your name in. You find the sites by using GPS co-ordinates.

What I didn't realise is that there is different type of sites. "Traditional" - just a box, "Multi" - the first box contains clues to find more box/es, "Earth" - where you learn something geological, "Puzzle" - where you have to solve a complex number orientated puzzle to find the box. It goes on. We found 5 sites in our relatively short walk along the Wellington skyline, see maps, so these boxes are everywhere around you!

Mark is on of those who gets texts on his cellphone and races to get new caches placed near where he lives. He described vividly a sleepy drive to Ekatahuna in the middle of the night. Whatever gets people out in hills enjoying nature is a good thing!

Kapakapanui

We were in danger in doing no exploring of substance all weekend, but Penny pulled me off the track. Kapakapanui at just over 1000 metres high towers over the Kapiti Coast at the southern end of the Tararua Range. The loop from the end of Ngatiawa Road in the Reikorangi valley is a great fast walk of about 4hrs. The climb is solid though 900 metres vertical over a few kilometres.

View Larger Map

There is some great bush on this loop. Tawa and Pukatea on their stream side platforms. Kamahi abd beech up higher, with Rata crawling everywhere. Or towering above. It seems to be all or nothing with this plant. The gyrocopter like Toro appear in the mossy goblin forest of the tops along with Horopito, the pepper tree. And on the tops astelia and even leatherwood can appear pleasantly proportioned when there is an easy track to wander through.

Redundancy

Well I haven't been made redundant, I'm probably more classified as "long term unemployed" or maybe I don't even count in the market economy. But I still can't get a job and I still occasionally feel pretty redundant. There is not much good either in knowing that you are one of many, because it really makes you despair at how our society can possibly repair itself, that is in the New Zealand context, let alone in the globalised world.

You read in the news some people claiming we don't value our young, some we don't value our old, but the reality is that we don't value our people and their need to fit into some sort of community. There are way too many losers in our society and plenty of them have lots of money and stuff.

I am one of many looking for a job. PFO (please go away) letters are full of the stats...150 people applied for this job all the applicants were of a very high standard...each one of those probably spent 2 hours tailoring their application...300 hours....nearly 8 working weeks, cut down to 4 or 5 interviewees in an hour or so of an HR persons time. I volunteer for a few different organisations at the moment...what we could do with someone working fulltime for 8 working weeks! Argh.

You are left with the choice of endlessly pursuing opportunities that may or may not be there or trying to create something. Last time I was in this position I tried to create an events business, but the only way to make that pay is by providing pleasant weekends out for the wealthy. My passion lies with connecting people to the environment and helping them learn their humanity through suffering and achievement not with providing nice days out for the already successful.

So now I am trying to plot something else. I am researching the concept of "social business", see the new blog, trying to understand how socially driven businesses may be successful in cases of current market failure. I am volunteering for several organisations, most importantly "Leave No Trace" an international outdoor ethics centre setting up in New Zealand..see www.lnt.org ...and trying to stay positive. Every now and then I run out of energy, but Penny and nature generally save me from getting too down about it. The photos spread through this post are from a recent flight from Rotorua down to Christchurch where I am now for my Mums 50th and little brothers 21st. If there is little else of use us redundants can do in society we can do our absolute best to protect and support this amazing place, which often society doesn't even notice. The land, as a whole system is as outside and remote from societys concerns as we are...

Somewhere in that last left hand photo is home...tucked beneath the big pine with a pohutukawa out front...

St Pats Forest Rogaine

Penny is working what we call the "dark shift" at the moment. 8am - 6pm - she never sees the light. But thats not to say she doesn't get any exercise. She bikes backward and forwards to work through the great Mt Victoria MTB tracks, every now and then we get a run in and then occasionally a crazy adventure. The St Pats Forest Rogaine the other night was definitely a crazy adventure.

The rogaines in the Hutt, which is where this is, start at 6.30, so it was quite a rush getting out there, paying during the final stages of the briefing, bagging the maps as they said 30 seconds to go, then sprinting off with the crowd while trying to plan a route for the next few hours! We didn't even know how to cross the river but luckily there were plenty of people to follow. Going under SH2 via the culvert at CP 21 we decided to head straight up the hill via 53 and 42 to 91. I had decided that to complete a good loop around the track linking up 75-76 we needed to get straight out there. A good decision for enjoyment I think but possibly not the most lucrative decision points wise.

Being a little flustered and suddenly alone, the rest of the field without exception (?) and probably wisely choosing to visit 81 and 71 we wasted lots of time searching early for 53 "off dip in track". I knew that we should probably wait for the dip in the track but I we just couldn't make ourselves it seemed so far! The tracks were classic tramping tracks, or even taped possum trapper routes, so it was quite slow going.

