Karen in her “Warden” shirt

Karen Griffiths didn’t grow up in a traditional kiwi tramping family, but she remembers that her father wanted his kids to experience “the outdoor life”.

“My dad would take us out in the bush a lot. He made sure we knew how to trudge through mud, up hills and in the rain. We learned about keeping going and resilience. There was possibly a bit of punishment involved too,” Karen laughs.

“He used to say to us ‘Where’s your sense of adventure?’ He liked to put us out into situations that were hard and tough and dirty and wet.

“I grew up thinking that I needed that sense of adventure.

“I did get involved in the tramping club in my early teens, but that was mainly because there were a lot of boys. When I left home I had a family and ended up in Australia. Tramping wasn’t really a thing for me then – it doesn’t work in Australia – but I did take my boys into the bush a bit.

“After my career and family, I ended up in New Plymouth where I joined the local tramping club. I was 50 and everyone else was in their 70s. I decided I needed some more people my age in the club, but ended up starting what I called a ‘Take a Kid Tramping Programme’. Every second weekend I’d go out with children and their families around Taranaki, and I’d tramp with the club on the other weekends.

“I got the idea of doing Te Araroa a few years before I got back into tramping when my husband Garry and I met Geoff Chapple in the forest behind Palmerston North one day. It was totally random. He was figuring out the route the trail would take and when he told us what he was doing I was hooked.

“I said to Garry that I would start walking the trail the day after I retired.”

It was around 2000 and Karen held that thought until 2019, when she did hike Te Araroa –  sobo. She wasn’t actually retired, but like many hikers, she was sick of work. A toxic workplace prompted her decision to take the trail on.

“I figured that I’d rather walk 3000 kilometres than work another 3000 hours for that place.

“The year I walked it was mostly with young people. I hardly came across anyone my age. Everyone knew me as ‘The Old Kiwi Lady’.

“Most of the time I was the only kiwi in the camp at night, so I had a bit of knowledge that I could share. 

“One German girl said to me that it was great having a New Zealander in her group. ‘I didn’t come here to meet more Germans,’ she told me.”

Karen is an accountant by trade so numbers and the way money works come easy to her. But she doesn’t fit the tired cliché of the boring accountant at all – in fact she asked at the start of this interview if all the swear words could be removed. 

She says that money was a regular part of her conversation with other hikers. She’d kept an eye on registration statistics as she’d prepared for her hike and was a little disturbed that the previous year 80 percent of all registrations and donations came from kiwis. Figures are hard to come by for those years, but she reckons that only about 10% of hikers were from New Zealand in the 2019-20 season. 

You do the sums. It’s not flash.

“There was very little money coming in and I remember at the end of Ninety Mile Beach – Ahipara – there was a big group of about 15 of us and I stood up and asked them all ‘Who’s made a donation?’ They all put their heads down except for a couple who put their hands up.

“So I started asking people why they hadn’t paid. Everyone had a different excuse. ‘I was waiting to see how far I got.’ ‘I will pay when I get to the bottom of the North Island.’ ‘I couldn’t figure out how to do it.’

“That’s when I suggested people bring their phone to me and I’d help them. We had internet and access to banks. I got two or three people to pay some money that day.

“I told the others that we’re a small country. We only have five million people…not 300 million like you Americans, or 70 million like you French jokers. We can’t sustain this without help from the people who are using the trail.

“If I went to Paris and didn’t want to pay to go up the Eiffel Tower, the ticket man wouldn’t just let me in. I wouldn’t get into a German movie theatre for free either. Our trail isn’t like a European trail that’s been going for thousands of years…we’re a long thin country that has no protection from the bad weather that comes in off the ocean. We’re in the middle of nowhere. The wind and the rain just keep coming. If we repair a track one day it can be broken the next.

“I would tell them it’s volunteers who are fixing this trail for you. Most of them are retired people. 60 and 70 year olds…working through the winter so it can be ready for you in summer. These are people who are old enough to be your grandparents…your great grandparents.”

This kind of talk continued throughout Karen’s trip. “Everyone would talk about the mud…which is fine. Mud is the adventure we were there for. But there were people who would complain.”

“I didn’t make the speech all the time, but I did pick my moments. A friend I walked with at the beginning told me that the hikers at Ahipara had thought I was an actual Te Araroa warden. I wore a long-sleeved khaki shirt and I had a big TA badge sewn onto my chest. It looked like I had some kind of authority,” Karen chuckles.

When Karen walked the trail foreigners and kiwis paid the same amount to register – but things have changed recently with the new registration system. When asked to put her accountant’s hat on again so that she could make a judgement on the fairness of this, she replied that “kiwis pay tax here. That tax helps pay for bridges, huts, roads, hospitals, search and rescue.”

