Neil: 0:00

And so you'll be often going along a little crawl way or something. And New Zealand's largest spider will come the other way

Speaker: 0:12

kiro and welcome to the Tramping Life, a podcast about hiking in New Zealand, or as we call it here, tramping. I'm jt, and in each episode I chat with people who share passion for exploring this incredible country. We'll hear about the tracks they love, the huts they return to, the lessons they've learned, and what keeps them heading back into the bush.

Jonty: 0:32

my guest today is Neil Silverwood, a leading New Zealand photographer and conservationist whose work has brought the beauty and fragility our wild places to public attention. from capturing dramatic backcountry landscapes to documenting hidden cave systems. Neil's Photography tells a powerful story that connects people to nature. I'm delighted to welcome him to the podcast. Good day Neil.

Neil: 0:53

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Jonty: 0:54

I'd like to start with understanding what are your earliest memories of being outdoors?

Neil: 0:59

My dad was a caver and he would take me on caving digs. I'd have giant oversized overalls and huge gumbo that didn't quite fit. I was involved in a lot of caving exploration. If there was something too small to get through, I was 10 and I'd be pushed through and I was the only person that could wiggle through some of the tighter spaces, and I always came back and survived. When I was about 15, we discovered a new cave system. We were the first human beings to ever go through it, and that feeling of exploration was just like nothing else I'd ever experienced in life to put the first footprints through, to put the first light into that place. Those rooms had ever seen. And I was just totally hooked on expiration. I was going to high school at the time, and I started wagging school, missing lessons and just, spending my time out looking for caves from a very young age of sort of 14, 15 and became addicted to that. I just thought it was. far more interesting than anything else I've ever experienced. and it led to a life of expression.

Jonty: 1:54

Just a technical query. So I grew up in the UK and we would call it splunking. So is that the same as caving?

Neil: 2:00

Yeah. Splunking and caving are exactly the same things. Or pot holding. Yeah, so it's all the same crazy sport.

Jonty: 2:08

So I'm thinking about access. Obviously you've gotta get into the bush to get to these places. And they're probably not at rodents. So there's probably quite a bit of bush bashing to get access.

Neil: 2:17

Yeah, the reason there was so much exploration to do and if you were in most first world countries in the world, you couldn't just walk into a new cave system. And the reason you can in New Zealand, especially on the west coast of the South island, is limestone. Areas called caste, which is a, um, areas where all of the water goes underground. Really remote, rugged, full of tomos, very difficult country. Like the worst I can think of is an area where four or five hours just to travel one kilometer, traveling through all these slots and holes. And so many of these vast, areas of cast, weren't explored then and still aren't explored today, I would say. The bush covered cast areas, perhaps only half have ever been searched for caves in the south island. The other half remain, unexplored, especially in areas like the Pinaki. And one of the neatest, memories I had was we'd given up walking through these places'cause it was too difficult. We flew over an area called the Hefe, past ban on the true left of the Hefe River. And I would've been 15 or 16. And we spotted this huge entrance, 30 meters wide, 20 meters high with steam coming out. And that was the longest, cave system on the west coast. Eventually it was explored out to, 20 kilometers. So it's an extremely exciting time to be a caver. And it still is the golden era of the sport.

Jonty: 3:27

Now have you used the technology, I think is lidar, where they use it for discovering pyramids in the Amazon rainforest and it gives a really good understanding of the ground.

Speaker 3: 3:35

Is that something that's used in New Zealand? Yeah, we've,

Neil: 3:38

Used lidar semi successfully. it shows every single hole in great detail. But the problem is in cast there's just thousands, tens of thousands of holes in an area, and it just tells you there are tens of thousands of holes in the area. It doesn't necessarily tell you which one goes, so you still have to go in and do the groundwork going down hole after hole bit. Uh, certainly improves your odds. And I think, a lot of caving is, like looking for a needle in a haystack where you go out and you'll throw a rock down a hole, probably won't go anywhere, and you got the next one, one in every hundred, one in every thousand of those holes in the cast actually goes down to a cave system. So it's a pretty grueling process trying to find a new cave.

