Club nights are at Turnbull House, on the first unimpeded Monday of every month. New and prospective members are welcome. Meet for dinner at the Backbencher public bar at 6.30 and on to Turnbull House at 7.30 pm for a catch up. Meetings and talks start at 8.00 pm with club business and tea and coffee afterwards.

Section trips news

Please send all your fantastic trip reports to newsletter @nzalpine.wellington.net.nz, so everyone can enjoy your stories.

Climbing in mountainous Holland

Today was so warm I was in shorts and cut off t-shirt - weird how fast it changes from that deep snow a few weeks ago, but nice to stroll all relaxed without worrying about losing your feet from under you.

I got a tram to central station determined to find the mythical climbing wall and after many lost turns and advice from the science museum host going way beyond her duty and calling a friend at home who knew what I was trying to describe, was pointed in the direction of a building by the distant train tracks across two canals, of corrugated iron lying on a sixty degree angle and covered in graffiti. As I got closer saw what looked like many climber types reclining on grass by water's edge, drinking wine and beer. (Drinking wine and beer? In daylight? This is weird, I thought, but they looked like climbers, shorts and singlets, some tattoos, less buttoned down than the usual black-shoed Amsterdammer). Convinced I was heading in the right direction, but further confusion, because the only way I could see to get to them was by swimming the well-below sea-level, non-tidal, coffee-with-milk-coloured brown water of the canal (Non tidal? Conceptually hard for a coastal kiwi, as well as disgusting looking)

Eventually I managed to cross the gracht (canal) by cutting across the train tracks that lead to Germany then Poland and eventually Russia, and, now very scared, the desolation seedy as hell, watching out for mafia in non-descript red two-door Mercedes, managed to get to this outpost stuck on an island of weeds on the outer dykes of Amsterdam.

When I got there it was very busy (they were just finishing a bouldering comp) and I talked to the dutch operator guy who said it was great to have a kiwi who might want to come here regularly, and he touched my arm like an old friend, saying he had just holidayed in NZ (with his girlfriend by the way) (and had climbed round ChCh). On the notice board are ads from various Aussie's looking for climbing partners so I'll call them soon, that will be cool. Although my class
mates at the writing course, the dutch ones, as soon as I mention climbing, want me to introduce them to the experience, so I could be busy. There are no self-locking Grigris though, so teaching them good ATC behaviour will be essential to minimise my elvis legs at the top of this (to me) very high plywood wall. (It is way higher than Fergs).

The nice thing about this wall, (and Amsterdam in general), is that at your local climbing wall, or swimming pool or menache (sp?) (indoor horse stable) - (where I watched indoor synchronised horse riding to disco music while having a beer - I know, I can't believe it either, and I wasn't tripping), is that after a climb you can sit right in the middle of the walls and watch while having a beer or coffee and wind down while your mates are still punishing themselves.

So that's climbing in Amsterdam. Will let you know how it is going. I have heard there is another wall nearby inside an old church, so I'll keep you posted. Probably find a free bible at the top of anything above a twenty. But now know for sure that when you are lowered from the rush of your on-sight or red point that if you need it, there will always be a table with a coffee or beer to suck on while you think about it.

Colin Hodson

Olivine Ice Plateau

In March, Vanessa Johnson and Kris Persson went tramping for 11 days in the Olivine Wilderness Area. The trip included a crossing of the Olivine Ice Plateau, unfortunately in pretty bad weather and low visibility. The Plateau was approached via the Dart River, Beans Burn, Olivine and Forgotten Rivers. We descended the glacier just south of Futurity rock and exited via Lake Williamson, Williamson River and up Arawhata River.

High points included some brilliant mountain scenery and seeing kaka, morepork, blue duck and other birds. A low point was a southerly storm with 100 km/h winds, which caused a tent pole on my $1100 alpine tent to snap and, during the subsequent evacuation, Vanessa to fall and injure her knee in the slippery conditions. A 12 hour, 3 km bush bash through a particularly bush lawyer infested section is also something we could have done without.

All in all, a fantastic time had. Some photos here:
http://www.lysator.liu.se/~kripe/foton/Olivines-Mar_2005/

Kris Persson

Digital Images
Digital Images: emailing, on-screen viewing and projecting.

Ever downloaded a friend's emailed photo and had to wait half an hour for it to arrive? And when it did, you were looking at a closeup of someone's earwax?

