DOWNHILL TECHNIQUES

Many years ago it was most definately gung-ho and to hell with the consequences (as I never thought anything would happen....youth = bulletproof), however these days I take a far more cautious approach to descents, depending on the ground (scree running can still be fun at any age). I find poles the way to go, just for the psychological factor if for nothing else, though they are shown to reduce impact by up to 30%. At the end of the day, both figuratively and literally, as long as you get down in one piece, that's all that matters.

Age and injury havent quite caught up with madpom quite yet and it may be that they never do. I certainly hope so for his sake. My descent of the same ridge was about an hour and left my knees shaking for about an hour after. Just finnished the northern crossing from Ohau to Holdsworth lodge and its taken two days for the swelling in my knees to go down enough to walk standing up-right, personally going down is a considered step by step process that takes as long as it takes.

I go just as slow downhill as i do going up as im fairly clumsy.Using one pole plus one free hand usually suffices and so far[touch wood]the only bad fall i had was coming down from Jumbo where i sprained my ankle.It took quite awhile hobbling out to the carpark.I have worn cartilage in my right knee and it can cause me grief,in fact going to Neill Forks from the Holdsworth carpark[took 10 hours with one short stop at Totara Flats]my knees the next day were so sore i to have an extra day there to recover.Most of the time its not an issue,i just try not to do many long days now.

Posted this across from another thread on hiking sticks/walking poles: I developed knee pain where the quads insert into the upper knee and had to learn to change the way I walk and move: particularly as I like to tramp most weekends and do a 200m walk up and down the Bridle Path mid-week. I hyperextend my hip flexors when I step down to use a different muscle group to bear the load. Hip flexors are very strong. I exaggerate the outward knee flexion on the weight bearing leg for big step downs. A lot of the time I jump down and land on both feet or skip down if the foot placements are good i.e. no steep and narrow tree root-ridden track. On a gentler downhill I do massive long strides with my hip flexors well extended. I wear 4 point crampons on greasy downhill terrain to avoid the lethal position of forward bending and guarded, sustained weight bearing. Planting a pole in front of my supporting leg is particularly bad as this makes me flex forward, bringing weight bearing onto the lower thigh which causes soft tissue wear and tear which is very slow to recover. Instead I plant the walking pole behind my supporting leg and extend that hip flexor. I don't use trekking poles, instead I use a walking stick. I chose this as I transitioned from using an ice axe and the pistol grip is the same. Using these strategies, I've pretty much kissed the knee pain goodbye. Occasionally if I'm on very slippery terrain especially at night I'll do that wrong move and activate it again. And now after 10 days out of 16 days annual leave spent tramping, my knees have got a bit tender by not following my own advice! So I've doubled the glucosamine and am avoiding big downhill slogs for the time-being. I've noticed that some people have long trekking poles dangling from their wrists when they need to grab the vegetation or use the rock for grip and it is very ungainly due to the length of the pole and slows them down. Just saying...

I can't find madpom's post, but 1000 metres in 20 minutes is a vertical speed of 3 km/h straight down. If you're on a constant 45 degree slope for the entire 20 minutes, you'd have to be travelling forwards at 4.25 km/h or 1.18m/s in order to keep dropping rapidly enough to be down 1000 metres in 20 minutes (keeping in mind that it'd be a 45 degree slope all this way). That seems pretty tough. What kind of descent is it around there?

When the trees suit I like to partly swing between them when going down a steep section of track, it is great fun. People who choice to use poles can not do that.

In answer to izogi's query about the descent to Mid Waiohine. I've only got one word for it and it's not acceptable on this website. Let's just say it's comparable to the child of unmarried parents. It's the only ridge I've ever gone up faster than I've gone down. I like militaris's point about swinging from tree to tree. I'll give it a go at the next opportunity and report back.

If there's a good surface - i.e no roots or rocks, then I adopt either a trot with very short steps (steep slopes) or a skipping gait (gentler slopes), both of which do not involve fully arresting my downward motion with each step (as normal walking does), which is what makes my knees hurt. As with bigpaul, a normal walking descent of the mid-Waiohine slope would have put me out of action for at least an hour. Other people's response to my downhill technique ranges from the 'you must be suicidal', to 'I thought I was the only person who went down hills like that'. I can say, both techniques - especially the short stepped trot, give a stopping distance not much greater than walking, and again the trot gives the opportunity to sit down and apply the ABS (arse-breaking-system) in emergencies. I've never taken an injury using these techniques, and bear in mind, as a possumer, I'm on the hill probably 300 days a year on average. As for the mid-Waiohine descent, I', suspiscious of the 1000m label mentioned above. That would be from the Isabelle summit, but the descent I refer to in the artical is from where you turn off the ridge, I've no map with me, but I'd guess this already 300m below the summit.

Ah, okay. The Topo50 maps put that point at about 1220 metres, so with Mid-Waiohine at 380 metres it'd be around an 840 metre drop. http://www.nztopomaps.com/-40.875006,175.396128,15,Map,100 That's about 70 vertical centimetres per second (just over 2.5 vertical km per hour), which seems doable, and obviously if you've done it of course.