Jonty: 4:14

To get access. Are you having to camp out? Are you staying in some

Speaker 3: 4:18

of the huts on the. Yeah,

Neil: 4:21

to get access into a lot of the more remote caves. you're camping out, so you often have to walk a day or two into places like the Hefe River. Doing a lot of work on go and downs. Spend a lot time on Mount O and Mount Arthur. All classic tramping destinations and a lot of those caving areas now, like the close areas been explored and we're going to the more remote areas or often a day or two.

Speaker 3: 4:41

How much gear are.

Neil: 4:43

We are carrying ridiculous amounts of gear. I think the standard pack you'd carry in for a caving trip would be 30 to 35 kg. So you're carrying rope, single rope technique or you're camping gear. So everything else. So it's pretty it's pretty brutal. That's the downside. And we do fly into a lot of these places'cause we have no other option.

Jonty: 5:03

How much of it do you have to just be on the ground? I know you said it's difficult to see from the air. I guess the geology and the topo maps will give an idea of where the likely suspects are.

Neil: 5:13

Most of it you have to be on the ground. it was interesting, I walked into a new caving area three or four years ago and it's in the head of Thera Basin and on the topographical map. It showed a river just flowing through. No cave systems obviously there. But when I walked in, took two days to walk into there and I got in the whole upper ra, um, river didn't exist and there was a stream sink. Going down into the limestone, and that turned out to be a seven kilometer cave system. So we spent six weeks, series of trips flying and flying out, exploring it. But

Speaker 4: 5:45

it just,

Neil: 5:46

blew me away that, even now there's these large unexplored cave systems in the middle of nowhere left out there. And just, that was just due to an error on a top graphical map where it showed a river where the river actually went underground.

Jonty: 5:57

And have you had any interesting I guess wildlife encounters

Neil: 6:00

caves, I wouldn't say void of life. There's any life in caves, but ecosystems are very limited compared to being on the surface. Much more simplistic, if you like, but probably the most interesting creature we have is something called the Nelson Cave Spider, which is the largest ones. We've got the size of your hand. They live on the ceiling of the cave. They wait for a cave weer below and have a little, thread and they spring down, grab hold of the cave weer and pull it back up. And the really rare, the only, spider. Protected under the New Zealand Wildlife Act. And there's only a handful of caves, where we have angular. And so you'll be often going along a little crawl way or something. And New Zealand's largest spider will come the other way I think. venomous as well, I've also had one my sleeping bag many years ago. But yeah, terrifying little critters, but they would probably be the most interesting thing underground

Jonty: 6:48

What got you into photography, was it the caving that got you into photography, or were you interested in photography

Speaker 3: 6:53

before the caving, how did that develop?

Neil: 6:54

got into photography would've been about 2014, 2015. You come outta these trips and you tell people about the experiences you had. you got these grueling sort of 15, 20 hour days or what it was like to live underground for a week, and they'd always go, why would you do that? That's a horrific thing to want to do. What if the roof falls on your head? Or what if it floods, or whatever it is? And they wouldn't realize that underground, there's this whole other world completely different than the surface. And caving is such a good medium for adventure. So decided to try and capture that and show people how amazing this other world is. Took the camera underground first results were absolutely abysmal. lots of steam. getting caught by the flash and out of focus photos and realized it was really hard and I went away and studied. Photography from, others around the world. who'd taken photos for national Geographic and whatnot, and then went back underground and captured some really, good shots. And then, by chance got a, role with New Zealand geographic. to produce an article on cave exploration. There was no other cave photographer at the time, and so it, gave me a niche or an in and after that, just started producing lots of articles about recreation in New Zealand and it felt like a way of giving back. The outdoors gives us a huge amount. If you could produce nice photos of these wild places, what makes other people want to go there? And connect other people with our wild landscapes. So that was the appeal at the time And yeah, pretty amazing journey. Loads of different stories on all sorts of aspects of New Zealand life and outdoor adventures and, an incredible way to make a living.

