Amharic Wanderings

I’ve recently returned from a week of work travel in north-western Ethiopia. Amhara Region has many claims, and among them, the claim to be the true ‘heartland’ of Ethiopia. Couched in the ancient highlands that were the natural fortress of old Abyssinia, it is a diverse and devastatingly beautiful landscape, full of history gone, and history still unfolding.

The region gives its name to both the dominant people group of Ethiopia, and the nation’s lingua franca- and hence the political as well as historical claim to be Ethiopia’s heartland. Both perspectives are easily challenged. Ethiopia is highly ethnically diverse, with over 80 ethnic groups, and its government carefully balances power among that recognized ethnic diversity: New Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn (who is a Wolayta, from the SNNPR) has appointed three deputy Prime Ministers, one each from Tigray, Oromia and Amhara (and have similarly ensured balanced religious representation, with one deputy being Muslim and two Orthodox, to compliment Hailemariam’s Protestant faith). Likewise, while Amharic is the state’s official language, and English has some currency as a foreign language understood by those who have completed secondary education, there are some 90 languages across Ethiopia, and native Amharic speakers make up just over a quarter of Ethiopia’s population. Geek fact: Amharic is the second most widely-spoken Semitic language in the world, after Arabic.

Amhara Region has somewhere in the vicinity of 18 million people, over 90% of them from the Amharic ethnic group (also a contested nomenclature) and most of them also Orthodox Christian. Its administrative capital is the town of Bahir Dar, which non-travellers to Ethiopia are unlikely to have heard of, but it is a pleasant and fast-growing town of nearly 200,000, with palm-lined avenues and magenta bougainvillea spilling over compound walls. It sits near the region’s centre on an inlet of Lake Tana, Ethiopia’s largest body of water and the source of the mighty Abbai- the Blue Nile (although the Piccolo Abbai- the Little Blue Nile) rises elsewhere in the south of the region to feed the lake, so in truth the lake is less the source, more a conduit).

Bahir Dar sits at an elevation of over 1,800m, which gives it a warm and gentle climate, just about perfect for walking around at night in a t-shirt at this equatorial latitude. Amusingly, when I asked colleagues about its elevation, I was told it was ‘very low’. I guess from Addis, at 2,500m, plenty of things seem low. In fact, Ethiopia has three main climatic zones, differentiated by altitude. The Kola, or lowlands, run up to 1,500m. The Woyinda Dega, or middle highlands, from 1,500-2,500m. And the Dega, or highlands, from 2,500m upwards. Most of Amhara Region is Woyinda Dega, but it also contains Ethiopia’s highest point, Ras Dashen, which perches at a lofty 4,550m.

Amhara Region’s better known locales, as well as Lake Tana and Ras Dashen, include the historic mountain city of Gondar, once seat to Abyssinian Emperors, the dramatic Simien Mountains, and Lalibela, famed for its rock churches. I’ve been told by people who’ve been there that the Simiens and Lalibela are two of the must-see places in the country, and I hope to get the chance to visit them someday. I did get a chance, on a late afternoon visit before my departing flight, to stop by the dramatic Blue Nile Falls. Due to a festival in Bahir Dar, an hour away, the hydro-electric power station that usually takes the river’s flow was switched off, and water diverted over the falls instead, and so the waterfall was in full thunderous flow, spray hanging in a great cloud in the evening sunlight.

The city of Gondar sits spread over several hilltops and the intervening valleys, at an altitude of a little over 2,100m. Like Bahir Dar- and many other corners of Ethiopia- it is a growing city and, deceptively, one of Ethiopia’s biggest, at a quarter of a million inhabitants. Its winding roads, forging pathways between buildings jostling for space on the hillsides, struck me at times as reminiscent of an Alpine town. The landscape has a Mediterranean dryness to it and sits beneath a haze that turns golden as the late-season sun sets behind the hills. At its heart grows the UNESCO-heritage King Fasilides’ castle, chief among a network of palaces first started in the 1600s whose remnants can be visited today- some, like Fasilides’ Castle itself, in excellent condition, others little more than ruins.

Gondar’s setting is beautiful, the surrounds of its approach moreso. Driving north from Bahir Dar, the road picks its way among rolling farmland and rocky hillocks, before climbing into the mountains proper. Before the mountain pass that leads into Gondar country, a great rock spire thrusts with phallic determination into the blue sky. Among the hills, the horizon is riven by outcrops and domes, while terraced fields and straw-roofed huts dot the valley floors. The terrain is dry, but not arid. Wildflowers bloom and grass is ripe for haying.

South of Bahir Dar, the landscape changes again. Instead of the dry hills of Gondar, the highlands are green and damp. Around the grubby crossroads of Injibara, hilltops are crowned with trees, as much as 10% of the land area in this heavily-populated and -farmed district still forested. The skyline is no less dramatic, however, with great protrusions of rock jutting into brooding clouds, while in the foreground, a patchwork of smallholdings is testament to the bustling agricultural sector. Fields are full of horses, and we pass riders in ceremonial garb, their mounts bedecked in white cloaks with red cloth baubles dangling at every trot. When one afternoon it rains, a rainbow paints itself over a spreading valley of fields. Driving back to town, the green of crops not-yet-ripened is somehow far more intense beneath the stormy clouds.

