So. Who the heck are ya? :)

I'm a very social person, unless I'm off on some solo mission to smash myself. I'm starting to get a bit of an idea of the experience of the frequent posters, but it would be nice to learn a bit about the people I'm taking advice from. :D I'll start. Name: Kreig (pronounced Craig) Age: 37 tomorrow! (22nd March). Place of Origin: Queensland, Australia Place of Residence: West Coast, South Island, baby! Level of hiking experience: Desert: High Australian bush: high Temperate Forests: Moderate Jungle: Moderate Alpine: Low (this is where I most need advice, but also what I most look forward to)! Favourite trail: Overall, my favourite trail is the 1000km long Bibbulmun Track in Western Australia. My favourite track so far in NZ (and I plan on spending the rest of my life checking them all out), is the Croessus. Really great track, close to home, that I can smash out in a good day's tramping. (Always from the tougher Barrytown side. Blackball side ascent is too soft). ;) Hardest tramp: Solo, 160km hike through virgin Cambodian jungle within spitting distance of the Vietnamese border. Apparently, I could have easily blown myself up. I was drinking about 15 litres of water a day; water I'd packed I ran out of in the first day. Every time a cloud came over I set up water catchment. Drank filtered mank water from small mud puddles. I suffered THE worst electrolyte imbalance and resultant cramps I've ever had. I must have been very close to muscle meltdown; absolute excruciating agony! No map available of the area I was in. I just had my compass, and aimed north. A truly epic experience! (And one I had to stop in the next town for, for a week, just to recover). Next tramp: Who knows? But basically, for the next four months, it'll all be training for an assault on the TAT. Strength on the trail: As an ex-Navy medic and wilderness first aid instructor, dealing with emergencies is my thing. I know I stay calm when shit turns to custard. Definitely my strength. Weakness on the trail: Bugs. Those little bitey bastards absolutely LOVE me, and they drive me nuts! They are definitely my kryptonite. Actually, my true weakness is I sweat EXCESSIVELY. I usually need to consume a lot more fluids than most. In Australia, and throughout SE Asia, this was often a logistical nightmare. Here though, a lot less so. A thousand ways to get water in NZ. :) Anyway, that's me. Who's up for sharing?

OK I'll bite too. Trouble is I'm at the fag end of my tramping life and there's far too much of it to bore you all with. But I'll start at the start with my first trip. My dad worked in those days for the NZ Herald, and arranged for one of the delivery guys to take us down country with our packs and school-bikes to Tokoroa. I can still clearly remember being dropped off at 4am on a very frosty morning - and the two of us setting off for Taupo. Then a day to Turangi, a day over the saddle and up to Mangetepopo. (The very old one long gone.) The next two weeks saw us scramble all over the park - most of the huts and all but the hardest peaks on Ruapehu. I fell in love with the place. Last day we rode down to Nat. Park and caught the midnight train back to Auckland. The guard took one look at us and parked us and our scruffiness in the post van, well out of the way of the real customers. But we got a great cup of hot soup and a fine sleep curled on the mail bags by the glow of a little coal-fired stove. We cycled home up through the city on a cold grey morning, got home to very relieved parents - had one very hot bath - got back on our bikes and straight to school. And we didn't mention a word of it to anyone! The next three May holidays saw similar trips - and then on to Auckland Uni and fantastic days with AUTC. A few years back I got to their 75th Jubilee Dinner and what a terrific evening and wonderful company! Around 1980 I spent an entire 12 months in the Southern Alps - and the highlight was a 6 week Geology field trip in the untracked wilderness of Dusky Sound - places with names like Needle Peak and the Dark Cloud Range. Sometimes I couldn't tell you what I was doing last week - but I can regale you with the details of every day on that long ago adventure. Over time family, job - and an increasingly painful neck - saw my tramping days dwindle to nothing much more than the odd Sunday stroll. Then in 2001 I stumbled across Aarn Taite selling some of his first packs in a mate's shop. That fixed the pain in the neck - and my newly found single-hood gave the chance to get back out again, first into the Tararuas (when you get good at the Tararuas, everywhere else is more fun!) then a few longer summer spells in the South Is again. My most recent trips were all in from a base in Masterton, so areas like Waingawa, Mitre, and the Central/Northern Tararuas became my 'patch'. God only knows why I'm so fond of the sodding awful place - but I am. And that's that.

Cheers for sharing Phillip! Epic stories mate! And so glad to hear of your positive review of the Aarn packs. I've made my decision on pack choice for the TAT; Aarn wins out. It just makes SENSE to me! That 12 months in the Southern Alps sounds magic! Totally jealous! And your first trip as a kid, well, that just brought memories flooding back from my own out-there adventures. Love it!