Jonty: 8:23

Do you have any particularly special bits

Speaker 3: 8:25

of photography kit or is it more how you use it rather than what you have?

Neil: 8:29

caving you have A-A-D-S-L-R a main camera. And then you have multiple flash guns and so you have a trigger on your camera. You push the button that fires off all those flash guns. You'd have five or six flash guns on a trip. And then we used antique flashbulbs, so you can't buy them anymore. We've brought up New Zealand supplier antique flashbulbs on trade Me. So the old one shot wonders and you set them off once and then they're gone. So an electronic flash gun will go, I don't know, 10, 15 meters. A flash bulb will go a hundred, 150 meters. And incredible light source and a beautiful warm night. And when we made the caves, exploring New Zealand subterranean wildness, when we made that book, we along the way destroyed about$10,000 worth of gear. We destroyed a camera. It's such a harsh environment. Multiple flash guns, and eventually, strangely enough, a drone as well.

Speaker 3: 9:16

Hardwoods

Jonty: 9:17

Hole is probably the most famous caving system, does it live up to its reputation?

Neil: 9:22

Howards Hole is probably the best one day through trip in New Zealand. once you've done Howards, you've done the best of the best and you may as well give up caving and it's the way all caves should be. So it's a beautiful beautiful system. Really intimidating absel. So your absel 180 meters big, dark gray shaft. And then when you're able sailing down Harwood, you just can't wait till your feet are finally on the ground. When you get to the cave system at the bottom, that's where the magic begins. It's these giant, beautiful blue and green pools, water, which you climb around or you can swim across, just a gorgeous cave system. And then you go from being on top of Tuck Hill and you come out the west coast side and the Golden Bay side into Neal Palms and lovely sort of tropical feeling environment. And yeah, it's absolutely. Classic through trip.

Jonty: 10:08

What's the level of difficulty? So how much training or experience would you need in order to do that trip?

Neil: 10:14

The thing with Howard, a lot of rock climbers go through and they don't tend to carry caving gear. They carry just rock climbing gear and they expose you to a lot of risks. You don't have the right gear to get back up the rope of the caves and flood. or something else goes wrong along the way, so you probably need, five or 10 days caving experience if you're going down there with experience cavers and all of the right equipment. If you're going through without experience, cavers probably maybe 150 to a hundred days personal caving experience. So you would've been caving for a few years before you. Attempted it. but it has a really high accident rate with, non caves going through probably an accident every year or second year, unfortunately. So yeah, highly recommend going through once you've got some experience.

Jonty: 10:55

Now you cave diving as well. Is that a thing here?

Neil: 10:58

Cave diving in New Zealand's really interesting. That's, the sharp end of the sport at the moment. So people are finding huge amounts of new cave by diving through sumps. It adds complexity and risk to the sport. So you have to take a lot more gear. you need a whole different type of training to survive in that underwater environment. But certainly if you wanna be at the sharp end of cave exploration right now, that's, a really good way to go. I've only done a tiny bit of cave diving and found it super, super exciting. It's super disorientating underwater, but, I think it's an, amazing aspect of the sport and I think that's probably what makes caving so special is there's so many different aspects to it. Through diving, through cave surveying, through, geology photography, each one of those is a totally different skillset. And there's new sports I can think of that are as varied as caving.

Jonty: 11:44

Do you think there's a risk around escalation of adrenaline trying to find the next change you're saying about cave diving's, the kind of cutting edge? Are people always trying to push the boundaries?

