IN THIS EDITION…

• End of summer news from the base
• What can I do in Winter in NZ?
• Staff profile - Kaz
• Feature trip - Ski Touring
• The Power of the Guide Book
• Hiking New Zealand features on International Lifestyle
• Lake Waikaremoana hike receives award
• WIN the price of your safari back!

End of summer news from the base

With our summer season drawing to a close, it’s time to thank our fabulous safari guides for a brilliant season. We received excellent feedback from clients about their trips this season, and praises were sung for our team of guides. A great guide can truly make or break a trip, and we’re so lucky to have inspiring people taking travellers into the wilderness areas of New Zealand. Thanks team!

For our end of season trip this year, we stayed local, rounding Lyttelton Harbour to the quiet and picturesque township of Diamond Harbour. A short ferry trip, bike ride or drive from our base, Diamond Harbour welcomed us with gorgeous blue skies and perfect weather for running, walking and taking a trip to Quail Island. While not quite as physically gruelling as previous trips, we thoroughly enjoyed getting together and relaxing.

Guide Chris will be in Europe for the northern summer, based in Germany. As with many of our guides, we’ve come to accept that it’s difficult to keep him in the same spot for too long. Best of luck tracking him down. Let us know if you see him anywhere!

At the end of this season, we say goodbye to two superstars of Hiking New Zealand. Leah is moving north after five years with us. First, she heads back to the USA for another summer and will then be in New Plymouth from October. We wish her well. Also moving onwards and upwards is our wind-up toy, Jaron. He’s moving to the USA for an indefinite period with girlfriend Kay. Jaron’s guided three fun-filled seasons for us. Thanks for all your hard work, Jau.

Hiking New Zealand team

What can I do in Winter in NZ?

The tracks are quiet, the snow-capped mountains provide amazing scenery, and there is plenty to do from June to September. New Zealand transforms to a winter wonderland, but that doesn’t mean you have to be able to ski to enjoy what’s on offer!
Check out our website for more details on these options:
Ski-touring – alpine and telemark. A range of trips from two to five days on offer. Join a departure, or choose your date to suit with a minimum of two people. See this newsletter for a ski touring story.
Winter South Island Adventure – an activity-packed 14-day tour of the South Island making the most of the time. Combine, hiking, skiing, cycling, and kayaking with other active travellers.
Abel Tasman Guided Walk – three days of walking and two days of relaxing on golden beaches, kayaking or exploring nearby walkways. With lodge accommodation, meals and pack transfers included, experience the beauty of the region in comfort.
Heaphy Track Guided Walk – five days traversing the Kahurangi National Park from Motueka to Karamea with backcountry hut accommodation. In this region of diverse flora and fauna, your informative guides will give detailed interpretation on the natural history of New Zealand and the west coast in particular.
Volcanoes & Rainforest safari – 10 day hiking safari covering the North Island from Auckland to Wellington, visiting the Whirinaki Forest, Tongariro and Taranaki. Stay in authentic backcountry huts, feast on a hangi on the beach, and enjoy soaking in a hot river after a good day hiking.

Profile
Karen – Guide / Tractor / Mountain lion

If you have Kaz as your guide the “Tractor” alias will make sense. Kaz’s husband let this affectionate term slip (after a bit of coaxing). It definitely does not imply she makes similar noises to a tractor in her sleep, or that she emits dark clouds of foul smelling fumes whilst chugging along! The alias has been earned through her remarkable stamina and strength when climbing mountains, which is something Kaz has done a huge amount of over the last decade, both recreationally and professionally while working as an instructor and a guide. Before joining Hiking New Zealand Kaz spent eight years as a glacier guide, based at Fox Glacier on the west coast and also in Iceland. While based in Fox, Kaz also worked as a team leader in the Fox Alpine and Cliff Rescue Team.

Not only is Kaz highly skilled as an outdoors person she has worked professionally as a chef, both in New Zealand and France. Kaz has enjoyed the guiding so much this season she may have even talked her husband, Ben, into working for us next season! I forgot to mention that on the rare occasions Kaz is not tractoring her way up another mountain, she enjoys painting, drawing cartoons, playing the flute, tin whistle and the guitar, and most recently building her house. Busy girl! It’s great to have such a multi-talented guide amongst us!

