Blog
17-Jan-12 20:35
Fording rivers - Ropes vs Linked Arms
Brian Wilkins has written a very interesting article on river fording. He looks at the various fording techniques and analyses some accident reports. Brian concludes that ropes are a safer way of providing mutual support than the commonly used method of linking arms behind the back.
One of the Brians points that struck home with me was about how rope support allows people to freely move around obstacles which is very important in a bouldery river bed. I've found that to be a major difficulty with linked arms.
Brian also advocates the use of "two hands on a stick" as a way to provide additional support. This can be used with the rope method or when crossing alone.
Chris Owen of the NZ Mountain Safety Council has responded to Brians article. Chris still supports the linked arm method quoting Ray Goldring
“It was concluded that ropes can give people a false impression of their abilities, and can tempt people to try unsafe conditions,"
“Using a rope as a crossing aid in rivers can be dangerous. Few people are sufficiently skilled to use them safely,"
It's an interesting debate but it's also important that you try to minimise the temptation to cross a dangerous river. Carrying some sort of shelter and possibly a mountain radio are good ways to reduce the temptation. Portable shelter allows you to wait for the river to come down with greater comfort and safety. A mountain radio allows you to call for help or let people know you're going to be late back. Personal locator beacons will also allow you get help.
13-Jan-12 19:19
Evidence supporting High Volume/Low Intensity Training
Stephen Seiler and Espen Tønnessen have an intesting and lengthy article about the benefits of high volume/low intensity training. They argue against the implications being drawn from reasearch on high intensity training (HIT). Their claim is that the training of elite athletes represents something close to the ideal training approach. They find that elite endurance athletes do about 85% of their training at low intesity (<2 mMol lactic acid). This intensity corresponds roughly to the often mentioned conversational pace i.e. a pace where you're not breathing so hard that talking becomes difficult. If you're into heart rate based training it's staying below 85% of your 30minute time trial pace.
Their research is based on looking at elite athletes who have essentially unlimited time for training. The cyclists they studies were doing around 25-30 hours per week. It's not clear what the ideal approach is if you have limited training time. What is the optimum intensity mix then? It's clear that there are benefits to be gained from low intensity work. Perhaps tempo training is a good way to get the adaptations of low intensity training in a shorter time. Tempo pace is sometimes referred to as "comfortably hard" and is between 85% and 94% of your threshold heart rate (determined by 30min TT).
I generally spend about 6 hours a week doing training of some form. I'm looking to increase the volume of training to about 10h per week with more Tempo workouts.
06-Jun-10 18:10
Interesting loop in the Kaimais
I've just done a cool 2 day loop in the Kaimais taking in three sections I've track I hadn't been one before. Highlights are Te Aroha summit (in good weather), Waitawheta Hut, Ananui falls, bluff creek Kauri and Tui Saddle.
Day 1: Te Aroha to Waitengaue/Ananui Junction
This took about 6 hours going up over Te Aroha and down the Waipapa track to Waitawheta then to the Ananui falls junction on the Waitengaue track. I was using my new tramplight pack and cloudburst 2 tarptent. This saved 2.7 kg of weight compared to my normal gear. The light weight gear was definitely noticed with a general feeling of freedom and ease despite not being especially fit at the moment.
I found a spot with barely enough space for my tent just downstream from the junctionThe weather packed it in overnight so I got to see how my tarptent was in the rain. As you would hope it was nice and waterproof but there was a build up of condensation on the inside, this didn't seem to cause any problems though.
Day 2: Waitengaue/Ananui Junction to Te Aroha via Daly's clearing
This was a longer day of 7.5 hours heading up past the 168m Ananui falls, down to bluff creek past Daly's clearing onto the Mangakino pack track and up to Tui Saddle the descending and heading along back to the Te Aroha domain. Before heading off I had to make a call on what the Waitawheta crossing would be like, I decided it would likely be high but not too bad as I've seen it handle quite a lot of rain at other times without becoming uncrossable. This decision turned out to be correct but not by much, the Waitawheta was quite swollen and nearing the point where I wouldn't have crossed it.
The Mangakino pack track sidles along a ridge most of the way and often has a steep drop off to the side. The footing is generally good but some extra care is required in places. The head of McCormick creek was very cool with lots of mist and several small waterfalls coming of the drenched hill sides.
So a great 2-4 day loop. I was travelling reasonably fast most of the way, the doc times work out to about 18 hours in total. Great to go on some interesting new tracks so close to home.
11-May-10 01:57
Tramplight Bushcrasher Pack
I recently purchased a tramplight Bush Crasher pack. This is a lightweight pack designed and made in New Zealand with a very minimalist approach. I tried the pack out last weekend on the Waitawheta valley track.
General Features
They quote a weight of 710g, mine probably weighs a little more than this as I had it made a little longer to match my height.
Removable sleeping mat used for back rest
One really cool feature in this pack is the use of a foam sleeping mat as a back rest. This means you won't need to carry a sleeping mat anymore unless you want the added comfort of a self inflating mattress. So you might be able to subtract another 300g or so from the weight of this pack if you're comparing it to one without this feature. I will probably still use my therm-a-rest when I'm planning to camp rather than stay in a hut, but for unplanned camping the one built into the pack would do the job fine.
This pack is about 2.1kg lighter than my excessively large 90L fairydown. The bush crasher has a capacity of around 65L (just a rough estimate) so it's not really a direct comparison. What I can say though is that the reduced weight is very noticeable. Just think of the difference it makes carrying a two man tent.
Load Stability
I found there was a tendency for the backrest of the pack to round out as I packed which made it a bit unstable on my back. This problem can be largely avoided by taking care in the loading of the pack.
Apart from the issue with rounding of the backrest the pack was fairly stable while walking. At one stage I tried a bit of running and the pack bounced around all over the place. So if you're someone that likes to a bit of running with your pack on this might not be the pack for you. The stability of the pack seemed fine while crossing rivers and walking over boulders so it seems that it handles lateral movement ok, it's just the up and down jolting of running that really upsets it.
All in all it's a good buy at $205 NZ for such a light pack.
 (Small).JPG "Tramplight Bushcrasher Pack")