Following the road west, we pass through Chagni, a dusty outpost town with nothing to recommend itself, even to my colleagues, who commented distastefully that the place hadn’t changed in twenty years. Perhaps not quite true- construction on a large mosque in the centre of town was nearing completion, the two minarets like rockets standing against a blue sky, the dome covered in makeshift scaffolding that looked fragile enough to come down with a sturdy kick.

Past Chagni, the road winds among more hills, crosses the barrier that marks the division between Amhara Region and Benishangul-Gumuz, and plunges. Not a hundred yards past the checkpoint, it skirts the face of a great escarpment that drops into the rolling lowlands spreading out for a couple of hundred kilometres to the Sudanese border. The landscape undulates, instantly dry. Orange dust like the slappings of a chalkboard eraser coats trees at the side of the road, lending them an ochre pall.

Villages bounce by, no longer the rectangular tin-roofed homes of the Amhara, but round-walled tukuls like those found in Kenya and South Sudan. In fact even the people are reminiscent of South Sudan. The Gumuz are not as tall as the Nuer or the Dinka, but their skin is dark like coal compared to the relatively fair Amhara. The women walk barefooted in groups, sticks balanced across their shoulders from which they hang plastic jerry cans of water, or other supplies, up to 50kg of weight. Broad-horned cattle roam the countryside. Mixed brush, trees and thorn bushes, grows thick here, and in the golden haze-hung light of a setting sun, this is textbook National Geographic Africa.

There’s more to Bahir Dar- and Ethiopia generally- than its landscape. Some of this I’ll explore in later posts, for sure. But I was struck on this trip by the utter beauty of the scenery. The hills and mountains, the light and the variety of the place made it one of the more eye-catching and memorable journeys I’ve taken through the byways of this continent- and I’ve taken a few by now. Ethiopia- and Amhara specifically- does have a reputation as a tourist destination among some circles- especially the Simiens (for trekking) and Gondar and Lalibela, for the anthropoligically-minded. However it was the remote and rugged terrain in the south and west of the region that really drew me in, and I hope to go back for a longer trip soon, one in which I’m actually there to take time over the photography, and not just rush from one field visit to the next.

Faces from a Guatemalan Village

We visited the tiny hamlet of Pavantslom high up in the hills behind Huehuetanango.  The road was a treacherous unsealed pathway of hairpin bends above panic-inducing drop-offs without so much as a fenceline between the wheels of the Land Cruiser and a five-hundred foot roll.  The hills themselves were dusty and badly eroded- a combination of geography and natural resource management.  It was hot.

Guatemala’s brutal civil war left the country’s soul badly tattered, and fear in many rural communities is rife.  I was told the villagers here hadn’t had a white visitor in years, and there was an element of disquiet and even distrust to begin with.  ML, my colleague, is a Honduran- both the most passionate and most competent community mobilizer I have ever met.  I have worked with her in at least six countries in Central and South America, and everywhere she goes she is able to inspire local people with her words and her attitude.  Her subject of expertise is community-based disaster management- encouraging communities to take measures to identify the risks they face, and then put into action a plan to reduce those risks.  People who have spent their lives planting maize in a radius of two miles from their birthplace stop and listen to her because she knows how to engage them, how to relate to them.  I’ve watched her do it equally in remote hillside villages and in urban slums, and her fluency in the vocabulary of poverty humbles me.

It took a little while for people to let me take photos.  During the civil war, people with cameras came to mountain villages like Pavantslom, and shortly afterwards, children would disappear.  I waited to be invited to break out my camera, and even invited people warmed to the camera to varying degrees.  By the end of the shoot, mothers were asking me to take photos of their children- but it took them a good half an hour to get around to that point.

Relating to people through the lens is always a dance, and this photoshoot was actually one of my first with a proper portrait lens.  Indeed, I still wouldn’t consider myself an experience portrait photographer today- although I have considerably more experience than I did two and a half years ago in these hills just south of the Mexican border.

I enjoy the variety and intensity of expressions that came through the lens that day.  Not always beautiful in a typical sense of the word, but certainly beautiful in the soulful sense, I think the reason I like this shoot so much is the lack of pretense.  The gazes are full of honesty, and unlike shoots you do in many other parts of the world where people are used to cameras, here there was no sense that people were putting on a display or trying to be vain.

I’m not travelling for a few months at the moment- at least, not for work- and my opportunities for doing portrait shoots such as this one are a little more limited.  I think I’m sharing this shoot as much for my own wistfulness as any other reason, but I hope you can enjoy travelling through the expressions captured here.