Feature trip - Ski touring
by Ern Reeders

Good weather. We set out early from Lake Tekapo to Mt Cook airport. There are superb views across Lake Pukaki to the Alps which are touched by dawn pink.

The Porter takes 8 passengers and all seats are filled; skis are piled high inside the plane and folk are nursing day packs on their laps. There’s a seat beside the pilot and being the only dagg with a DSLR dangling from his chest I win the prize.

We take off and head up the Tasman Glacier valley. The pilot gets out his paperwork and starts filling it out. ‘Warn me when we’re about to hit something’ he says as we’re pointed to the East valley wall. I decide he’s joking but don’t stop watching.

It’s about a 30 km trip and we get awesome views of the moraine, the glacier, the peaks and the intersecting glaciers. The scale is beyond words.

We get up to the headwall of the Tasman and spy Kelman and Tasman Saddle huts. The pilot warns he will do a touch down and take off on the neve to test conditions and then fly back to land. The thermometer in the window beside me spells out around -5 C.

We’re down. Us three tourers get out and the Porter heads elsewhere to drop off the downhillers.

We’re kitted up with harnesses, ice axes, and transceivers with crampons in the pack. The snow is soft. I’m sinking 10 cm or so on my XC skis which are 69mm wide underfoot. Sam and Charlie are on AT gear.

Sam instructs. We’ll ski down a pitch and then skin up to the Ledenfeld Saddle. We are to stay well behind him and to the right for the downhill run. Keep out of each other’s tracks.

We do it. But the snow is so deep that I’m exhausting myself to steer the skis. Can only manage tight turns followed by traverses. My problem is fear of speed having done in one knee a few years ago. But I manage to get to the bottom without falling over.

Then it’s skins on - a first for me - and we start a walk up to the saddle. It feels seriously daggy, having to push skis forward on the snow and set the skins. But there’s huge grip and the change of zig to zag is easy with small steps.

My chest is heaving. Maybe it’s the altitude - around 2200m - and I’m not as fit as I’d thought. The scenery is also literally breath-taking and I’m a little spooked by the magnitude of it all.

Sam gets me close behind him, taking the small steps forward that he’s pacing. I decide to do what I’ve told my kids to do on uphill walks: start an internal mental chant … one, two, three four, two, two three four, three two … etc. It works.

We get to look west over the centre of the Southern Alps. On a clear day you can see the beaches on the West Coast but that side is clouded today. We drop down a crappy slope of soft sastrugi and powder pockets. I’m managing a mish mash of traverses and snow plough turns. My technique drops back to survival level when I’m knackered. We see a good sized soft snow avalanche off the face opposite as we go down.

We head back towards the main part of the Tasman on another pitch of soft snow. Sam instructs again. Watch out for that bright spot down over to the right; it’s a snow covered crevasse. I guess that it’s bright cos the light shines through the snow bridge over it. Sam and Charlie make it look easy doing parallels on their gear. I’m back to zig zags trying to tele and fall over once. At the bottom of that pitch I decide to prop and take some photos. The others spy a nice gully among the ice blocks and skin upwards to it. I see a party of four tourers doing a gully on the East side; it seems close enough but in the photo they come up as pin pricks.

All around us are high peaks, minor glaciers, seracs and a vast vista down the Tasman. You could stand here sucking it in til your toes got frozen and not notice.

But we have a flight to catch and when the others have done their thing we cruise down to the pick-up point. Following in their tracks I speed up and threaten to rear-end them and have to ski to the side to slow down.

We have four days to walk in and out and tour from the Rex Simpson private hut at the foot of Two Thumb Range north of Lake Tekapo town (alt. 1280m).

We drive out, lash our skis to packs and start the 3 hour walk up to the hut in our ski boots. The T2x’s are surprisingly comfortable but an ingrown toe nail takes a bashing. On the way back it’s wrapped in Melolin and I don’t feel a thing. Charlie and Sam though have their AT boots to walk in and they have my sympathy. They don’t need it though.

