Author and arts organiser Nic Low shares the trips that have had the greatest impact on him.

Nic Low (Ngāi Tahu) is an author and mountain-lover. His books include the best-selling Uprising, a walking journey through Ngāi Tahu’s history in the Southern Alps, and Little Doomsdays, about arks and time capsules and how past civilisations tried to protect what they love.

“I often write about what we inherit and what we pass on,” he says. “I was lucky to grow up in a family that treasured the mountains and their stories.” 

1. Hunting in Harihari

I didn’t go on the first trip that changed my life; I hadn’t even been born. But when my dad went on his first tramping trip as a teenager, his experience later set my own course. A family friend took him hunting in atrocious weather in the Harihari hills south of Hokitika. Each day they stalked through tangled forest in torrential rain. Each night they slept in an aluminium shed with a dirt floor. His parents weren’t outdoors types. He had no precedents, and the experience could have put him off for life. But Dad fell in love with the hills: that sense of being fully alive. He passed that on to me.

2. Huxley–Hopkins Loop

I also inherited the traditional Kiwi ethos of buying bombproof gear. Without hardcore leather boots you would probably break your ankles – or die. Which is why, when I first saw a tramper in trail runners, it changed my life. 

Twenty-odd years ago my mates and I were slogging up the Huxley River when a guy cruised past us wearing running shoes, as light-footed as a leprechaun. We were aghast. An idiot tourist, surely. 

We caught up with him at Brodrick Hut. Turned out he was a hugely experienced Californian who’d been visiting Aotearoa for decades, hiking up our gnarliest rivers then packrafting down. We were impressed – and it planted a seed. 

A couple of years later I met friends to do the Wilkins–Young circuit after a climbing trip. I only had mountaineering boots with me and a friend loaned me his trail runners. I stepped into the Makarora River with trepidation, but my ankles were fine and that first day I felt light – leprechaun-like, even. Now, for trips below the snowline, it’s trail runners all the way.  

That experience also marked the start of a wider shift, one which is double-edged. I was moving into a culture where shoes – indeed jackets, tents, gadgets, clothes, everything – were consumable. Lighter gear has improved my tramping, but leaving behind sustainability feeds into a wider consumer ethos that has consequences for the places we love.

3. Sealy Pass

There’s nothing like nearly killing yourself in an avalanche to focus the mind. Trip three was a solo winter visit to Sealy Pass in the Whimiahoa/Godley River catchment. The area has deep significance for Ngāi Tahu. I’d only intended to scope the approach but pushed too far in bad conditions and triggered a slide. I got lucky and this changed my life – first, obviously, by still having a life to change. Second, by ramming home the knowledge that there are limits in the mountains, both physical and spiritual, that no amount of bullish perseverance can overcome. And last, by resolving a dilemma I’d been wrestling with for years. When I walked away from that avalanche I came to understand that I did want kids, and I wanted to pass things on: whakapapa, knowledge, that sense of being fully alive, love and care for the mountains – but not my worn-out running shoes.