The Veil

Swollen by spring snowmelt, Bridal Veil Falls tumbles into California’s exquisite Yosemite National Park- easily one of the most jaw-dropping locations I have ever visited (despite the steady stream of camera-touting, RV-driving, hotdog-munching tourists).  The name, taken from the likeness of the wind-drifted water to its matrimonial namesake, is far from unique.  In fact Wikipedia lists no less than 38 ‘Bridal Veil Falls’ named in 8 different English-speaking countries around the world.  How original.

That said, this particular example is a spectacular one.  Plummeting 188 metres from the lip of a hanging valley left behind by a retreating tributary glacier, the light playing in the mist hanging at the falls’ base refracts into a beautiful prismatic rainbow.  Although at certain times of the year the water from the falls won’t even reach the rocks at its feet, I was lucky enough to be there in May when the water was flowing full and plump.  Taken in the late afternoon sunlight beneath a crisp blue sky, the crowd was not impenetrable, and although I ended up with a couple of blobs of water on my lens when the wind shifted direction, it was a pleasure to run off some shots of this natural icon.

For those who haven’t had a chance to visit Yosemite National Park, believe the hype.  Yeah, it’s overtrodden by the visiting hordes, which is a true tragedy for the lover of the natural world, but the valley itself is jaw-droppingly beautiful (quite literally; as I rounded the corner at the far end of the park and got a view through my windshield of the ice-carved gallery bathed in sunlight, my mouth fell open like the hinges had failed).  I’d like to take my next visit in winter, when the throngs are thinned and the snows rest on the mountain caps.  Till then, I indulge myself with a few more photos of what is a spectacular location.

(Yosemite Valley)

(The View from Inspiration Point/Tunnel View)

(Yosemite Falls)

Note: For those visiting who want a slightly quieter experience of the beauty here, visit Hetch-Hetchy, in the northern portion of the park.  A valley reputed once to rival Yosemite for its beauty, it is now dammed and flooded, but with breathtaking wilderness and wonderful plunging peaks, as well as some apparently spectacular hiking (I wouldn’t know, I was only there a few hours).  Best of all, it is relatively undervisited, and well worth the hour’s detour through the forest.

The Tasmania Tour, Gate 3: Freycinet Peninsula

Knobbled and rugged, the Freycinet Peninsula juts out into the southern ocean connected by a thin strip of land to the eastern coast of Tasmania.  A line of prominent rocky hills sticks out of the sea in a knuckled ribbon, ruffled by scrubby forest, with wave-swept headlands broken by sweeping white-sand bays.  It is unsettled, accessible only by foot or boat, and is a true natural wonder of Australian geography.

The jumping-off point for Freycinet is the village of Coles Bay, a scattering of holiday homes and tourist accomodation set over half a dozen little bays and inlets giving a beautiful aspect onto the peninsula itself.  The town exists for its access to the walking trails and the national park- I assure you there’s little else to do there- and lodging is best booked in advance, as it is in short supply compared to the large numbers of people who visit.  Even mid-week after schools were back we were lucky to get the last caravan at the holiday park.

We arrived in Coles Bay when the sky was brooding and rain showers brushed through intermittently.  We stopped at a cove which gave aspect over the line of hills that makes up the Peninsula itself, just the other side of the choppy green water.  The one thing Coles Bay has for it other than proximity to some of Tasmania’s prettiest beaches is the view, which is truly magnificent and can’t be overstated.  I don’t imagine it ever gets old waking up and looking at those rugged peaks across the bay.

The changing light made for interesting if challenging photography that first day.  When the sun lit the foreground, the contrast between the orange-painted rocks and the heavily overcast sky was striking, and the peninsula itself made for a dramatic backdrop.  It was a fun shoot.

The next day, after completing our walk into the exquisite Wineglass Bay (more to come), we returned to the same little cove.  The weather had improved and now we had blue skies but a choppy sea.  The scene remained dramatic- as did the light- and it was another enjoyable landscape-fest.

Any visitors to Tasmania would do well to include Freycinet on their itinerary if they have any interest in scenery, beaches or the sea.  I for one will surely be heading back there on my next trip through.

Coming soon: Rural Wanderings

Moments in Space and Time #3: Wapta Icefields

There is a silence that settles in the mountains like something tangible. It’s hard to really explain unless you’ve experienced it yourself. It’s the combination of the muffling effect that thousands of acres of snow has on sound propagation, the white background noise of steady mid-altitude winds rumbling past peaks, and the utter paucity of any human-made sounds such as highways, airplanes and air-conditioning units.

It’s a beautiful, beautiful thing.

I took this photo on day 3 of a ski-touring trip with my dear friend Mackie, which you can read about in this string of posts here, here and here. We rose early on this morning, a crisp winter’s day in the Alberta Rockies. The sun was shining but periodically subdued by passing mountain cloud. We had put the worst of the ascent behind us climbing up onto the Wapta Icefields, and were now on the icecap itself, gliding along the smooth surface on our quest to find epic powder. While we were moving, the sounds we heard were of the snow-crystals whispering beneath our skins, the hissing of our ski-pants rubbing together as we trekked, and our own heavy breathing. And when we stopped, that beautiful silence.

