There was not much to be disappointed with from our recent South Island expedition. It ticked all of the boxes, we got to go to some fantastic places and almost as soon as we got home, we wanted to do it all again. Having said that I did envisage that we would be able to stop more often when we were out there and soak in the surroundings and be in it for a while. Sadly this did not turn out to be the case and I did not manage to do as much photography and time lapse work as I had wanted. The following video is all of the footage that I managed to capture. Improving on this is already on the next time list as is my desire to improve my post production techniques to boost the quality of the footage to higher level of polish.
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
West Coast South Island 2014
After we left our back country off road adventure, we headed west through the Haast Pass. On the day that we did this, the weather was terrible and we only just made it through the road works that mark the start of the video below. Shortly after we got through, they closed the entire road again, because of the danger posed by the huge deluge of rain and potential for more slips. You can see in the video how the forest just sits on a steep slope of bare rock and when the rain undermines it, the vegetation and any top soil simply slide off into the rivers, taking what ever is in their path at the time. Unfortunately when these slips went they took two Canadian tourists in their camper too.
We regularly tried to get off road as we progressed north, using out 4WD maps and track guides we had purchased. But time and time again the tracks had either been over stated as to their 'ruggedness' I guess we had been spoiled by the land access and terrain we had enjoyed in the previous week. Most often, however, the gravel roads had been tar sealed and were just normal state highways and most annoyingly when we were just nosing into more remote areas we would encounter a locked gate thrown up by the local farmer, even though the road was a publicly maintained road. I know that we can appeal these gate closures, but that would always be after the fact. I am sure the farmers are sick of the hoons who ruin it all for the rest of us. A good example would be the vandalism that we saw at lake Ida on the Wrighton Station. Last year some kids from Christchurch had driven all the way out to the curling/ice skating hut on lake Ida and smashed all the windows... Idiots. No wonder the farmers feel compelled to throw up locked gates if idiots are going to damage property, worry stock and rip up paddocks.
Anyway, enjoy this last video of our trip. I am currently working on a time lapse video taken at some of the stops and when I have rendered it I will post it here.
WestCoast2014 from David Kinane on Vimeo.
We regularly tried to get off road as we progressed north, using out 4WD maps and track guides we had purchased. But time and time again the tracks had either been over stated as to their 'ruggedness' I guess we had been spoiled by the land access and terrain we had enjoyed in the previous week. Most often, however, the gravel roads had been tar sealed and were just normal state highways and most annoyingly when we were just nosing into more remote areas we would encounter a locked gate thrown up by the local farmer, even though the road was a publicly maintained road. I know that we can appeal these gate closures, but that would always be after the fact. I am sure the farmers are sick of the hoons who ruin it all for the rest of us. A good example would be the vandalism that we saw at lake Ida on the Wrighton Station. Last year some kids from Christchurch had driven all the way out to the curling/ice skating hut on lake Ida and smashed all the windows... Idiots. No wonder the farmers feel compelled to throw up locked gates if idiots are going to damage property, worry stock and rip up paddocks.
Anyway, enjoy this last video of our trip. I am currently working on a time lapse video taken at some of the stops and when I have rendered it I will post it here.
WestCoast2014 from David Kinane on Vimeo.
Sunday, February 23, 2014
My Land Rover Has a Soul
Not sure if you have seen this, but I thought it was wonderful and would have loved to have been a part of it. I wonder if there are enough Land Rover nuts in NZ to challenge this record? It would be quite a site to have a procession of Landy's trooping over Arthurs Pass from Christchurch to Greymouth. Any takers?
My Land Rover has a Soul from D4 PRODUCTIONS | Andrew King on Vimeo.
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Off Road Tracks
We covered over 5000km on our trip and a good chunk of that was on gravel roads and off road. Obviously the trip between Auckland and Wellington consumed a huge number of tar seal related distance.
I have been putting together a route of our off road tracks using a map provided to us with a really rough highlighted route on it. The reason for the vagueness is to do with sensitivity from land owners about their land being used. Which is why my videos have been heavily edited to try to remove the majority of distinguishing land forms from the footage. It will also explain why the scale on the images below is not very large and the tracks not really very well defined. Please treat them as a rough guide to our trip to illustrate the flavour of what we did and the approximate location.