I'm a rabid Aarn Pack nut-job. There is more to them than just the front balance pockets - the entire design is quite subtle and you have to pay a bit of attention to get the best out of them. But just don't try steep rock-scrambling in them. Take the pockets off first otherwise they'll just get in the way and annoy you. I've only ever had to do it maybe twice. Oddly enough the best stock of them anywhere in the world is in a hole-in-the-wall shop here in Melbourne!

this is for you two, its a little off date wise but I'm sure you will like it :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRhBRg-XkWY its Ken Oathcairn!! hahaha

Ace little doco! :-)

My profile says it all I hope. However I did do that 54 day traverse in Fiordland that I've referred to in previous posts. I've managed a first ascent (Mt Williams in the Rolleston Range) and done some face climbs that I'm happy with e.g. Mt Una in the Spenser range and the Crow Face. They are trampers' mountains but I soloed them. Actually I got tricked into soloing the Crow Face...and then had to wait an hour for the other 2 to arrive. I always wanted to go tramping ever since I realised my big brothers were going tramping with our father. But I never got a look-in due to being a girl. At the time I had the prepubertal growth spurt and was stronger than my older brother. Finally the opportunity came up to join the tramping club at Avonside Girls High. You had to be in the 6th form. I loved the 2 trips I did and was encouraged by Norman Hardy. He was on the expedition that did the first ascent of Kuchenjunga. After that I did the occasional tramp as I was doing shift work with nursing training by then. One time we went for a day walk up to Temple Basin and got into patches of snow below Mt Blimit. Then I thought, my god this is fantastic. I want to do more of this stuff. But I had to battle against self-belief, no role models, no peers and no mentoring. My brothers were doing rock climbing but never invited me even though I'd spent most of my childhood pioneering routes up various trees and perfecting the art of entering abandoned buildings, businesses etc. as a lone pursuit. After 5 years overseas where my fitness built up to the point where one day I realised for the first time in my life I was not the least fit in the group, I was determined to do lots of tramping on my return to NZ. So I got a job in an outpatient clinic (9-5) and joined a club. We did fairly mediocre stuff at easy/mod grades and then after being unable to afford to do the basic snow skills with the WTMC, I then attended this course the following winter and got some grounding for alpine stuff. I followed this up with a slightly more advanced but still basic course with the Tararua TC. I can still recall John Wild sneering at my step cutting swing. I suggested he wouldn't be very good at changing a demented patient's bed full of faeces on his first go either. When I came down to Chch and joined the CTC I finally got the support and encouragement to go on the fit trips and do the wonderful off-track exploring that really does it for me. Thank you, Steve Berry, Barry Abley and Les Jones. From my experiences I am a big believer in encouraging and supporting people who want to get into more challenging and rewarding trips. This is partly why I write up my trips for this site as I hope it portrays the educative strategies and errors I make on these trips. I joined Women Climbing and did a lot of courses with them, continuing to upskill and put stuff into practice on my trips e.g. first aid and crisis management. WC gives women the opportunity not to be overshadowed by the blokes e.g. you're walking along and the blokes in front stop and have a wee conflab and make decisions before you even get there. I've seen this happen but fortunately have been in the front group and involved, holding my map and contributing. Being the youngest of 6 with 3 big brothers, deferring to the boys has always been the natural order for me so I've had to struggle to overcome this tendency of mine. Eventually I became the National Coordinator of WC and organised about 5 consecutive alpine week-long courses for women each summer in the Southern Alps using NZMGA guides. Only wish I'd gone on one myself. After the Fiordland traverse with Janet Macnab I figured I had gained experience sufficient to share and joined the MSC as a bushcraft assistant instructor. I qualified and became an assistant instructor in the alpine area but figured I didn't have the enormous reserves of stamina required to be able to manage possible crises when instructing i.e. I would still be focusing on keeping myself warm, safe, fed and hydrated. I got burnt out from committee work and instructing. The main issue being for me perceiving a lack of gratitude. During this time I became the chief guide of the CTC as well. So I chucked it all in and decided just to go out there and enjoy my trips. If anyone wanted support, they could ask me. Frank said that instructing with the MSC would only serve to undermine any confidence I'd gained and I did notice occasional unnecessary challenging from the blokes at times. So now I just do it. I'm in the hills on average a 100 days a year, a lot of it off-track e.g. Stewart Island and have been doing this much for the last 25 years. This includes a lot of time cutting tracks. If I share my achievements and experiences with people, it's only so they can have a basis for being able to judge the quality of my input, not as a means of establishing status.

"I got burnt out from committee work and instructing. The main issue being for me perceiving a lack of gratitude." Totally get that. I did a short and largely unremarkable spell as a club official and yes - a lot of members could well be a lot more supportive of the people who do all the actual work for them. The other thing I might add to my ramblings above was how very much I was inspired by Grame Dingle and Jill Tremain's winter traverse of the South Is in the 70's. I read the book word by word with awe. Some of the ground those two covered in the times they did is still pretty remarkable. I did climb with Graeme a couple of times, and while I was perhaps technically a little better than him - his sheer mental toughness was a thing to behold. While I never met her, I had this hopeless youthful crush on Jill Tremain, and her untimely death in the Himalayas is still grieved in a small corner of my heart. Because while Graeme was clearly a man of great masculine energy and capacity - I also learnt how it is that there are women who in their own complementary fashion - are the tough, enduring and remarkable matches of that energy. Any man who is 'challenged' by what a woman is achieving - is in reality out of touch with his own inner resources.

Honora, you're a bloody superstar! I will happily take advice from you anytime. You have a LOT more experience than me; particularly in the terrain of NZ. Way to pursue your passion! I'm a big believer your work should support your passion, not the other way round. Exactly the sort of response I was hoping to get. Thank you!

Cheers, Kreig and when it's time to bungle in the jungle I'd be looking to you for tips on how to avoid snakes etc.