On the icefields the isolation was magnificent. It was Mackie, me, and what felt like a million miles of nothing. No other humans. No other tracks. Just smooth snow as far as we could see, ringed by inviting mountain peaks that formed something of a bowl and only served to enhance that sense of being cut off from the rest of the world. The peace out there is intoxicating, simply exhilerating, and I can truthfully say that few moments on earth can compete with the pure joy of being up in the mountains, trapped by the glory of creation, simply surviving in that wild landscape.

Flying Paradise

(Note: Click the photos for a larger view of the scenery)

For a guy who pretty much spends his life in airport transit halls, I’ve never been fond of flying. As a kid I was a nervous flier. As an adult I’ve learned to relax on flights where I know the chance of pieces dropping off the plane are relatively slim (ergo Qantas gives me the heebies), although on some of the world’s more dubious airlines (Air Ivoire, Air Burkina, United Airlines) I’ll still crack a sweat. Planes which rock up without even a tail ensigna (thank you Air Mauritania), I’m pretty much up to giving myself the last rites.

So the thought of flying Air Niugini, PNG’s national carrier, as my only way around that particular little slab of paradise, didn’t fill me with glee. In fact, I didn’t have a lot of options. I was stationed in Madang, on the North Coast. It is connected by road to Lae and to Goroka, but not to Port Moresby, where the country’s international airport is situated. In principle you can travel to Moresby by boat. But it’d take you days and days. Most people opt for the one-hour flight.

Air Niugini has, against all the odds, an impeccable safety record. Impeccable in that PNG has some of the most aircraft-unfriendly terrain on the planet. It is effectively a massive range of spiny mountain peaks wrapped in dense jungle, ringed by a thin strip of flattish ground near the coast. During World War II, when aircraft were unpressurized, limiting flying at altitude, PNG was known for its “rock-studded clouds” as huge spires three and four thousand metres high cloaked in tropical mists jutted into aircraft flight-paths. Dozens of airmen and women lost their lives to the unmerciful terrain.

A couple of factors contribute to Air Niugini’s safety record. The first is the terrain itself. It’s so dangerous that to fly it, you really have to know your stuff. Weather can be violently unpredictable, landing strips short. Because everything away from the coast is jagged and steep, there’s no place to put an aircraft down in an emergency- unless you fancy pancaking a struggling jetliner on a 45-degree forested mountainside. If something goes wrong, you’re up the proverbial creek, with neither a paddle nor a parachute.

Air Niugini, while state-owned and run by a Papua New Guinean, also employs the habit of partnering a white Australian in the cockpit alongside every national pilot or copilot flying, the theory being that the Australians know how to fly better. I won’t comment on either the policy or the theory underlying it. However a late friend of mine intimate with PNG flew on an Air Niugini flight some years back where this policy was not observed. Upon landing, the pilots, presumably forgetting protocol, did not use the reverse-thrusters to decellerate the aircraft, but used the hydraulic brakes on the wheels. The hydraulics, unable to cope with the speeding aircraft, promptly burst with a loud bang, and the plane ended up careening down the landing strip and barely avoiding a serious accident. As the aircraft sat ticking over once the crisis was managed, disgruntled Papua New Guineans could be heard muttering to one another in Tok Pisin, “If a white man had been in the cockpit this would never have happened”.*

 

Stories about Air Niugini’s minor mishaps are rife. Friends of mine were on a flight travelling into Madang that, through pilot error, experienced a sudden violent depressurization at 4,000m, and the plane touched down with blood pouring from everybody’s ears. A few years back, a Fokker F100 ran off the end of the runway in Madang and plopped into the sea. Nobody was hurt, and crew and passengers walked off the plane along the wing back onto dry land. It turns out that the pilot had had to land without any ground support because the staff in the control tower had simply gone out and left it.

Worse perhaps than the safety risks were the delays. Air Niugini’s flights were so notoriously unreliable that if any of us were flying to leave the country on a connecting flight, we would generally book two or three flights earlier out of Madang than necessary (there were generally two flights per day out of Madang), just to ensure that we wouldn’t miss our onward leg. Such events were referred to as “TANG-FU”s- Typical Air Niugini Stuff-Ups. It was an acronym we used frequently, and with heavy bitterness.

Over the twelve months I was stationed in Madang, I spent days and days worth of my time in the tiny airport building- a single room with a grubby lino floor and a few rows of plastic bucket seats. Air Niugini operated two types of aircraft- Fokker F50s and Fokker F100s- the number designating roughly the number of seats on the aircraft. Louver windows opened onto the apron, so that when the planes taxied up to the building, a blast of ear-shredding noise would pound the waiting passengers. On more than one occasion I have spent hours and hours trying to get either myself, or colleagues for whom I was responsible onto one of their aircraft.