We decided to get 54, which involved getting the compass out and heading west from the track bend and 74, dropping down soft needly slopes into a creek. But 82 gave us some grief as we overshot the first junction then struggled to find the control which was just sitting there between us in the middle of the forest. Great practice in hunting for TWALK this weekend! We overshot the junction by 103, but grabbed the four CP's here relatively quickly and headed off for 85 where Penny was onto it enough to stop me going too far again.

A steep gnarly descent in the dark with dull lights to 104 then our first adventure of the evening downstream to 75. Complete with bush bashing, wading through the creek and a series of little pools to skirt. The glow worms down here were amazing even in the rush and the track up the hill to 94 was full of them too. 94 itself was quite hard to find. A very small track deposited us on aforested spur, and it was only Penny noticing that the ridgetop track is broken by a light dotted line (so is broken and confusing on the ground) just north of the control that enabled us to find it in the end.

From here we were really pushing time. 34 was skipped, as was 35, but 76 and 93 seemed worth it. Then came our second great adventure for the evening, bush bashing between the tracks between 93 and 63....ugly...Penny was convinced I chose the wrong way through low scrub and fallen trees, in reflection she may have been right...but who was to know! It ate up time a little but we eventually emerged on the track and promptly failed to find 63. Our plan had been to take a lucrative route back through 83, 102, 62 and 92 but this had been getting less and less likely for the last hour or so and was now completely out of the question. So it was down the nice open spur to 24, then down the track beside SH2 to another culvert at 23.

We were late now. I had to inform Penny that it wasn't polite to verbalise the points we were losing every minute as we were running along. Especially when she wouldn't let me tow her, claiming that her legs couldn't go around fast enough. Marital bliss! But we got there back to the organisers sheltering under the motorway off ramp, (did I mention it was wet and miserable :-))and the pizza. Great event. Interesting navigational and route choice challenges. It would have been fun to do it for six hours.

Seeing something you created flourish.

Events have been on my mind lately. I have been working on a few concepts which are quickly turning into real plans. But aside from that I am keeping the website up to date for the Taylors Mistake Rogaine Series which began last week on the hills above Christchurch.

I have been reflected on how fulfilling and great it feels to see something you have created flourish once you have passed it on. I like trying to create things for others, most of the time the things flop but the Taylors Mistake Rogaine Series at least is an exception!

I created the Taylors Mistake Rogaine Series in 2005 as fundraising for Penny and I to attend the World Orienteering Champs in Japan. I then ran it again in 2006 before passing it on to Matt Scott, Lara Prince and Michael Smithson to organise in 2007. Last year Chris Forne, Emily Wall and I organised an extended series - 5 events from the tip of Godley Head to past the Sign of the Bellbird. This year I have passed it on to Ian Edmond and Nora Audra to organise for as long as they like.

Ian and Nora by all accounts have done a great job so far attracting a near record field of 180 to the first event based high on the Summit Road above Governors Bay. The slideshow below is from their first event held last Wednesday.

The photos just bring back so many good memories of people with smiles on their faces running crazily on the rugged ridges. People just so stoked when returning to the finish after a starry evening high above the city lights. Theres people in those photos who were at the first events and are returning now by the looks of it with new girlfriends and kids. There are people that look exactly the same (and wearing the same clothes) as they did that time ago. The landscapes in the photo are so familiar now, the view over the harbour to Lyttleton, and indeed back the other way. Probably my favourite event ever was the first time we used the Gondola, it was just such a different experience starting way up there with a 360 degree panorama of an oncoming southerly. We didn't make any money when we used the gondola but it was a blast.

I feel like we have made a real difference in introducing people to all the beauty of the Port Hills at different times of day and night. The amazing red cliffs, the groves of forest, the deserted bunkers hidden by flax, the rugged sea shores of Godley Head. I rest easy in the knowledge that Ian and Nora are continuing this, and hopefully it continues for a long time.

The Boohai!

Was just scoping around the net looking for images for a few ideas on topographical map navigation for my OSquad Blog, when I found a write-up and online maps from my own event!

The Boohai 2008 on the East Coast was an event I really enjoyed organising with friends Rachel and Rhys. In my unemployed state I am getting more serious about organising another for later this year! The map of the first day, which included some classic "East Coast" Coastal farmland with beautiful beaches and rugged headlands is included below", as is a little section of the write-up which can be found in its entirety here.