Te Araroa’s website puts it like this:

For New Zealanders, the Trail Contribution is optional because many of the public services and infrastructure that support Te Araroa — including tracks, bridges, huts, Search and Rescue, and ACC — are already partly funded through taxes and levies paid by New Zealand residents.

International walkers are required to pay the Trail Contribution because they are not already contributing to the upkeep of the trail via taxes and levies. Overseas visitors make up a large proportion of Te Araroa users, and their contribution helps support the ongoing maintenance, management, safety, and protection of the trail.

For kiwis the Trail Contribution is the donation part of the whole registration process and it comes with some more hometown advantage – New Zealand taxpayers get a 33% refund on any donation made to a registered charity like Te Araroa. This may seem like cheating to a visitor from overseas – but Karen likes to think there’s a way to even this out.

“New Zealanders should pay more in their donations so that when they get the 33% back they’ve still given the same amount.” This involves some complicated calculations, but it also makes sense. “I’m not sure of the maths off the top of my head, but I could work it out. In fact I was tempted to pay some of the donations on behalf of a few foreign hikers so I could claim the donation back…but…of course it was only a thought,” she laughs again. 

That refund is easy to do as long as donors keep their receipts. They can apply for the refund any time and refunds happen quite quickly.

Our Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) system also benefits foreign hikers. An accident in New Zealand is treated the same way whether the injured person is from New Zealand or overseas. Karen recently had a hiker stay with her after spending several days in hospital. 

“She needed some time to recover, but when she was discharged she found it hard to accept that there wasn’t an invoice for her insurance company,” Karen says. The hiker had never heard of New Zealand’s ACC system which generously states on its website:

“If you’re injured while visiting New Zealand, we may be able to help you. It doesn’t matter if you’re not a resident.” 

Karen isn’t sure if this makes financial sense for kiwi taxpayers, but it certainly avoids a bureaucratic headache for the hospitals.

ACC doesn’t cover many of the other things that can happen to hikers while wandering New Zealand, and still strongly advises normal travel insurance is taken before arriving in Aotearoa.

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Let’s talk about Karen’s many chopper trips

One of the great things about tramping in Aotearoa is that we have a fantastic Search and Rescue system. Any time someone sets off a Personal Locator Beacon (PLB) in New Zealand, a chopper or ground crew will be dispatched to find, and attempt to rescue them. It’s expensive but it’s also free for the person who needs rescuing. The various services called upon are paid for by tax payers, ACC levies, sponsorship and donations. 

You might have to prepare yourself for this next statistic. 

Karen has been picked up by a rescue chopper seven times in her relatively short tramping “career”. 

“Only five of them were for me. I always apologise when they pick me up, but they’re more than happy to have been able to help.”

Two of these rescue missions happened while she was doing Te Araroa in 2019 and Karen thinks this may be some kind of record.

“The first rescue was a medical issue – my heart was racing and I couldn’t get it to slow down. The people I was with helped me get through the day, but eventually they basically bullied me into pushing the button. I didn’t want to. I would walk four steps then fall over. It was very stressful for them…”

After being in hospital for a day she got a clean bill of health, was discharged, and continued on.

While not an actual accident, the rescue was still free for Karen as a New Zealand citizen. Again, it makes total financial sense. If she was having a heart attack or stroke, the downstream costs to New Zealand’s health system could have been enormous. 

The second time Karen got rescued on Te Araroa was on the third-to-last day of her journey.

“I got lost in the Longwoods which was a bit…no…it was VERY…embarrassing. I’d walked nearly 3000 kilometres to get lost in the last bit of bush!” 

“I’d been told by people ahead of me that there was a shortcut down from Martins Hut that would only take three hours and that it was a nice track. My friends sent me their [GPS] tracking so I put it into my phone and thought I’d be alright…but…[the track] wasn’t ready for Te Araroa at that stage.

“I was on my own and itching to go. I woke up in my tent outside Martins, but because it was raining and I figured that I only had a short way to go, I took my time. Did my blogging. Watched a bit of Coronation Street on my phone. The Colac Bay pub had a Happy Hour at four o’clock. I thought I’d have time to arrive there…get changed, get sorted…for a half price drink.

“So I left at 11.30. It was a great track. At any one time I could see three orange triangles. I got about half way down. Ate the last of my food. I started running and singing. I was a happy chappy. Then I stopped and looked around. I realised that I hadn’t seen an orange marker for a while. I was in really deep…REALLY deep bush.