Neil: 11:55

I think, with cave diving, you want to have the right personality type, really cool, calm and collected when you are working in stressful situations because. it's very easy for things to go wrong quickly. I think if you were someone that was prone to panic, you wouldn't be the right personality. It's when we call Karma collected and do huge amounts of training and stack the odds in your favor.'cause the inherent risk is simply just so high.

Jonty: 12:20

For most people they probably have an element of claustrophobia. Now, is that something that cavers you overcome or that people have got different levels of natural kind of affinity for being

Speaker 3: 12:30

in tight spaces on the ground? Claustrophobia

Neil: 12:32

is really interesting when you take people for their first ever caving trip, they'll often say, I'm claustrophobic. I'm really nervous about going underground. And the reality is everyone's claustrophobic. I'm super claustrophobic. I managed to get stuck in a squeeze once for eight hours. They've eventually got dug out and so have a absolute fear of that ever happening again. And so it's a natural human reaction. But I think it's a little bit like going rock climbing. Almost all rock climbers are terrified of heights. Otherwise they wouldn't survive very long. And I'm sure most cavers are equally scared of getting stuck in squeezes. And to be truly claustrophobic means you wouldn't be able to hop in the back of a car with other people, wouldn't be able to hop in a sleeping bag. And so it, it's just a feel like any other that you have to work through, with time.

Jonty: 13:14

Was that the closest you came to disaster being stuck, or there been a few other close calls?

Neil: 13:18

When I was young, I was on a caving trip with the fatality. uh, We had a drowning, a person jumped in a pool and was recirculated. And a couple of other people fell in that same pool. So it was aerated water, really um, gnarly, recirculating hole at the bottom of the waterfall. That was pretty traumatic and had a rope snap around the same time and a person fell, 37 meters, and survived. So fell down a tomo. And then just lots of other incidents along the way. Lots of rock bulls and, epics with caves, flooding and all sorts of things. It just goes with the territory really.

Jonty: 13:48

So it's quite a niche activity I guess. But the community, I assume is growing and the fact you're running a, a school now it's promoting it,

Neil: 13:56

I think. the community is really static, the same people I started caving with 30 years ago are all still there. And if you go to a caving do, it's all the same faces. It's something you tend to do for life, like rock climbing. Mountaineering, kayaking. most paragliding will have a much higher turnover, but once you buy into the sport and you start to understand all of our big cave systems, you become really obsessed. You want to know where they go. You want to be part of that exploration. And so it's kinda like a small group of people and it feels like a real family. In New Zealand, that same group of people were at every single gathering and whatnot.

Speaker 3: 14:34

What's the day job that allows you to spend all this time underground?

Neil: 14:38

Work as a photographer was fantastic, and so I got to do a lot of caving, but now I'm working full time teaching. A polytechnic in gray mouth. So teaching out through education, and unfortunately that's a little bit more limiting with regards to caving. And I've actually started spending more time paragliding. So become hooked on paragliding, which is a, a great way to merge. flying with tramping, you get to walk up a hill and fly off, and it's very similar to caving in many ways. It's sort of escapism. You get to go up, you get to go into this other completely different world. takes many years to learn to understand. And so really enjoying that at the moment.

Jonty: 15:15

Statistically, what's more dangerous, caving or paragliding?

Neil: 15:18

I think statistically paragliding is right up there, so, yeah. it's extremely high risk and you have to do everything you can to stick the odds in your favor, understand the environment you're working in really well. Huge amounts of practice on the ground. Just a very cautious approach if you want to. So my wife and I both started Paragon at the same time, and we had an incredible instructor and, just after we trained up, would've been about four years ago that, instructor was actually killed. And you think the people that are teaching you the best at this game get killed, then you know what hope is there for us. And so that's made us, both incredibly conservative as paragliding pilots.