The story that in my mind typifies the mind-blowing simplicity of Air Niugini’s mismanagement occurred around July 2008. Several colleagues were due to fly to Port Moresby following a disaster simulation. The flight they were booked on was listed up on the whiteboard (no, of course there was no automated screen) as being an F100, coming in from Wewak and continuing to POM. A total of 100 passengers were booked on the leg to the capital. Only when the plane landed, despite having accepted 100 bookings to Port Moresby, Air Niugini had scheduled an F50 with exactly half the number of necessary seats on it.

In my mind this is a pretty simple set of mathematics, wouldn’t you say? But somehow it outfoxed (routinely) the cerebral giants who managed Air Niugini’s flight schedules.

However the one thing that Air Niugini delivered (for which it really couldn’t take much credit) was the scenery. I’ve noted elsewhere that for all its foibles, PNG is a jawdroppingly, brain-explodingly beautiful country. The jagged mountains that scream “you really shouldn’t be flying over me” are dramatic and awe-inspiring, real heart-of-darkness sort of stuff. Views of the coastline landing in Madang are simply tremendous. Coming in from POM over the Rai Coast, the plane plummets thousands of feet down the face of the Finisterre Mountains, straight out of the pages of Jurassic Park with verdant cliffs dripping with thick foliage.

Even the touchdown (or take-off) in Madang is magnificent. The runway is on the mainland, about four feet above sea-level, jutting out into a pocket of Madang Harbour. Madang itself sits on a series of small inlets and peninsulas, and even spreads out onto the dozen or so little islands plopped in the sea nearby. Outrigger canoes and banana-boats (fibreglass hull outboard motorboats) ply the channels like taxis. The water is azure and palm-trees lean out over the raised reef shoreline. And the aircraft cruises straight down the harbour, views on both sides of the charming waterways and seafronts, until as a passenger you’re sure that the wheels must be churning up a creamy wake in the glass sea.

It’s really quite splendid.

If I never have to fly Air Niugini again as long as I live, I will probably cope with this fact. I do genuinely admire the skill of pilots in PNG- not just those of the small jets and turboprops who do navigate some of the most challenging commercial airspace in the world, but those like the small missionary air companies like MAF whose little single-engined planes are the lifeblood of many remote villages in the hinterlands, and who place their aircraft sans assistance into clearings in jungles or onto steeply-angled landing strips on yawning mountainsides.

And much as I hated it all at the time, flying paradise sure did leave me with some memories.  Maybe someday I’ll tell you about the time flying Solomon Airlines that I spent 8 hours in Honiara because somebody put toilet-paper down the toilet, and a passenger disappeared…

*(It’s worth noting briefly that their colonial history has sadly left much of PNG with something of an inferiority complex, whereby many Papua New Guineans will express feeling less adequate than whites. Colleagues would periodically apologize to me for the state of their country with genuine shame, and the impact on the national psyche was quite plain to see. While some whites do still behave as though PNG is still an Australian colony, it’s saddest of all to see nationals upholding this mindset while they struggle to establish a stable national identity and find pride in their country).

 

All photos except 1 taken on Air Niugini flights between Port Moresby and Madang.

 

Note: For those readers among you who have your own experiences of Air Niugini and the various TANG-FUs you’ve enjoyed, please feel free to share them below- I’d love to hear about them!

Moments in Space and Time #4: Macchapuchare Morning

The ascent from Phedi to Dhampus is a two-hour slog up stone staircases winding their way through the lush overgrown forest of the Himalayan foothills. Upon attaining the ridgeline along which the village’s little stone cottages are spread, a magnificent panorama opens up in the fading afternoon sunlight. The entire Annapurna Massif is laid out, from left to right some of the most magnificent peaks in the world. From Annapurna South and Annapurna I in the west, crowned by the dramatic Macchapuchare in the centre, and around to the enourmous Annapurnas II and IV in the east, the view is simply staggering.

Pemba, our Sherpa, booked us in at a sweet little guesthouse atop the ridge, where the views remained staggering. This was only our first evening on the Annapurna Sanctuary Trek, and it was already delivering the goods in spectacular fashion. The accomodation was rustic- wooden beds and thin mats in what felt like a converted stone barn, accessible by a ricketty wooden ladder slippery with years of tred and woodsmoke.

I got up early the next morning with Lydz and Laura to watch the sunrise. Our vantage looked over the east-facing flanks of the mountains, so as the sun slowly slipped above the distant horizon, they were washed in fresh sunlight, the low angles emphasising the details in the relief. We were standing four and five thousand metres lower than the peaks at which we stared, and the sunlight kissed their tips while our stretch of hillside was still very much swathed in shadow. The air was very still, and hanging with the smoke from early morning fires.

Macchapuchare, or Fishtail Mountain, is known as the Matterhorn of the Himalayas for its distinctive shape and prominence. It is an awe-inspiring peak, and as the sun rose, the light seemed to finger every little crevice and feature on its jagged face. After a little while, the light reached us as well, and a bush exploding with pink flowers in front of me was suddenly bathed in soft light. I balanced a shot with the flowers framing the mountain peak in the background- the sun-splashed petals, the shining peak and the blue sky contrasting with that deep shadows of the valley. The memory of that morning holds a place as one of the most beautiful sunrises I’ve ever witnessed, in one of the world’s most moving settings. The itself photo sits for me as one of the top two or three I’ve ever taken, and I hope you enjoy it as well.