“That’s when I remembered the warnings in the trail notes not to leave the track. It was a mining area. It had been heavily mined and there were hidden holes everywhere. I had my tracker on and tried to use it to find my way out, but it wasn’t accurate enough. I gingerly went round in circles a few times for about an hour. I didn’t want to fall down a hole that was hidden under moss. In the end I realised I wasn’t going to find [the track]. I thought about just staying the night, but figured that I would still be lost the next day.

“There was no sun or shadows to give me my bearings. It was also flat so I couldn’t just walk downhill…there was no downhill. I thought I could be one of these old ladies who gets found five years later down the bottom of some hole.

“I tried to phone and get the internet, but I couldn’t get through. So I pushed the [PLB] button on that one,” she recalled.

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“The chopper took about 45 minutes. I remember getting really cold. When they arrived they were very happy to see me. They said I’d done all the right things. When I heard the chopper I started shaking a tree so they could see the movement in the bush. I was waving my orange sleeping bag.

“When the guy came down I said ‘I’m so sorry. I’m sorry’, and he told me that they were a mine rescue crew and were expecting to find me in a hole. They had ropes and winches and had started to organise a ground crew to come in and rescue me.”

Karen got winched through the trees and into the hovering chopper where she asked the crew where she was going to be taken.

“We’re taking you to Te Anau,” came the wrong answer.

“But I’m going to miss the happy hour,” Karen replied. Only half joking.

“Waddaya mean?”

“Well I was going to the Colac Bay pub happy hour. Half price drinks at four.”

“The guy who picked me up told the pilot ‘there’s a change of plans. We’re going to the Colac Bay pub.’ So they turned the helicopter round and dropped me in the park across the road.”

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It was a happy ending AND a Happy Hour.

You’d think an accountant would be worried by the cost of all these rescues, but Karen is unashamed of her bad luck. To her, “free” rescues are not only morally right – they make financial sense.

But she’s also aware that it’s donations that keep search and rescue services working for us. If you’re in the unfortunate position of needing and asking to be rescued, you should be prepared to make one of those donations she reckons.

“I donate to a rescue chopper service every time I use one. I have Frequent Flyer status.

“If you get lost, I know Search and Rescue would rather you push the button early, rather than leaving it – because it costs too much later on. It’s better to get rescued early on before things get bad. It’s much easier to find someone before things really go wrong.

“I have a lot of friends who work for SAR. They get really excited when they’re called out. They’re like farm dogs let off the lead. It’s what they train for and they all know it’s best to pick up someone who’s alive.”

Having said that Karen thinks you still have to have a decent reason to “push the button”.

“Some people think that it has to be a life and death situation, but it’s a bit more complicated than that.

“If you’re just tired or uncomfortable you don’t need to call a chopper, and if you’ve got all the right gear – a tent, warm clothes, some food and water – you’ll be alright. If you’re not in any real danger, pitch your tent and have a rest overnight. Sleep on it. Hopefully things’ll be better in the morning.

“This is a bit tricky to put into words because everybody is different, but my theory is that if you think you should press the button – it’s a pretty good sign that you probably should. In the New Zealand bush, when you’re wet and are starting to get cold you’re going to find it hard to judge and that delay could cost you.”

Johnny Franklin, the Chief Development and Project Officer for Land Search and Rescue New Zealand (LANDSAR) puts it another way:

”If you or someone you’re with is in grave or imminent danger, first try to communicate through a two way communications device – like a phone, a radio or a satellite communicator. That way a proper assessment of your situation can be determined and the appropriate response deployed. If you can’t establish two way communications, then activate a distress beacon. In either case, a response could still be hours away, depending on availability, location and weather.   

“Do not delay calling for help if you think it is needed. 

“Because a response can take time, you should make yourself as safe and comfortable as possible. This emphasises point 3 of the Land Safety Code – pack warm clothes and extra food and also don’t delay activating the beacon.  

“It’s important to register your beacon, and let your distress contacts know about your plans. Their information may help determine the appropriate response.

“Once you activate it, keep the beacon with you. Don’t switch it off.”

It’s been seven years since Karen walked Te Araroa. She enjoyed it so much she gave it another go a couple of years later – walking nobo. But it just wasn’t the same so her second attempt petered out. She’s walked the Bibbulmun, which she enjoyed, but she reckons she should have waited to do it when she gets to 80.

“It’s pretty flat. It’s perfect for anyone with a zimmer frame.”

Karen and her father’s sense of adventure still calls, but where it will lead her now that she has reached retirement age, she’s not sure.

“I’m definitely looking for somewhere new to go. The Heysen in South Australia? The Larapinta? We’ll see.”

FYI

Want to donate to Te Araroa because you forgot to in 2019?

Would like to donate to Landsar?

What about the great team at Otago Southland Rescue Helicopter Trust?