The first event, which was of 8 hours duration was held on the coastal Nuhiti station. Rugged ridges sweeping into the sea, bisected by streams lined with native bush and remnant puriri forest. The craggy coastal feature of Mawhai point home to a former whaling station was visited by most with high pointers located on its tip. A lone hermit sheep eyed competitors curiously as they scrambled over rocks to his gnarly island of grass and bush. There was some honest labour going on, with plenty of hills to keep the competitive ones busy. Neil Jones had brought over a team from Whakatane and beyond, including son Daniel and well-known adventure racer Grant Burke, who were expected to do well, but in the end the first day was taken by Hawkes Bay pair Hamish Goodwin and Chris Howell. There was no mercy being given in this competition, the latter moving fast into the finish.

Fear, Hardness and MTBing in Fiordland

I was somewhere near four foot high stuck on a crumbly tussock slope above the shores of Lake Hawea. I had wandered off to entertain myself, determined to climb a mountain. Now all four feet of me was stuck 200 feet up a 3000 foot mountain and my knees were banging. Together.

Fast forward 15 years and they were still banging, six foot of me was sixty feet up a concave crumbly tussock slope. The slippery, featureless bare rock below which had been so easy to climb up, now seemed so easy to fall down. My girlfriend had dumped me, my foot felt like it was slipping (though there was no movement perceptible to the eye) and despite the vast landscape around me I was so far in my head that I didn't know Martin had passed me until he started issuing instructions from above.

Martin Rodd redefined my appreciation of "hard"ness. Every so often you meet someone who redefines or extrapolates on the qualities that makes one strong in the mountains. Before Martin I had met Kynan Bazley and later I met Kieran McKay, but they are different stories. This story is about Martin, and although he didn't have the calm demeanour or physical fluidity of the latter two he shared their manic glint and exhibited a gritted sense of determination and brute physical force. Previously Martin and I had shared a weekend in the Eyre mountains, escaping out of a storm to a derelict hut with only the vestiges of walls. We yarned quite a bit of the night as the squalls thrashed our shelter, mainly about Martins adventures and exploration of the West Coast, and woke in the morning to snow drifts in the corners of our bunks and my frozen shoes. Martin who had slept with his watched in disdain as I had to rip my shoes to get my feet in. It was a long walk out in his footsteps.

View Larger Map

But here we were now on the side of Mt Wilmot, straddling Lake Manapouri and Doubtful Sound and Martin was above me and my fingers weren't gripping. The thing is, this was the objective. Martin had cornered me at work, "come and climb Mt Wilmot". Ok. The access was horrendously awesome. The Percy Pass MTB route. We parked at Borland Lodge and headed up over to the Grebe following the transmission lines. The Grebe is amazing watercourse, its headwaters leach out of New Zealand's biggest ever landslide. But it leachs out so clear, almost translucent and the beech forest is so picturesque, even when it gets stunted when you hang a left and head up the Percy Stream. We have so few places in New Zealand where transmission lines cross remote country and you can explore the old tracks by bike. My mind strains; Dennistoun incline to Lyall, spots around Arthurs Pass, out the back of Tokaanu. But this is the best. The track up to Percy Saddle isn't rideable by mortals and further reduces to a carry when the road ends in beech forest. You heave the bike on the shoulder and make for the distant pylon on the saddle.

When we reached the saddle though it was snowed in. Bikes in an alpine paradise. A crusty alpine paradise. I remember staggering down the hill dragging or pushing the bike in a constant state of fall. Once the snow clears though the downhill is diabolical,amazing. Its how you envisage a mountain road in Kazakhstan. TV sized rocks strewn over the tracks where you roar around blind corners. And the arm of Lake Manapouri is so far down there, deep blue under the mountains.

Martin looking forward to Lake Manapouri and casting a look over the shoulder at the climb to Percy Saddle

It had been a long day, but this one was meant to be longer, another 1000metres up the slope I am currently stuck on, a quick return to the bikes and a cycle down Wilmot Pass which had amused us for an hour this morning, hopefully to catch the ferry, then 50km on the bikes back to Borland lodge. No wonder my legs were shaking. I edge to the right closer to safety and my foot slips, the other digits hold. My head is gone. I grasp at the ledge and pull myself over, you can see the disappointment in Martins eyes. This ain't a man who lets his goals go easily. He gives me time out while he does a reccie. I eat food and wuss out. By the time he returns I have completely failed to regather myself.

I quit, like I did when I was four foot tall and descended desperately back down the hill. It was further home this time. We still had the bike down, the ferry and the bike back around. Plenty of time for suffering and self analysis. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger they say, but I often wonder what is that little edge inside some people that makes them so strong, so determined to achieve and endure more than I can comprehend or begin to undertake. Just genes maybe? I'm not sure

(for some more info about the trip check out this site.)