Jonty: 15:53

I remember walking up the breast hill track by Lake Hower and there was a paraglider up there and it was just, it was really interesting to hear what he did and he was flying around Mount Cook and if it wasn't for the dangers, it almost sounded like the ideal way to go tramping.'cause once you you've got the slog up the hill, then you're off, then he is following the currents and he is managed to land in other places and gets these inaccessible bits and stay in a hut and then fly the next day. And it just sounded. Unbelievable. But it's, again, it's how do you start that process, as you say, probably quite safely and quite cautiously.

Neil: 16:23

Yeah, really cautiously, definitely. I think the sense of freedom you get in the air is like nothing else I've ever experienced. You walk up your mountain, you fly off, you try and find lift. So you're trying to find rising air thermals, which are simply that the sun is heating up some parts of the world faster than others. you manage to get into a thermal. Doing little tight circles and you might go up to 1500 meters. you have lots of essentially fuel in the tank if you like, height to burn, and then you go and try and find the next one. But with tramping or rock climbing or caving, you go down a linear pathway. when you're flying, you can go 360 degrees in any direction. That feeling of freedom is incredible. And the other thing so excited with paragliding just to be amongst the clouds. Like it's every human being's dream to fly, but to actually be up amongst the clouds, looking over the world is just unreal. It's an incredible sport, especially if you're into tramping. to put flying and tramping together just fantastic.

Speaker 3: 17:18

So what's the longest paraglide that you've done?

Neil: 17:20

Longest paraglide is five hours, and that's coastal soaring. So wind coming in off the ocean. The sea breeze. Which is driven by atic winds in the mountains. So as the winds rise in the mountain, the air is sucked in from the sea, and then as it hits the coastline. If you have a series of cliffs, you get huge amounts of lift. And so you can stay up for just hours of surfing this wave of the air back and forth, and. It's yeah pretty sweet feeling and crank the tunes, put the music on, and just enjoy life and being in the sky. The most fascinating thing with paragliding too for me is time. because you're so in living in the moment because the risk is pretty high you're concentrating so hard, your perception of time changes, you often. Fly for just a short flight, maybe 15, 20 minutes, and you'll get down to the ground and you're like, oh, that was definitely an hour. Look at your watch. 15 minutes has gone by and just your whole perception of time changes. The only sport I've ever experienced that before.

Jonty: 18:13

I would've thought being underground as well. You've lost all track of day and night that's probably quite a disconcerting experience as well.

Neil: 18:19

Yeah. Time underground is interesting. When you're underground for a week at a time. Your body will naturally go into sort of a 24 hour cycle, if you like, after a while. And I noticed that we often cave really long days and then sleep a. For a much longer period, one trip we took a watch that didn't have AM or pm and then we mixed up the AM and PM along the way somewhere and we came out and we thought we were coming out to watch the sunset and then realized the sun was rising. So you certainly have very little perception of time when you're underground. And something else I found fascinating with caving is that when you're underground for a week, is that in the big cave systems? Just'cause you have to go so far in now in the mobile mountains is that it's the only time in life you have color and warmth and weather taken away from you. And it's a black and white world. The temperature stays the same every single day. So the temperature in caves is constant, no matter whether it's winter or summer. It's the average temperature of the rock itself. There's no weather, so a lot of passages in these cave systems are old and dry, and so you dunno whether it's raining or sunshine on the surface. And when you come out of the cave system, it's like the sensory overload, seeing colors for the first time, seeing weather, seeing more than just five or 10 meters in front of you. It really made me appreciate life and how beautiful the world is. Like it's quite funny. you would, pick my would off and say I wouldn't go caving. It's really gRED down there, but actually it totally gives you a whole new appreciation for the world.

Jonty: 19:43

Do you have kids, and if so, are you introduced them to the paragliding and the caving worlds

Neil: 19:47

Yes. I have a little baby at homes. And he is one, and he's been on his first caving trip and I think it was in his DNA, actually, I've never seen him so excited before. Very excited to be underground and took him rock climbing and named a rock climb after him. We, put up a rock climb the other day and called it Give My Love to Soul I think he'll definitely be an explorer.