These are common problems, but they're easily fixed. All you need, other than your image files and a computer, is software that allows you to change the resolution and dimensions (width x height) of the image. Many programs let you do this and it's likely that you got this type of software with your camera. Otherwise, you can get FastStone Image Viewer (free) at www.Faststone.org or Irfanview (also free) at www.irfanview.net. The best of the mainstream commercial programs is Adobe Photoshop Elements (the latest version, 3.0, is $185 at www.photo.co.nz).

JARGON:
It's worth the effort of understanding these terms and their relationships. File size is the amount of disk space or memory used by the image file. It's measured in Kilobytes (Kb) or Megabytes (Mb). Pixels are the tiny squares that form the image, like the tiles of a mosaic. Pixel dimensions refers to the number of pixels the image contains, as width x height (e.g., 3504 x 2336). Document dimensions means the size of the printed image (e.g., 15 x 10 cm). Image dimensions can refer to either pixel or document dimensions and unfortunately you need to know which of these your program means. Finally, resolution is the density of pixels in your image and is usually quoted as pixels per inch (ppi).

resolution = pixel dimensions / document dimensions

You can also think of resolution as the size of each pixel. If you make your print smaller but keep the pixel dimensions unchanged, you increase the resolution of the photo, because each pixel is now smaller. [Note: Unfortunately, some programs (like FastStone Image Viewer) use "dots per inch" (dpi), which is the usual term for printer resolution-an entirely unrelated factor.]

Resolution is a linear dimension, so an image that has twice the resolution (say 300 ppi instead of 150 ppi) will have four times the number of pixels in a given area. Consequently its file size will be much greater .

EMAILING AND ON-SCREEN VIEWING:
For everything other than printing, you need only low-resolution images. Most monitors display images at 72 or 96 ppi; if your image has a resolution of 300 ppi then it will look no better but the file size will be roughly 10-16 times greater and it will take much longer to email. If you're emailing images for on-screen viewing, or putting them on a website, keep the resolution at or below 96 ppi.

The other thing you must do is make sure your photo fits nicely on the screen. For emailing, I'd suggest setting the width for landscape-formatted photos to no more than 800 pixels (600 is usually plenty), as this allows them to fit within the viewing window of most programs. Portrait formats are trickier. If you keep them less than 400-500 pixels high so that they'll probably fit in a viewing window, they'll only be roughly 300 pixels wide. This is fine for most purposes, but the image will appear quite small and will certainly lack the impact of the landscape formatted images. The decision is yours. (Note: Some viewing software will automatically resize the image to fit in the window, or your friend can do this herself. However, this sometimes degrades the image).

To use the image as a full-screen desktop wallpaper, you need to know the monitor's "screen resolution" (width in pixels x height in pixels) (Note: This might better be termed screen dimensions. Yes, I know it's confusing, but that's Windows). The most common is 1024 x 768; some might still be 800 x 600 and some are greater than 1024 x 768. If your image doesn't fit these dimensions, you can crop it to fit, or accept some of the desktop's background colour showing; otherwise Windows will cut bits off it for you.

Now for the the important part-HOW TO DO IT. These are the steps in Photoshop Elements:
· In the main menu, choose "Image>Resize";
· Make sure that the boxes labelled "Constrain image proportions" and "Resample image" are ticked;
· Change "Resolution" to 96 ppi;
· Change "Width" or "Height" in "Pixel dimensions" to an appropriate value, as discussed above.
· Save the file in JPEG (e.g., Pete_Cratering.jpg) format, with a compression value of 60%. In Photoshop Elements, use the "File>Save for Web" option. Higher quality values, e.g. 80%, are usually indistinguishable on screen, but they increase the file size.
Warning!! Use a different filename from your original file! Otherwise you'll overwrite your original file with the new, low-resolution version. Also, when you close the file, the program will probably ask you whether you want to save it-choose "No".

SLIDESHOWS:
I won't go into detail, but here are the crucial points:

If you're giving a slide show through a data projector, do a dry run first! Make sure everything works ok.

Assuming the computer's "screen resolution" is 1024 x 768, prepare your image files as if you were viewing them on-screen:
1. Change the resolution to 96 or 72 ppi, and
2. Set the longest dimension to 768 pixels if you want portrait and landscape images to have similar visual impact. If you don't mind the portrait-formatted images appearing much smaller, you can set the width of the landscape images to 1024 pixels.
3. Save as a JPEG with 60% compression (again using a different filename).

