The final check

October 2025

Read more from

October 2025

Photo: Mark Watson
What’s the last thing you check before heading into the hills? We asked the experts. Tanya Bottomley Ultra runner and mindset coach After years of adventuring, my packing runs like clockwork. Everything has its place and goes in my pack before it even reaches the car. Everything but my phone, that is: that’s always the […]
Leigh Hopkinson

About the author

Leigh Hopkinson

Wilderness deputy editor Leigh Hopkinson spends the weekends in the hills with her whānau and weekdays as a journalist and editor. She has a Graduate Diploma of Journalism from the University of Canterbury. A keen tramper, rock climber and newbie mountaineer, she has written for magazines and newspapers on both sides of the Tasman. She’s originally from the West Coast and now lives in Ōtautahi Christchurch.

More From Skills

Related Topics

Similar Articles

You can always change your plans

Back to school

Lessons learned the hard way

Trending Now

Green Point Hut, Gamack Conservation Area

The possibilities of packrafting

Every Tararua hut reviewed and ranked

Ministry of Works Historic Hut, Kahurangi National Park

The Tararua’s forgotten traverse

Subscribe!
Each issue of Wilderness celebrates Aotearoa’s great outdoors — written and photographed with care, not algorithms.Subscribe and help keep our wild stories alive.

Join Wilderness. You'll see more, do more and live more.

Already a subscriber?  to keep reading. Or…

34 years of inspiring New Zealanders to explore the outdoors. Don’t miss out — subscribe today.

Your subscriber-only benefits:

All this for as little as $6.75/month.

1

free articles left this month.

Already a subscriber? Login Now