As I said earlier I had hoped to use my Hema Maps GPS app to log each off road track, but it could not cope with the amount of time I was asking it to log for. I am not sure if this is a fault of the app or my expectations of the performance of this app to do what I had hoped it could do. Anyway here are a series of images that illustrate our off road route from North to South through Canterbury and Otago.
If you would like a map of the route we took up the West Coast and up to French Pass, let me know.
I have been putting together a route of our off road tracks using a map provided to us with a really rough highlighted route on it. The reason for the vagueness is to do with sensitivity from land owners about their land being used. Which is why my videos have been heavily edited to try to remove the majority of distinguishing land forms from the footage. It will also explain why the scale on the images below is not very large and the tracks not really very well defined. Please treat them as a rough guide to our trip to illustrate the flavour of what we did and the approximate location.
As I said earlier I had hoped to use my Hema Maps GPS app to log each off road track, but it could not cope with the amount of time I was asking it to log for. I am not sure if this is a fault of the app or my expectations of the performance of this app to do what I had hoped it could do. Anyway here are a series of images that illustrate our off road route from North to South through Canterbury and Otago.
If you would like a map of the route we took up the West Coast and up to French Pass, let me know.
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Defender Challenge
Allan sent me this link today about the Defender Challenge from the Motorsport website, it is an entry series to the Dakar Rally. Not sure I am up to the Dakar myself, but would to have a blat in one of these suped up 90s.
Monday, February 3, 2014
Auckland Land Rover Owners Club
Last night I attended the monthly Auckland Land Rover Owners Club meeting at the Cardrona Speight's Ale House in Mount Eden. They have monthly meetings and at least one off road run a month and this is the reason why I want to join.
I gather that this was the first meeting of the year and so everyone, including me was encouraged to share their offroading experiences of the summer. It was good to chat with other truck owners about what they do, what accessories they use etc. There was lots of talk last night about winches and cables.
Before I can go on a run with the club the car has to be scrutineered and that takes place in Albany on Sunday February 23. I also sought out information about the 42 Traverse that I want to do before the track closes in April for the year for 4WD traffic. To be fair I got two different responses, one was that it was not particularly exciting for the effort of getting there and another one that talked of river crossings and steep drops. Both were of the opinion that the mighty Defender would take it all in its stride and not be a problem for it. So that's it then, I am of with Steve, if he can organise Gary to come with his Nissan Patrol.
I gather that this was the first meeting of the year and so everyone, including me was encouraged to share their offroading experiences of the summer. It was good to chat with other truck owners about what they do, what accessories they use etc. There was lots of talk last night about winches and cables.
Before I can go on a run with the club the car has to be scrutineered and that takes place in Albany on Sunday February 23. I also sought out information about the 42 Traverse that I want to do before the track closes in April for the year for 4WD traffic. To be fair I got two different responses, one was that it was not particularly exciting for the effort of getting there and another one that talked of river crossings and steep drops. Both were of the opinion that the mighty Defender would take it all in its stride and not be a problem for it. So that's it then, I am of with Steve, if he can organise Gary to come with his Nissan Patrol.
Sunday, February 2, 2014
More offorad footage
I have come to the end of my video footage to share of our off road experiences in the South Island. After the end of the tour we headed over to Haast, down to Jacksons Bay and on down the Jacksons River.
We then retraced our steps and worked our way north ending up at French Pass at the top of the sounds. We never got as wildly off road as we did in the previous videos. However there is some footage of the trip and some timelapse footage to follow, so keep watching, but in the mean time enjoy this last mountain video.
Apart from editing more footage I have also yet to produce the route on a Google Map, I have started doing this but it will take some time to get roughly right.
Off Road - South Island 2014 - Mountains Vol3 from David Kinane on Vimeo.
We then retraced our steps and worked our way north ending up at French Pass at the top of the sounds. We never got as wildly off road as we did in the previous videos. However there is some footage of the trip and some timelapse footage to follow, so keep watching, but in the mean time enjoy this last mountain video.
Apart from editing more footage I have also yet to produce the route on a Google Map, I have started doing this but it will take some time to get roughly right.
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