FINALLY...
In summary, for everything other than printing, do two things: drop the resolution to 96 ppi and reduce the pixel dimensions so that the image fits within the screen. Of course, if you want to email a photo for someone to print, you need to keep the resolution up around 300 ppi. If you have a bunch of those, please do those of us with dial-up connections a favour: burn the photos onto disc and post them. Thanks!

Pete McGregor

Pete's Post from Antarctica

In my spare time I've been ice climbing in the nearby icefalls with members of the SAR team. (and dressing in women's clothes. Contact me if you want the photo. I take bribes - Ed) Other than that my time has been busy with work. The days are getting very short, and by the time this is published our last sunset will have occurred. Temperatures are moderately cold, with minus 25 being normal. The coldest I've seen so far is minus 37, but it will get much colder once we lose the sun.

We have to create our own entertainment down here (Hence the women's clothing. He has been waiting years for the chance - Ed). This is something that happened two weeks ago:

Every Friday night we hold a darts tournament. On this particular evening, South Pole Station (USA) joined us via HF radio. Americans came over to Scott Base from McMurdo Station. Other bases around Antarctica were invited, but many of them operate in different time-zones and were unable to participate via radio.

The Italian station at Terranova Bay is closed for the winter. The departing Italians normally stay a night at Scott Base as they head home.

The person looking after the HF radio temporarily installed in the Scott Base bar heard the following signal:

Scott-a Base-a, Scott-a Base-a this is Terranova, Terranova. Can you hear-a
us-a. Over

REPLY Terranova, this is Scott Base receiving. Go ahead, over.

Scott-a Base-a this is Terranova, can-a we join-a your darts-a please-a.

REPLY Terranova, this is Scott Base. Sure. We'd be delighted for you to
join us. Please advise the names of those playing. Over.

Scott-a Base-a this is Terranova. Our names-a are Guiseppie, Mario and-a
Roberto, over.

REPLY Terranova, this is Scott Base. Standby while we make sure everybody
else is ready, over.

South Pole, South Pole this is Scott Base. We are being joined tonight by
the Italians at Mario Zuchelli Station at Terranova Bay, over.

The darts competition proceeded over the next hour or so, with the Italians just managing to stay ahead of the others. Each team announced their scores from every throw to the radio operator at Scott Base, who was keeping the totals on a spreadsheet. Whenever the South Pole threw their darts well, the lucky Italians managed slightly better. Eventually the Italians won. South Pole were only slightly behind, and Scott Base came last.

At that point we thought we should confess that we were actually two New Zealanders, not three Italians. We were in my office at Scott Base talking on a ham radio. We reminded them that Mario Zuchelli Station at Terranova Bay was closed for the winter, and that people should have remembered farewelling the Italians when they stayed at Scott Base on the way out.

It was very funny, and was hard to carry off without laughing on the radio.

Pete de Joux from Antarctic

Looking Ahead - Dates for Diaries

Put the times and dates of two more NZAC meetings into your diaries now. They are:

· 7:30 pm, Sunday, 8 May: Banff is back in town! For the third year in a row, the Wellington section of the New Zealand Alpine Club will be showing a selection of the best films from the last Banff Mountain Film Festival. We've booked the Paramount Theatre for the occasion. Tickets are available from outdoor equipment stores such as Bivouac, Mainly Tramping, and Mountain Designs. Tickets are selling like hot cakes, so be quick or be disappointed…

· 8:00 pm, Monday, 13 June: The Wellington section's annual photographic competition. This year there's a new judge - Paul Clarke, who showed his own first-class photos about climbing Kenya's remotest mountain to the Wellington section in late 2003. Wellington section member, Peter Laurenson, fared outstandingly well in last year's national photo competition, so we're looking forward to seeing lots of good entries in this year's Wellington section photo comp. Start sorting your slides now… Further details and an entry form are contained elsewhere in this issue of VertiGO.

