The Tramping Report

CTC ROR Submissions

I'm sure it's obvious to any tramper that looked at them that the Christchurch Tramping Club's submissions on DoC's "Recreational Opportunity Review" (on retaining huts and tracks etc) were embarrassingly impotent.

The club's submissions had a fairly low success.

Apparently those that penned the submissions  for the club responded by just blaming everyone except themselves, eg the Federated Mountain Clubs among others.

However I can't help but compare their effort with the results Honora and I got from our private efforts. And we only selected the huts and tracks we believed were most at risk. We didn't really think we had a hope with any of them. But sometimes it's important to just be seen to be on the right side, and making an effort. But we did ask people in the tramping community, if they agreed with what we were doing, to please give us their support by saying so.

We ended up with multiple submissions on our most important projects.

DoC changed its position on all of them. We were totally gobsmacked by some of the changes they agreed to, eg Pfeifer Biv.

Clearly our approach was one that worked.

Now it's for the CTC to decide whether its members are being well served by the club's current approach to submission writing, whether it's ROR, Tenure Review or whatever.

Who needs trip organisers?

It was the Christchurch Tramping Club AGM. All the important seats on the 16 person committee were filled - Patron, President, Vice Presidents, Secretary, Treasurer, Captain, Quartermaster, Editor, etc, etc, and even the half a dozen odds-and-ends positions. However there were two people missing - the trip organisers.

Hmmm.....

Aren't the trips organisers the first thing a tramping club needs? I'd always thought that so long as there was someone organising trips, a club could get by with virtually all of the other seats empty.

Maybe the club's getting things the wrong way round.

Last year, the CTC got through three people in the weekend trip organiser role. As one of them, I've got a pretty good idea why no-one would take it on this year.

I was the club's Trip Convenor from 1993-1995. It was a much bigger job then than it is now, but I found it so interesting I didn't mind the workload. It became one of the most satisfying, and fun, things I've tried my hand at. It was a good personal growth experience too. And the number of people on club trips doubled over that period.

No room for job satisfaction now
When I became involved again as Trip Organiser in 2004 I was disappointed to find quite a different committee culture and chairing style from how things worked in the early nineties.

I found it impossible to get through the changes I knew would improve the quality and enjoyment of club trips.

Sadly, the committee was dominated by people who didn't realise the club's constitution was set up to allow a high degree of independance to people elected into various key roles. Instead a few believed they had a right to obstruct or veto anything they didn't like that someone else was doing.

So who would want to take on the role of trip organiser? Anyone who's able to do it can just organise their own trips, and avoid the grief.