Temple – Ahuriri – Temple Tramping Trip
Epics or near-epics in the backcountry are a bit like going to the dentist – generally good after the fact. So it was with a recent trip I completed with my wife, Shelley. As we hadn’t been into the hills for a while, we decided on a fitness tramp: long, but not too long; a…
Shaping Surfboards with Jamie Horsefield
In his father’s shed, overlooking his local surf break, 15-year-old Jamie Horsefield works on another creation. I met the young Warrington surfer a year and a half ago, when he knocked on my door one morning and asked if I wanted to get some waves with him. There’s nothing like the cheeky enthusiasm of a…
Our Journey…told from a surfing perspective
I divide my time between surfing, climbing, writing, loving life and a few other peripherals. There is no order or balance to it, but each seems to mesh succinctly into the whole. A mix of randomness here, a few lucky choices there, and I find myself in the middle age well along the journey –…
The Mountains Within
Kiwi poet John Newton once wrote that mountains are ‘a story you tell about yourself, a story you are journeying into, which swallows you’. I have referred to them as ‘the castles that bind our land firm’, allowing me ‘to see as never before’. Having just returned from a trip into the ubiquitous and unrivalled…
For Scotty – Alpinist 49
A glacier is like a tree, you said as I hacked its melting skin carving glass steps for tourists, air bubbles escaping folds in the ice In kaupapa Maori everything has a story Ka Roimata o Hinehukatere, they called it Tears of the Avalanche Girl Her lover Wawe fell to his death here, the weight…
Mount Percy Smith
I first caught a glimpse of Percy Smith at dusk in the winter of 2004. Kynan Bazley and I had just topped out on nearby Ward, in the Hopkins Valley, after snaking up a dozen pitches of virgin ice on its south east face. Greeted by one of those glorious winter alpenglow sunsets that never…
Above The Snowline – A reminder about winter climbing
The forecast was solid. The temperature had dipped well below freezing. Kynan and I were in search of ice, fat runnels of the stuff that flowed tantalisingly down steep narrow gullies. Winter is the time to go forth, with ice crampons sharpened and ice axes held to attention. We picked a valley of promise, wading…
The Time Between Tides – article in White Horses
Light lifts night’s veil from the sea like a parting of the fog. There’s a decent north swell still rolling in, the remnants of Cyclone Lucy which gave the country a good slapping earlier in the week. Waves radiate towards land – the ocean’s pulse, which is also my lifeblood on many a glass-sculpted, windless…
MSR Hubba Hubba NX Tent – gear review
The MSR Hubba Hubba NX (the NX stands for Next Generation) is marketed as offering a number of significant improvements over the previous model of Hubba Hubba. As someone familiar with the old version, and with its strengths and weaknesses, I was intrigued to see how MSR had tweaked the design. The main faults I…
Friends And Surfboards – article in White Horses
I’ve just bought a new surfboard and lost a best mate. The board is a 6′ 4” c-wing quad from a friend and master shaper, Roger Hall at Surfline. Roger was one of the surfing mentors of my now very dusty youth, a visionary of shapes and techniques that has taken me more than 35…
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Paul Hersey Writing 