For Sale/Wanted to buy

Personal Locator Beacon
I have an emergency locater beacon. When I am not using it, which is quite e few weekends, it is essentially a useless lump of plastic. If people want to borrow it for their weekend trips, then thay can borrow it off me. It is hardly going to depreciate with use. Club members might as well get as much use out of it as possible. I just hope that while people carry it, they don't have to "use" it. Know what I mean?
Anyway, the offer is there. People can contact me on this e-mail address if they want to borrow it.
Sam - Samuel.Newton@nzpost.co.nz

Adjustable 12 point crampons with key in Charlet Moset crampon bag. Good condition. $140.
Contact Chris on 021 307 353.

Makalu La Sportiva boots, mens size 41 European. Hardly worn though have been snow sealed, in excellent condition. $200neg,
phone Erin 021 339382 or email erinpentie@yahoo.com

For Sale:
· Mountain Designs Fox alpine pack 50L -used once and decided got too many
packs! New $449, Sell $150
· Adidas Womens running shoes s9 US -Brand new, been sitting around for
few months. New $289, Sell $150
· Mountain Designs Outrace pack (Adventure racing/Running) -Been used few
times, as new. New around $110, Sell $50
· Thermarest explorer (short) Thick and comfy. Sell $40
· Asolo AFS Supersoft (Plastics) Mens s9 1/2 UK -Used few times,
minor surface scuffs, wrong fit for my foot. Sell $150
Items in Wellington, Pics Available: Email Matt mattm@ampro.co.nz

Quiz Number 16

THE ANSWER TO QUIZ NUMBER 16
Our aged chairperson (his description not mine! - Ed), Nigel Roberts, took offence at the following statement: "He was now 65 years of age, an age when most mountaineers have hung up their ice axe and retired to the rocking chair." Consequently, quiz number 16 was "Who was that statement made about, and who made that statement?"

Bob McKerrow said it about Ebenezer Teichelmann. Only one correct answer was emailed to Nigel Roberts, so Peter Pohl took home a bottle of French white wine from the 4 April section night meeting. Congratulations, Peter (who has said he's going to wait until his wife Vivienne returns from the Annapurna Sanctuary before opening his prize)!

QUIZ NUMBER 17
Everest was climbed in 1953; while K2 and Cho Oyu were first climbed in 1954. Quiz number 17 is, therefore, Which 8,000 metre peaks (if any) were first climbed in 1955, and who were the first New Zealanders to climb any 8,000 metre peaks first climbed in 1955?

Email your answers to NR@nzalpine.wellington.net.nz by no later than noon on Sunday, 1 May. Be sure to put Quiz Number 17 in the email's subject line (or else your email is highly likely to be destroyed as spam). Because the winning entry will be drawn by Colin Monteath before his talk at the section night meeting Monday, 2 May, the winner of Quiz Number 17 will receive a bottle of Canterbury wine.

And here are the club trips ....

Wellington Section Trips - Trips are a key part of the section, so if anyone has an idea about a trip, no matter how vague, come and chat to Michele Domaneschi or Rachel Depree (trips @nzalpine.wellington.net.nz)

Trips can be of any length, any level of difficulty, and any size. Simply email us, or approach us at the monthly meeting, and we can help you get going.

See you in the hills! WE NEED MORE TRIPS! COME ON GUYS

Trips for the Calendar for the rest of 2005…

Check out the proposed and planned new list for 2005. We need trip organisers to put their hands up for what are bound to be outstanding adventures. There's something for everyone in here with a mix of snow, rock and even a spot of ski touring.

Quotes to make you think?

"The best climber in the world is the one who's having the most fun."

"Some of the world's greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible."

"They say you can't do it, but sometimes it doesn't always work."

"No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible."

"Alcohol, firearms and a 4 wheel drive can go a long ways towards making a rain day into a fun rest day."

Photo Comp 2005
13 June - Wellington Section Photo Competition

It's that time of the year again: make use of the 'in between' autumn weather to sort through your photo collections for those champion shots.
If you haven't had any luck winning Nigel over during the last couple of years, take heart! Paul Clarke will be judging this time around.

There will as usual be six categories (alpine activity, alpine nature, alpine general, rock, humour, and photojournalism) and, as usual, entries should be delivered to Mainly Tramping. In a break with tradition, however, Mainly Tramping will be located in the Grand Arcade, at the bottom end of Willis St.

So rip, cut, print or photocopy the entry form off the back of this newsletter, and get it and your pictures in to Mainly Tramping - in the Grand Arcade - by 4pm on 3 June.

Photo Competition Entry Form