Spotlight On Sports Clubs

The Tramping Club was founded in 1921 under the guidance of Professor Boyd-Wilson. It is still rumoured that on the first outing, the party accidentally burnt their footwear and limped back along the track 15 miles. This tradition has been maintained.

The Tramping Club usually has 50-60 members, although many more students join club trips.

The yearly pattern of activities is under way already. Trips, which leave most weekends, vary from hairy - legged marathons to leisurely trips up river valleys.

Mostly, these trips run into the nearby Tararua ranges or the Orongorongo mountain range.

The climax of the tramping year comes in the Christmas-vacation. for traditionally this is the time when the good keen New Zealander groans visibly and audibly under a 701b pack, and stumbles off into the mountains for anything up to three weeks.

A long trip like this is the true test of tramping ability—organisation, endurance and mountain and bushcraft ability. It is a strange but good feeling to know you will be out of touch with civilisation for some time.

Last Christmas, club parties were in the Olivines. Waimakariri, and Wilkin valleys, with trips to North-west Nelson.

Alpine instruction

In an effort to introduce trampers to the intricacies of snow and ice, the club is again offering an Alpine instruction course this year. This commences on the cliffs at Titahi Bay, graduating to the slopes of Ruapehu and Egmont, culminating after finals somewhere in the higher mountains of New Zealand.

The instruction is free and of a high standard, costs being limited to food and transport.

Two new innovations this year are a bushcraft course and regular monthly social evenings. The bushcraft course, also free, will cover the essentials of tramping, including such things as firelighting in the rain, bivouac construction, and river crossing.

The idea of social evenings is to provide a forum for discussion and reminiscence with the usual arguments about gear and techniques.

Common misconceptions about tramping are that you must be fantastically fit, highly experienced and magnificently equipped. One trip with the club is sufficient to dispel all these illusions.

The club does have a large range of tramping gear available for hire to members.

Gear for hire

The club is particularly proud of its headquarters—the Alloway-Dickson hut in the Tararuas.

The hut is the product of a good deal of hard work by past members, find for a long time has been the scene of enjoyable—if not rowdy—club parties.

If you have read this far, there is a good chance that you are interested in tramping. So how about making it a dale one week end? Trips are advertised on the noticeboard at the east end of the Student Union Building and we would like to have you alone. See you in the hills!