Tessa’s Kaimai Adventure

Morrinsville College student and current Gold participant, Tessa Nicholson, has recently returned from a her practice journey in Kaimai Mamaku Conservation Park. We sat down for a kōrero with Tessa to find out the highlights and challenges of her adventure. Check out the video below, which follows her group’s movements on the tramp!

🍃 Kia ora Tessa, tell us about your recent tramp! What were the highlights?

The biggest highlight of our trip to the Kaimais would have to be the way our group entertained ourselves during the 4 days that we were tramping. We spent countless hours participating in mind games that would make our group so irritated cause they didn’t understand. We also played Kubbs using the kindling and wood from the huts and had many games where we left dodging pieces of kindling that were being thrown.

🍃 What was the planning/prep process like for this tramp?

The process of planning started on the 7th of September. We had one of our meetings and discussed what this tramp would look like. We looked at the map of the kaimais to know where we were tramping and then identified possible hazards on the track. We then booked the huts that we were planning on staying in. About a week before the tramp we held another meeting and worked out what sort of equipment we could share between our group (cookers, pot sets, gas and food).

🍃 Any lessons you learnt along the way?

Some lessons that we learnt was to always do last minute research on the huts. When we arrived at our first hut that we planned to stay in we found that a 16 person hut had around 40 people staying there. So we decided to keep walking to the next hut. During this tramp we also looked at the first aid kit that our school provided us. We looked at what sort of stuff we needed and what we didn’t need. Our observations of the first aid kit was that we needed an emergency blanket, voltaren and some bigger bandages. We also found that there were many double ups in our first aid kit. This was a lesson we learnt on this tramp and we now plan to add our observations and reduce some of the double ups.

🍃 What do you love most about being outdoors at this time of year?

During this tramp we had perfect weather. We spent many hours enjoying the sun and had many chilly refreshing swims to cool off. This was a lot of fun seeing our group members become breathless because of how cold the water was. One of my main highlights of tramping this time of the year is to see many people from the public enjoying the same experiences in the outdoors as you are.

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