The grass plain is waterlogged in places and we have to do a deal of tussock hopping. Soon it gets steeper and I discover how unfit I am. Sam waits from time to time with good patience, while remarking several times what I must have in the heavy pack. He and Charlie have their clothes, food, crampons and ice axes neatly stowed in and on their 45l jobs. My 80l pack is full in part with gear recommended for the Tasman and no longer necessary at lower altitudes.

Would I go back? Like a shot. For the big mountain stuff.

Thanks Ern for a great story.

Thank you also to Ern Reeders and Charlie Mowbray for use of photographs.

We love getting great feedback from clients who have found their perfect adventure with Hiking New Zealand. If your trip was everything you hoped for or more, then we’d love for you to contact one of the many popular travel guide books and tell them why Hiking New Zealand is THE hiking and outdoor adventure specialist in NZ.

If you saw Hiking New Zealand in a Guide Book and want others to be able to experience New Zealand in the same way, please write and thank the guide book for recommending our safaris.

Lonely Planet: www.lonelyplanet.com/contact/

Rough Guide: www.roughguides.com/website/aboutus/ContactUs/

Fodor’s Travel Guide: www.fodors.com/feedback/

Let’s Go: Email: feedback@letsgo.com

Recently Hiking New Zealand featured in the online International Lifestyle Magazine. After researching what was currently on offer in New Zealand, Editor Lynn Nicholson approached Hiking New Zealand, discovering that a hiking safari can cater for all ages, backgrounds and budgets. An excerpt from the article:

“When you mention hiking to people they tend to think of hippies traipsing through the countryside, making tents, eating mung beans and singing camp songs, but there is so much more to hiking, in particular the health benefits. The secret of good health comes not only from eating well, but the whole package; the mental, the emotional and the physical, and for those of you who feel that sweating in a gym simply is not an option then you should seriously consider hiking, for this is exercising whilst taking in plenty of fresh air and it gives you time to think, to clear your head of the daily rubbish we all collect and store, resulting in stress, that has a serious effect on our health. Lets also consider that women are always told to consider osteoporosis and to look for ways to prevent it, yes you can buy into medication and expensive drug options but hiking will help prevent it naturally. The gentle force of gravity helps to increase bone density and slows the loss of calcium, so you can strengthen your bones and make them less susceptible of breaking, and taking a hike will have a gentler effect on your body than walking on the pavement. So, if you are looking to change how you look and feel you need to organise yourself on a hiking trek, and what better place than New Zealand in particular, Hiking New Zealand.

“The point is, if you never take a moment out of your life to really appreciate what the world holds for you, if you never move away from your computer or simply turn off your cell phone you will find that you miss out on so much. As the saying goes “If you don’t make time how will you ever have time?” Understanding yourself is so important in maintaining good health and having the peace and quiet to really listen to your own personal needs is essential. No loud music, no sweaty gyms, no running through the street breathing in the toxins of traffic, just you and nature. Perfect.”

Click here to see the full online version of International Lifestyle.

Lake Waikaremoana wins award

The Lake Waikaremoana hike has been ranked as the third best guided walk in New Zealand in the latest issue of Wilderness Magazine. The track itself was ranked as the number one multi-day tramp in New Zealand.

The success comes from smooth operations despite difficult logistics, attention to detail, and the quality of the walk.

Click here to see the trip dossier of the Lake Waikaremoana guided hike, and find out for yourself why it ranks among the best in New Zealand.

Beginning in Rotorua, you will enjoy an all-inclusive guided hike: your walk package includes hiking equipment, gear cartage, delicious meals and wine, accommodation, snacks and refreshments, and professional, knowledgeable guides.

One lucky film-maker will win the price of their Hiking Safari back this season with our special YouTube video promotion. All you have to do is submit your video filmed while on a Hiking New Zealand safari to YouTube and send us the link.

The hiker with the best video from the 2008-09 season will win the price of their safari back.
If you’re booked on a hiking safari later this season, don’t forget to pack your video camera!

Send your link to us at info@hikingnewzealand.com