New Tramper, looking for gear list?

Most clubs do their level best to accomodate all levels of experience and fitness, and quite scrupulously grade their trips something like: Easy = Four hours (per day) or less. Formed tracks, plenty of breaks Medium = Four to Eight hours, Rough tracks, maybe 5 - 10 minutes break an hour Hard = More than Eight hours - tracks, breaks, decent weather ... all optional. Varies between clubs - but this the general scheme. Most clubs will be reluctant to let you sign up for a Hard trip unless you've been on a couple of others and they have a sense of your fitness and ability. The last thing they want is for this to put people off - it's in everyone's best interests that new, or prospective new members, have a good experience the first few times they are out with the club. The Whangarei Club in particular I can't speak for. Not sure what their intention is.

Yeah. I wouldn't assume you'd fit well with the Whangarei Club but I also couldn't assume you wouldn't. Clubs can be hit and miss, depending largely on personality of both you and them, and it's hard to judge a club by their website. I get why their website stresses that they're not a walking group, though. They've probably had people turn up in the past expecting to be going for easy casual strolls around a lake in the outer suburbs, or similar. But if you were intending to actually go tramping, and wanted to learn about that, then I doubt that concern of theirs would apply. They'd just want to make sure you didn't accidentally end up on a trip where people were expecting you to have skills or fitness that you didn't have. The best thing to do is to speak directly to someone about what they do and what you want.

It's all good, I'll just keep headed in the direction I'm going. It's working thus far, just got told by my boss I have too many holiday days and days in lieu. Told them to pay me out as much as they want, there's my Aarn Pack paid for :)

The MSC Bushcraft manuals also give instructions on how to navigate. This manual really helped to consolidate my navigation skills. I imagine the Outdoor Training instructors will have had that as their bible and base their instructing on it. The instructions with compasses in the past assumed your map gridlines were oriented to magnetic north, not grid or true north (which are almost the same as each other). It's probably the case now too (where the instructions apply to maps with gridlines oriented to magnetic north). Scandinavian and US maps have their gridlines pointing to magnetic north. I've found a Suunto site http://ns.suunto.com/Manuals/M-3/UserguidesSUUNTO_BASEPLATECOMPASSES_UG_EN.pdf that talks about using a compass when the gridlines run to True North. 'The meridian lines on a map indicate the direction toward true north while your compass needle indicates the direction toward magnetic north. The angle between these two directions is called magnetic declination' This takes a lot of practice and it's easier if you can find a kind soul to mentor you but just to make things more tricky, there are 2 different methods so if you get taught or teach yourself one method, then you need to make sure that your mentor also can consolidate that method for you. Some instructors may try to then teach you the method they feel the most comfortable with. This is a confusing disaster! A good instructor is equally comfortable and conversant with either method and works in tandem with the student(s). The methods are a) grid bearings, or b) magnetic bearings. The grid bearing method is quicker e.g if you can quickly sight on a feature to plot a bearing to it before the clag obsures the feature. The magnetic bearing method is easier to use if you need to 'box around' a feature that you wish to avoid e.g. a swamp or an evil patch of regen. This method requires people to orientate their maps first though, which is an extra step and then they need to do a wee bit of arithmetic when they convert a bearing from the map into one that they use in the field. In truth, tramping seldom requires these skills. Your main skill is being able to interpret the map in relation to the field as these contour lines are telling you huge pieces of information e.g. slope, and the presence of features such as bluffs and saddles, vegetation types etc. etc. etc. To learn this stuff, you need to always carry a very accessible map and a compass and muck around with it often. In any location, you should easily see at least 5 features in the field which are also evident on the map e.g. the directions of flow and size of catchment for a stream. It is helpful to print out the heading and steps for each task that you wish to achieve, on a piece or paper 2 inches by 1 inch small, and laminate these steps and attach them to the compass lanyard. If you always ensure the red end of the needle is pointed at the magnetic declination (for the grid method) or sitting in the red arrow (red in the shed) for the magnetic method, you'll have most of it sussed as this was all I could recall after being shown once and it enabled me to navigate through untracked Fiordland for 40 days.

The greatest skill you can learn and the one you will look back on the most in the future will simply be experience. Just get out there bro, and as long as the universe looks after you, you will slowly pick up all the skills you need. Gear don't matter. What matters is fitness, confidence, experience, determination, will power, strength of character etc. Being in the bush can shape your life, it can save you, it will teach you all you need. Just enjoy it, take your time, see it for what it is. Hug a tree and have fun bro.

Seems the magnetic variation for Whangarei is about 20 degrees. http://www.gns.cri.nz/Home/Our-Science/Earth-Science/Earth-s-Magnetic-Field/Declination-around-New-Zealand

Yeah my map I bought off lands & survey has both marked, angle (19.5°) included. It's a really nice map though only 1:50000 I think ideally I want 1:25000

Every person is different when it comes to navigating. My partner is hopeless (and she knows it!) and will wander off on all sorts of vague tracks, or down the wrong ridge, if she's in front. I, however, had a scoutmaster father and learned to navigate and track animals etc at an early age and this is now just inbuilt into my brain. Thus I nearly always, without knowing why/how, seem to know where we are and which direction to go in. But then I've been in whiteout cloud and lost my sense of direction and that's when the compass skills are needed. Have never felt the need for a GPS - as I get older my desire to be off-track is rapidly vanishing! lol I always carry a PLB though.

Ideally I only want to be far enough off the track that no one will find me. Waiting on stock of the Silva Field, local store keeps dicking me around, was supposed to be in Monday, then Tuesday, now it's tomorrow....

@deepriver Yes there is no doubt that navigating in rough country in an instinct that is best developed when you are young. It seems to me that your brain develops a way of processing the subtle and complex patterns of the land. My partner and I sometime play a game where she shows me calendar pics of NZ scenery without revealing the caption. 9 times out of 10 I can accurately guess where it is - even without any recognisable landmarks. To her this is magic - but to me its obvious.