Hut Life

We spent the first three days of our snowkiting tour in a small hut atop a rounded mountain ridge somewhere in the Crown Ranges vicinity, not far from Snow Farm. I like mountain huts. I like that they give instant access to views and terrain to play on. I like that they are remote and cut off from the complexities of life. I like that you get exposed to all sorts of wild weather conditions that you don’t find down in the valleys. And I like that they cut through all the crap and return you back to what’s important about living: Survival.

To say we stayed in a hut isn’t quite true. We actually stayed in two huts. One was a corrugated tin cylinder, like a can turned on its side, which had beds down either wall, gas-rings and basin at one end, a cast-iron wood stove at the other, and webbing hanging from the ceiling to dry gear in. It was warm, cozy and pretty comfortable. The other was a glorified aluminium shed with three bunks, no heater, and no facilities. There was already a group in the first hut, so we got the second. When we moved in, the door hadn’t been closed properly, and wind-blown snow had caked one interior wall of the place and had to be swept off the floor. When we got up the next morning after spending a night in the place, the snow was still caked over the wall.

Hut life revolves around staying warm, dry, fed and watered. Basic tenets of survival. When we’re working in refugee camps we’re looking at pretty much the same stuff. Shelter, water, food. The huts themselves should provide the shelter. There’s nothing quite like being esconced in your sleeping-bag, listening to a raging windstorm rock the mountain outside. I love it.

Warmth is a bilateral job. If there’s a fire in the hut, then a steady provision of wood (or sometimes, gas cylinders) will do the trick. It’s also up to you to bring the right gear. A good warm sleeping bag. A down jacket. Some good layers. Some hut booties. It’s also a good idea to keep at least one set of clothing dry and for hut use, because there are few things more demoralizing than sitting in a mountain hut, wet and cold and unable to warm up.

Food you pack up with you. You can go from the very basic (dehydrated rations and muesli bars) right through to the gourmet (I once saw a group in a hut preparing sushi rolls), and it depends on what facilities are available and how hard you want to work for it. Water is a more basic mechanism, but luckily in the mountains in winter there’s usually lots of it around. You just have to melt it first. So we keep pots atop the stove, slowly cooking away, and every half hour head out and top them back up with snow we shovel from designated ‘clean’ spots outside.

The other necessity is the toilet, of course. This tends to be the least appealing part of any outdoors trip, never a truer statement than in the mountains in winter. In this case, the toilet was in a standalone stall sheltered behind the huts, caked in snow and ice on the inside, which presented some comfort challenges. Not the worst I have had to use. That award goes to the dunny in the Arrowsmith Ranges behind Christchurch. As well as being a hundred yards away from the hut on its own- unsheltered and a miserable trudge through deep snow in a nighttime blizzard- there was a gap underneath the door through which wind whistled, depositing granular snow into your lap as you were taking care of business. A thoroughly unpleasant experience.

 

In a perfect world, hut life takes place at the beginning and end of a day. You spend most of the day playing in the mountains, only to return in the evening. Of course, as any mountain traveller knows, the mountains are rarely perfect, and any trip involves down-time when the outdoors simply isn’t a welcoming place. During the trip to the Arrowsmiths, for example, we spent the better part of five days sitting in our cramped mountainside shed, listening to the wind howl as snow flew horizontally past the window, and making the terrain far too dangerous and avalanche-prone for travel. On this trip we were far luckier, and while we had a few hours each day in the hut waiting for the wind to pick up or visibility to rise, we managed to find several hours a day when the wind was just right to get out and do some kiting.

Not that we didn’t get our fair share of feral weather. Most of it came through in the evenings, when howling gale-force winds whipped over the top of our rise, obscuring the ground with blowing snow and ice grains like a sand-blaster. Blizzard-like snow-storms kept us hutbound one morning while wet snow plastered the side of the buildings and we braced ourselves each time we had to step outside to top up the water pots or use the toilet. Eerily serene whiteouts wrapped around the mountains like thick scarves, dulling sound and making faint light scatter until all the texture in the snow vanished, making safe navigation impossible. During those times, we lounged around on bunks, lost in our own thoughts, listening to music, reading books, or making idle chatter, while checking on the weather every few minutes to see if it was changing. It sounds boring, but actually it’s a very simple way to exist, and if you’re prepared for it, it’s really very relaxing.