Jonty: 20:08

Your son's a third generation caver, so Yeah, it should be in his DNA right now.

Neil: 20:12

Yeah. I hope it's in his DNA. I'll be disappointed if he's not a caver.

Jonty: 20:16

Now, do you get out just regular tramping? I think it would be a little bit lighter on the pack than the other activities.

Neil: 20:22

I really enjoy tramping. I like the simplicity when you go paragliding, we have to take lots of gear. Cavings the same rock climbing is the same. We just um, nothing but you, your pack a sleeping bag and your food, um, really enjoy going hut to hut. and New Zealand has just under a thousand back country huts Tried to get to as many as I can. I love the way that when you go tramping all the stresses from life, whatever you are worried about, whatever's dragging you down just disappears straight away. You have nothing to worry about then the trail in front of you navigating and just, enjoy being in the country. Probably favorite tramps would be a couple of years ago, went down to GOG and Gog with my wife Got dropped off in a boat and then walked back, through the tin range go. And Mago in the southern part of Stewart Island. It's two granite monoliths. these, huge, big blocks of granite rounded areas of granite, standalone and this wind, sweat landscape in the bottom of Stewart Island. That was really special. And, the navigation through GLG and May Gog through the Tin range when you come back is really hard work and really super interesting history. now Garabaldi and Kaha National Parks, one of my favorite spots of tramp to, so it's this really remote plateau with, a hundred meter high, cliffs right the heart of Ka National Park with no, tracks leading up the edge to really remote special place. Um. And I really enjoy champion in around Hoku. Kuka has about 60 back country huts, hundreds of kilometers of tracks and just very wild I think that's one of the most special places for tramping in New Zealand. But, uh, championing has a, a, a very special place in my heart.

Jonty: 21:52

What was the mud like in the, I mean, the northern part of Stewart Island's pretty muddy. So what's the southern part like?

Neil: 21:58

The southern part is all off track and nothing like that. The mud you encounter on the northern and southern circuits? No, it's a lot better. It's completely remote. no huts, no tracks. Just wild country, wilderness country. But I highly recommend, anyone who's listening, going and checking it out,

Jonty: 22:13

what was Bird Life?

Neil: 22:14

Yeah, so special to see Kiwis. My wife's goal, dream on that tramp was to see a kiwi she'd never seen one. And on the first day, another person spotted one, and then on the second day I spotted one, and then finally on about the fifth day, he got lucky and finally saw one. So she was happy with that. it's pretty special to see Kiwis in the wild. We're pretty lucky. We have somewhere like Stewart Island in New Zealand.

Jonty: 22:34

Do you have any particularly favorite huts or huts that you have strong memories of?

Neil: 22:39

So my favorite huts would actually be all the huts on the hefe track. they're quite modern beautifully built, but if you walk through the Hefe track, it's one of the few great walks in New Zealand. And if you walk through in winter where it's often deserted, there's very few people in the huts Last couple of years I've had a lot of issues with swing grids getting washed out. So then you're guaranteed to see no one at all. But I don't know, just especially the hefy hut. On the river mouth there. It has to be one of the most gorgeous huts in New Zealand. So yeah. Highly rate the, the hee of all, of all our great walks in, in the huts. There is some of the most precious we have

Jonty: 23:09

and fewer sand flies in winter.'cause I remember doing the Heathie track over Christmas and the heathie hut that you could almost not see out of the windows'cause they were just blackened with sand flies.

Neil: 23:17

Yeah. Definitely. Fewer sand flies and it's quite neat because I think Doc have done a great job on those huts. They've preserved the character. They have beautiful murals on the walls, and they're still really special even though they're large scale great wall cuts.

Jonty: 23:30

Are you the Vice president of FMC Federated Mountain Clubs for a couple of years? Can you tell us about some of the kind of advocacy work you're involved with, during that period?

