Favourite Nor'wester tramps?

The nearest pub :-)

Weather is typically fine and calm in Kaikoura, but the wind is very powerful around the tops and standing on ridgelines/summits can be a experience. So any of the valley walks around Kaikoura are a good option. Top travel and norwesters do not really mix.

The eastern foothills can be OK sometimes. I check quite a few sites to get an idea of how far east the rain is predicted e.g. yr.no. and wunderground which has forecasts for Black Hill etc. as well as http://www.snow-forecast.com/maps/static/nz/full Banks Peninsula is a goer in a NW'er of course. As militaris says, it's better to stay in the valleys though.

Living in welly I thought all tramps were nor westers haha.

Yeah looks like I'll be doing more exploring of the foothill valleys!

You need to have done an apprenticeship in the Tararuas. On hands and knees around the dress circle, hanging on to a tussock for dear life, legs flapping in the wind. I remember contemplating getting a set of knee pads for the next trip after one particular norwester tops trip where the tops travel didn't involve any bipedal locomotion.

The problem with the tussock-clinging high-beaufort tramping technique is quite what you do when you reach the snowline and run out of tussocks.

Get an ice tool in each hand and crampons on. I remember a trip where we ended up on the plateau area of Mt Ruapehu, horizontal wet stuff that was freezing on you as it hit, packstraps buzzing as they vibrated in the wind, staggering / crawling over snow that was littered with thousands of frozen solid little waxeyes that had been blown up there in the storm. Goggles covered in ice, map unreadable as well due to rime ice forming on it... Looking for the glacier dome shelter, didn't find out till we got back that it had burnt down the week before. Luckily we had a good tent with us that trip. Good training, the good thing about a North Island apprenticeship is that with the terrain being a bit milder, you can keep going in much more extreme weather and visibility conditions than you would in the bigger mountains down south, what you learn stands you in good stead when things get nasty in the bigger mountains. I remember also backing off Zubriggens and heading back across the bottom of the Linda in atrocious conditions at about 0300 one morning, meeting a party going the opposite direction, both of us thought we were heading back to the hut. Quite a funny argument to have before we continued in our direction and they eventually turned and followed along behind.

"Living in welly I thought all tramps were nor westers haha." Not so Sometimes its Sou Westers We have both types of wind here