The weather signalled when it was time to leave, as well. Shifting wind patterns suggested we might be better off on another mountain range, so we prepared to head out on the fourth day. There was no kiting to be had, as the day started with a flat calm and soft, textureless light after a night of snow. The guide and I decided to skin out along a cross-country ski trail while the rest of the group waited to see if the wind would pick up. For the first hour or so we crossed the undulating landscape, trying not to lose the path where the wind and snow had covered old tracks. It’s good honest work that breaks a sweat, and I was down to rolled-up sleeves and bare arms, when we paused for a break and a few small flakes of snow started to drift from the sky. The wind gusted, a chill settled, and all of a sudden, the weather had changed. Within three or four minutes we were bracing ourselves against driving snow and powerful blasting wind. It wasn’t a big problem- we rugged up and slogged on- but it was a reminder of just how fierce the mountains can be- even in relatively safe, low terrain. I love it. Wouldn’t hang out anywhere else.

Snowkiting: As Dumb As It Sounds

In my mind’s eye I hold the images I couldn’t photograph. We ride down a snowy ridgeline atop a range of hills topped by round, rolling crests, like a slow ocean swell frozen in place. The sky is a bottomless blue colour overhead that feels infinitely deep when constrasted with the brilliant white of the landscape. The wind is brisk and steady on my right cheek. To my left, a vivid green kite canopy hangs at the end of a taut twenty-metre line, about thirty degrees off vertical, locked in an open C-shape where the wind fills the foil. I am the third in four as we skim down the slope, our kites multicoloured variants of the same theme, the curious engines that conspire with gravity to drive us forward. I am leaning into the wind and carving my skis into the slope hard to hold my ground against the tug of the kite. The air is crisp and cold and pressing itself hard against my face. My body and my mind are focused on balancing the different forces pulling me down and across the mountain, and it’s exhilerating. As I look ahead, I watch Fabrice at the head of our line cut shallow ‘S’ turns into the slope where he plays joyfully close to a curled frozen windlip dropping forty feet into a gully below. He carves out into the wind, then snakes gently back again while his kite hangs static above him. We can see multiple peaks and multiple ridgelines, filling our vision from horizon to horizon, and we four are the only other humans we can see.

On our first day in the Southern Alps, our guide told us,

“The very best days of my life have been snow-kiting, and the very worst days of my life have been snow-kiting”.

Having spent a little time in the backcountry, I could guess at what he was alluding to, but it wouldn’t take very long at all for me to discover what he was hinting at for myself.

Snow kiting is a curious sport. Of all the ‘extreme’ sports that I’ve taken part in at various points of my extended adolescence (off-piste skiing, rock-climbing and abseiling, mountain-biking, tandem skydiving, white-water rafting and kayaking, and a variety of other activities), snow-kiting is certainly the one that best fits the ‘extreme’ tag. It is the most technically challenging by far to learn, and it is also the sport which I reckon offers the greatest chance of inflicting a serious injury on yourself. That said, on the occasions when it all comes together, our guide’s comment rang true. When it works, it’s absolutely fantastic.

The sport of kite-surfing has become recognizable over the last decade. Largely replacing the sport of windsurfing/sailboarding among the younger generations, it is an iteration of the same activity, where participants strap a [smaller] board to their feet and use a ‘kite’- a wing or sail canopy flown at the end of a series of lines, which can either be a foil or with a lightweight inflatable frame. The kite hangs in the wind, and by flying the kite back and forth (the kite is a structural wing), lift is produced which allows the kite-surfer to travel back and forth on the water- and, when they’re good enough- catch some pretty good air as well.

Snow-kiting is more or less the same sport, only adherents use a pair of skis or a snowboard as their ride. Then they do the same thing back and forth on a hillside rather than the open sea. It’s a subtle shift in medium, although in fact there are several key differences that make snow-kiting considerably more challenging to master (in my inexperienced and inexpert opinion).

The first and most obvious change is that snow is not water. This may sound like a silly observation to make, but it has some fundamental implications. You can’t drown in snow, for example. You can, however, break bones. Or snap them. Or shatter them. You can also bury yourself in avalanches, if you get onto the wrong slope. Which isn’t really a lot better than drowning, apparently.

The next difference is that you have to add a whole third dimension of travel. Kite-surfing generally involves going forwards, backwards, and side-to-side. This is all influenced (obviously) by wind direction. In the mountains, you also have the uphill and downhill elements. Travelling uphill is harder (in terms of the resistance you get from gravity). Travelling downhill, easier. Travelling uphill downwind is okay because you can get the kite to pull you up it. Travelling downhill allows you to move upwind- an advantage you don’t get in the sea so much. However travelling uphill upwind is near impossible as you’re fighting both gravity and the wind. It’s probably a losing battle. And travelling downhill downwind is quite simply terrifying.

You got all that?

The third big difference is that the land features affect how the wind travels. Subconciously we’re all vaguely aware of this. Standing on a hilltop you get more wind than standing on the downwind slope of the hill. Wind accelerates as it goes over the top of an obstacle, and can be channelled around an obstacle, so wind direction in gullies can be unpredictable, and the wind speed itself can drop off altogether. So you have to think not just in terms of how to travel with the wind, but also where the wind is likely to be strong or weak. You might be sailing quite happily along a ridgeline, but if you drop into a little valley the wind can evaporate and you’re left with a long steep climb in deep snow dragging your kite and skis back onto the hilltop to relaunch.

