Ricky French talks to some tramping legends to find out how times have changed and why the lure of the hills remains even as we become less able to explore them
When I first ventured into the bush I was in my teens and in my element. Fearless and unbreakable, I was prepared to suffer any indignity or hardship for the honour of getting caught in snow-drifts on the tops, or biting my way through a ho-hum blizzard while scaling a wall of ice-coated scree. I would quite happily bask in the novelty of hauling myself up gullies comprised entirely of leatherwood, spaniards, boulders and freezing water. I would run an icy, swollen finger along a map completely devoid of dotted lines, looking for a way out of whatever latest perilous situation I had managed to land myself in. Look mum, no track. On my feet I wore sand shoes and my first pack was as square as a box, had an external frame and was shared with other family members. When someone else needed it, I wore my school bag. I still remember the proud feeling of owning my first polypropylene skivvy; it was as though I had graduated tramping school and was officially an elder. We didn’t let excuses get in the way of tramping. One winter’s weekend my friends and I caught the train from Wellington to a slab of concrete station in the western Hawke’s Bay and hitchhiked to the start of the track, intending to cross the Ruahines to Mangaweka. Two days later we were back at that same spot, beaten back by ice and a lack of decent gear (and possibly skill) and we thumbed a lift through the frozen high country on the back of a farm ute loaded to the gunwales with the carcasses of dead lambs that had perished in the cold of the night before. It didn’t occur that it could well have been us. Now at that grand old age of 33, my boots are soundly waterproof and my pack feels like a hefty pillow. I have even been known to spend more than $15 on a single pair of socks. We rarely choose epic routes, though we often choose cheesecake. Call it comfort tramping. The initiation was completed long ago, why push yourself through the pain barrier when you can choose to lift the barrier with modern toys? GPS devices, hydration packs, hiking poles (to think we just used to pick up a stick!), water-purification tablets, the deeply-troubling ‘stool tool’; it’s a wonder we ever make it out of the house. In one sense we don’t: the huts are now often more comfortable than our real homes. Gone are the mouldy mattresses and the chaotic, bellowing open fireplaces; in are the gas lines, tanning decks and separate hut-warden quarters. I wanted to know if my experience was typical of trampers. And how do our expectations of what we seek to get out of the outdoors change as we get older? Things haven’t changed much for 60 year-old tramper Brian Pickering. At 18 years-old he walked the famous 430km Pennine Way in England, solo. You get the feeling he wouldn’t hesitate in attempting a repeat trip now. “Although I’m a bit slower than I used to be, I’m basically at my peak now,” he says. “I don’t seek out easier tramps, if anything I do harder ones.” Pickering says the realisation of aging has spurred him on to greater things: “My physical abilities will inevitability decline, so I want to do as many hard tramps as I can whilst I still can. I try to push it as much as I can.” And while Pickering is not planning on taking it easy any time soon, he has begun to smell the roses, so to speak, in his veteran years. “Whenever I am coming to the end of a tramp I intentionally drop back from the group for a few minutes and say ‘goodbye’ to the bush,” he says. “Some evenings after work I will go into the bush with my dog, just to be there.” Paul Maxim is President of the Tararua Tramping Club and has been stuffing a pack and hitting the hills for more than 30 years. He says that younger trampers are more likely to throw themselves into sticky (or boggy?) situations. “Taking risks in tramping and climbing is far more prevalent in our younger years,” he says. “The heady mix of enthusiasm and fitness can easily propel the ambitious younger tramper and climber to take a risk that more experienced participants are often wary of.” He reckons as we get older and more settled into life, we become more risk averse. “There’s the issue of dependants,” he says. “A partner in life and particularly children often temper risk-taking, with many climbers choosing not to climb big alpine routes, or severely reducing their acceptable level of risk.” Maxim is probably on the money there, and it’s true that a few times when I’ve been in difficult situations recently I’ve found myself picturing my five-year-old son back at home, pestering his grandmother and awaiting my return. But what about the matter of comfort; do we also simply desire a less hellish experience out of our wilderness? [caption id="attachment_5023" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]