Wilderness June 2022

I suffered the dreaded boot sole delamination recently. It was on a trip to Pinnacles Hut in Coromandel Forest Park. A few minutes before it happened, while standing in a small stream to assist my daughter to the other side, I thought how brilliant these boots were. I’d done innumerable difficult trips in them – Stewart Island, Otago, Coromandel, Tongariro, the Tararua Range and more – and they’d offered support and surety of grip. Not five minutes later I heard a flapping noise and felt something knocking against my foot. “Oh-oh.” Sure enough, the sole was barely hanging on. A few minutes later, the delamination had spread to the other boot. I had newfound sympathy for all those readers who had shared similar tales of woe a few years ago…

WE NEED THE WHOLE STORY I would like to tautoko (support) Tania Rae’s ideas (‘There’s something missing from the Great Walks’, April 2022). As a Kiwi doing one of the Great Walks, I was profoundly uncomfortable with the one-sided narrative being delivered by the DOC wardens. The passion, aroha (love) and manaaki (care) shown by these wardens are abundantly clear; the blame lies not with them but with the poor support offered to them by DOC. I was left feeling that these nightly talks were a wasted opportunity. Pre-Covid, when the huts were full of overseas visitors, these stories of how the passes and mountains were named and discovered by early European settlers went unchallenged. With Kiwis now filling the huts, it’s time for DOC to up its game and…

Get your photo published here to receive a meal from Real Meals worth $17. Learn more about Real Meals at www.realmeals.co.nz. Last Weekend submission criteria can be found at wildernessmag.co.nz.…

Trail guide website has top of the south covered Nelson Trails started out in true Kiwi fashion as a do-it-yourself solution to a lack of information on tracks at the top of the South Island. The website now boasts close to 125 trail guides and is on course to have 100,000 users in 2022. The man behind it, 30-year-old Jordan Miller, makes maps for a living, so the urban walks, day trips, tramping and bike trails on the site are all expertly charted. Wilderness spoke to Miller about how he combined his love of the outdoors and a new hobby to create the guide. How did the website come about? At the end of 2015, I was looking for some information on Mt Malita, a day walk in the hills…

I’M DOING IT TO GET BACK INTO TRAMPING Taranaki teacher Janine Ingle found the challenge just the motivation she needed to get back into tramping. Janine Ingle is loving being out in the bush again thanks to Walk1200km. The challenge has also helped her shed more than 20kg so far this year. Janine has always been an outdoors’ fan, but after separating from her husband several years ago, tramping fell by the wayside. To get back out there, Janine subscribed to Wilderness, knowing she would want to do some of the walks featured in the magazine. That’s how the Taranaki preschool teacher found out about Walk1200km, which was “just the motivation I needed”. “I kept telling myself I would get back into tramping but thinking it is not enough,” Janine…

“I’ve always been able to pick up people who are good at different things. It’s just a matter of organising them all.” If you’ve ever walked the section of Te Araroa Trail between Palmerston North and Levin, then you owe virtually every step you take to the tireless efforts of one man. Ian Argyle grew up a farmer in the hills near Palmerston North, but for the last 23 years has dedicated his life to building tracks for recreational hikers and local families. It started in 1999 with the Sledge Track, near Palmerston North. Argyle noticed there was no real access to Hardings Park, an 860ha scenic reserve. When the project was completed, Argyle was asked to continue his work and take the track further. He didn’t know then that…