It’s really fun. I did it a lot.

In addition, you add in all the complications of regular backcountry skiing. Terrain hazards like rocks, crevasses and cliffs. Varying snow quality and surface (we spent some time skittering over frozen windcrust one evening, which was every bit as much fun as it sounds). Avalanche risk (this year is said to have the most extreme avalanche hazard in living memory in New Zealand right now). And the sheer remoteness of the locations you sometimes play in (though in this case we were mostly within easy striking distance of a lodge).

I think the challenge of snow-kiting appealed to me because it really was the confluence of two already-challenging sports. When you get riding, you have to think about all the elements of skiing: speed, direction, slope, hazard, surface condition, controlling the skis, etc. On top of that, you have to think about the kite: wind speed, direction, how it flows with the landscape and how to pick your route, which direction the kite is pulling you, whether the kite is diving or climbing or static, and so forth. All at the same time. It’s sensory overload coupled with multitasking to the max. One of these days I’m sure it will all become automatic and instinctive, but I have to say at this point in time, it’s exhausting.

And of course, with this sort of complexity, there’s lots of opportunity for it to all go horribly wrong. Launching a kite in strong wind is a pretty scary prospect as it can be quite hard to control, and more than once I ended up having my kite yank up into the air, yanking me horizontally across the landscape on my face. When you crash out skiing, most of the time you hit the snow and decelerate (though most of us have experienced brief high-angle incidents where this doesn’t hold true…). However when you biff hanging on to a kite, you have the initial impact- driven by both gravity and wind- but while gravity eases off, the wind doesn’t.

In a best-case scenario, you keep control of the kite, drag through the snow a short distance, then regain control of the [still airborne] kite and pull yourself back to your feet. Or lie there for a few minutes to catch your wind while keeping the kite lazily floating. In a less-good-case scenario, after you crash, you also lose control of the kite. The kite dives towards the ground, and for a few seconds all the power comes on to the kite, accelerating you across the ground in whatever state you happen to have landed, before finally hitting the snow. If you’re lucky, it’ll fold and stay there. If not, it can keep dragging you downwind- into and over anything that might be in your path- until you have the presence of mind and physical ability to reach your break or, in a worst-case scenario, your emergency release cord.

Also fun.

The recovery can be a hoot as well. The foil kites we were mostly flying were controlled by a bar with four fine lines on it- two front lines (left and right), and two rear lines (left and right). These lead to a bridle with two dozen connection points and a number of pulleys and knots and other fun string-related paraphenalia, all of which hang neatly from the kite while in midair, and get horribly, horribly entangled when it crashes and twists. I’m not great at untying tangled knots in fine nylon cable at the best of times. Doing it in ski-gloves in a gusting 20-knot breeze (which keeps tugging the lines) when the air temperature is –4 and I’m having to trudge through knee-deep powder in heavy ski-boots is a long, long way from my idea of fun. One particular afternoon I spent an hour and a half detangling my lines from a single messy crash.

But there were moments- prolonged, beautiful moments, I should add- where it all worked perfectly. Like those runs we had up on the Old Man Range a couple of hours out of Queenstown, out in the middle of nowhere while the wind took us up and down the gently angled slopes of the ridgeline. Or enjoying the soft powder of our first few days on the edge of the Pisa Ranges, when the power comes on and you lean right back against the wind so that you can reach out an arm and drag it in the snow if you feel like, with the kite hanging fully-charged a few metres off the snowpack downwind, and you glide, almost weightless, across the slope. It doesn’t yet come to me with the ease of downhill skiing, but I have to confess that kite sports have me solidly hooked, and I can easily see why being a competent snow-kiter would be one of the most rewarding sports out there to master.

 

 

Photo Note: All photos by me.  None actually of me.

A Brief Return

So I’m back from New Zealand.  But I am also moving house.  So I currently have no internet at home and have been pretty out of touch for the last couple of weeks.  Apologies.  I realise that I have ended up with two anime posts back to back and that’s embarrassing cos that’s a sideline and not what this website is about.

So, in the five minutes I have left in this lunchbreak, let me throw together a couple of photos and assure you that there are more coming (together with some stories).  Well, I say there are more coming, but truth be told I’m trying to sell a couple of them to a snowkite-board manufacturer.  They’re not stellar, but if it works out I’ll probably have to sell the rights, so you won’t get to see ‘em here.  But the good news is that if I can’t move ‘em, then I’ll post ‘em here.

Good news, assuming you actually want to look at photos of a pro snowkiter suspended in mid-air.  Otherwise it’ll just be boring.  But, as always, there’ll be diversity.

And once I get my internet set up (wow… how did we live prior to the late 1990s?) that diversity will hopefully be back.  In the meantime… thanks for your patience people!

 

Photos:

1. The Southern Alps from the Pisa Ranges, an hour out of Queenstown.

2. I can’t do this.  A snowkite world champion shows us how it’s done.