Neil: 23:38

I served as the vice president of FMC for about three years, and it was a way of, giving back. And so the outdoors has given me a huge amount, and that was my chance to give something back that was very challenging. We, had a lot of big campaigns. one of those would be the Waha River, so the Waha is a high volume wild river. In Westland, it's unmodified from source to sea. So it starts at the ivory lake and then, flows down through Kiwi flat and then, down through a beautiful gorge and then eventually out to the ocean. And so a hydro company had a plan to put a hydro scam in on that gorge and run the river. So it would take out 90% of the flow of Morgan Gorge, which was one of the most dramatic gorges we have in the south island. So we fought very hard to try and save that. I advocated through FMC and also, my own time by taking photographs. I think what FMC does is allows you to magnify your voice. it gives you a way of getting in front of the politicians of going to the media and being heard. Whereas as an individual, it's much harder to make a difference. And as a result of that, at the time we were successful in saving the river. The, minister for the Environment, David Parker turned that scheme down, which was fantastic. And then also we fought very hard to save a beautiful canyon called the Griffin Creek, including, reversing the court system. But we were unsuccessful in that case, which was really heartbreaking. And we also fought very hard to preserve Theara Basin. So there was a, inappropriate development planned. Called, Motown, where they're going to, bring lots of artificial development into the basin. And so pushed really hard to try and save that, and we were successful in that campaign. So you have some big wins and you have some big losses. But, I think I was on, involvement FMC for five years and we think we were successful in making a difference.

Jonty: 25:29

And what was your experience working with the Department of Conservation?

Neil: 25:32

Department of Conservation has a tough job in New Zealand. I'm managing one third of, new Zealand's back country. they're under pressure from every angle. Some people think we should preserve that one third of New Zealand. We have two thirds set aside human use We should, preserve that one third for nature's sake and for recreationists as well. And then you have, people that want to develop these wild spaces that if a river looks really good to kayakers, so it's steep and high volume. It also looks really good for hydro, has, the characteristics hydro companies need. Many of the places we tramp are high in minerals. So they're appealing to people going to mine gold or coal. And so department of Conservation is under pressure from both of those groups and also from iwi who have a totally different value set again, who see that as their land. And some cases may want the control of that land or management of that land back. And so the Department of Conservation are, are at a really challenging situation where they're charged with protecting our wild spaces, but also, they have to allow mining and hydro and development, and work incredibly closely with Iwis. it's a really challenging space. On top of that, you have. Huge problems with pest species as well. So I think the doc do the best job they possibly can, given the complex environment they operate in.

Jonty: 26:45

And just to finish up with what's on your tramping bucket

Speaker 3: 26:48

list

Neil: 26:49

I went to ivory Lake a few years ago, and Ivory Lake's an amazing journey where you you bush bash up the Waha River or you're on a track and eventually bush bash up and it's a bit of a pilgrimage to get there. And went over to the comb, but I'd love to go back up to Ivory Lake. I think it's just one of the most magical. corners of New Zealand. And other than that, I think I'd just really like to introduce my son to Tramping and get him out on some adventures and seeing what I see in the back country and connecting with these wild spaces. I think the real value of Tramping and all these recreational shoots and in many ways recreation is, I hate to say it, but it is selfish. It is focused on ourselves most of the time, but. What's so important with recreation is it connects people to our wild spaces. And if you don't connect the people New Zealand to the wild spaces, then these places will get developed. The people that are going to champion, our rivers and mountains and try and preserve them are going to be the recreationists. So that's why so important we get as many people out recreating as we possibly can.

Speaker: 27:45

Thank you so much for listening to the Tramping life. If you've enjoyed today's episode, please follow the podcast in whatever app you use. Tell a friend about it and consider leaving a rating or a review. It really helps more people discover the show. you have any questions or feedback, I'd love to hear from you. Drop me an email at the tramping life, one word@gmail.com.