My outdoor journey

My first summit, at about age six, was with Dad on the steep, two hundred metre hills behind our vacation bach. We called it the trig station hike. Those hills back onto a rugged state forest park where I saw my first gorge. I remember looking down to the stream, fascinated at the depth and the ruggedness. I drew a gorge called the Grand Canyon, which I soon learned was real.
A few years later Dad and I did the Hollyford Valley trek. I was twelve. We trained in a different area of that same forest park, bringing me face to face with my nemesis. Tree ferns have scared me from infancy. They just do. They’re like dominant, imperious army sergeants through the bush. Earlier in life I’d scream blue murder at them, but that wouldn’t cut it here. My father’s an old school, pragmatic type, born during the Great Depression, so…I had to man up. Call it tough love, facing your fears. The Hollyford introduced me to more rugged bush, bigger mountains and larger versions of my plant adversary. On the last day, I foolishly sipped from a flooded stream and copped the price.
The Milford Track, a year later, saw us go semi-alpine. We saw towering, rough mountains, big valleys and a panorama from the wind-blown McKinnon Pass. I remember the final day as long and hard. I wanted to get there and relieve my sore feet. I was first to finish.
These treks were fun and a good challenge but my fear of ferns was permanent. To continue hiking, I’d have to grit my teeth or do something else. I gritted my teeth.
Outward Bound introduced me to “going bush”. Until the sea scheme hit us, the bush hikes, especially Bush 1, belted us around. That was supposed to happen. They were tough assignments in the steep, bent, fractured terrain of the Richmond Range. The instructors dropped us off to start and navigate untracked territory and make it to the finish point via map and compass. During Bush 2 we summited a key peak on dark, then stopped and slept in the open and the wind. We were fitter and freer, we wanted to get the damn thing off our backs, out of the inbox and we did that. We finished that hike ahead of schedule. We had learned to hydrate, wherever possible. Water, water…and water. Top up, even if you don’t feel like it. You don’t know what’s coming. We learned that the mountains have their own code of conduct, their own laws.
Following Outward Bound I joined a hiking club and my outdoor life took off. I undertook what they called a fit trip along the tops of the St Arnaud Range with hard core wiry types who averaged seventy kilos, as compared with my eighty odd, and who moved fast. It was hard and I learned to pack a bit lighter. An army mate and I did the three-day Southern Crossing in 12 ½ hours. I graduated into alpine weekend courses and midnight treks in the ice and the snow, learning how to work with an ice axe and crampons. The club had a lodge on Mt Ruapehu and we would trek up there, in the snow, on a Friday night, for weekend instruction. From this experience, I climbed and crossed the Copeland Pass, Southern Alps. Alpine trekking is exciting and takes you to higher peaks and points but with harsher realities. If you slip on the ice, you must understand what to do.
In 1994 I joined a month long Trek America camping trip in the US. We trekked Yosemite for a day during which I suffered dehydration and a proper headache. I remember that well. Dumb mistake. I should have known better but I remedied that days later when five of us hiked the Grand Canyon - the gorge that I drew as a kid –- in a day in mid-summer. Properly self-contained with food and water, we started before 6am, trekked down to and along the river and back up again in forty-degree heat on a sandy track which challenged foot grip. 8 ½ hours. I was way pleased to have done the hike but, beyond the photos and admiration, it’s a brutal, primal place, the sun rises and sets like an assembly line and you’re on your own.
The outdoors is a fantastic place which clears your head and puts life in perspective. You’re a speck amidst rugged terrain and landscapes which don’t care about your problems and which demand focus.

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