Adventure yarn: The TitterPlatt Traverse, with Jeremy Platt
Adventure yarn: The TitterPlatt Traverse, with Jeremy Platt
An epic 1700km multi-mode crossing of New Zealand's South Island by foot, packraft and packscooter. What's a packscooter? Let's find out!
Kia ora, Dunc here.
How about this for an epic multi-mode adventure?
Some moon phases ago, I was contacted semi-out-of-the-blue by a guy who’d done a similar packraft journey to me, albeit across Te Waipounamu/the South Island. Jeremy Platt got in touch after hearing me on Abigail Hannah’s podcast ‘Aotearoa Adventures’. One early summer evening, while living at Rārangi DOC campsite, I plucked up the courage to give this wild roamer a call. As I listened to his tale, my fascination only grew.
“Ah, I’ve got this little kick scooter that I designed and made that we used on the roads,” he casually dropped in at one point. Excuse me! A what? It's a foldable scooter that can be dismantled and used, among other things, as a paddle. Sounds impressive, right?
Called the ‘TitterPlatt Traverse’ - the adventurers involved were Constance Titterton and Jeremy Platt. This 1730 kilometre, 100-night journey through the extremes of Aotearoa was more of an outdoor extravaganza than a simple A to B route. Their goal stretched beyond simply getting from one end of the island to the other as fast as possible. Their intention was to zig-zag many times over the Southern Alps!
I loved every second of our phone chat, but didn't take enough notes to publish him verbatim. Luckily, a thing called email Facebook Messenger has been invented, so I sent through some questions later. Here are Jeremy’s responses:
Dunc: What came first, the scooter or the idea for the journey?
Jeremy: The idea of the journey came first. I actually walked some of the TA the year after it was completed and always wanted to do a long trip like that. I wasn't a packrafter at that point and I did my first backcountry float on that trip with my sleeping mat (a bad idea) and also came up with the idea of the scooter there after walking many hours on the road to bail out after some rain.
D: Can you explain WilderWheels?
J: So, following on from that, I was like, I need to make some lightweight roller skates or skateboard or something to transport me to the trail and then also between wilderness sections. I settled on a scooter, that I thought would take six months to build - it took a fair while longer!
Once I had the scooter idea, the next iteration was make it turn into walking poles and paddles. The idea being that this would open what famous Finnish scoot man Alpo Kuusisto calls ‘free wandering’ - always having the right tool to move through a landscape.
D: Was there a moment where the scooter came into its own? Did you get to fly down 20km of hill in 30 minutes and feel vindicated for the extra luggage?
J: Scooting from the end of the Heaphy Track to Karamea, we couldn't believe how quickly we put it behind us. On the Heaphy every kilometre was hard won and took an age; on the road to Karamea the kilometres flew by. Also, when we couldn't get over Matiri ridge, we were able to do a 100km scoot detour to get back on track. Scooting is so much faster. It’s generally faster than rivers, too. You can average 10-15 km/h.
D: What was the highlight of the whole traverse?
J: My highlight was the Nelson Lakes/ Waiau River section. Constance's highlight was the Gorge River/ Pyke River section.
D: What was the toughest section?
J: Toughest parts were probably at the start and the end. At the start figuring everything out before we got good at it and being repulsed at Matiri ridge. (In their blogs, they write of Matiri Ridge: “Confronted with a narrower and narrower ridgeline, we attempted to head to the left and hook up again with the saddle visible behind this knob. Unfortunately, three hours and 600m of hard travel later, we returned to the same spot…”) We finished the trip in July, so at the end the frozen roads and cold short days were pretty hard too.
D: How did you get through?
J: Being there with two people made it a lot easier. We also had to reroute the trip due to snow hitting the passes early-ish that year.
D: Did you have to make any emergency gear repairs or bodges?
J: Haha yep, had to make plenty of repairs. In Karamea I had to fix a part using the few materials I had available to me - namely a small amount of surfboard repair resin and a cotton bag with pigs printed on it. We also had lots of tyres blow out until we figured out the correct ones that were really durable.
D: Did you make any mistakes and how did you resolve them?
J: We made a couple of mistakes - not using the postal service to bounce bag supplies ahead - we changed that eventually. We also once left toilet paper for an 11 day section out of our resupply box - we became connoisseurs of local floral toilet paper.
D: What was the biggest surprise?
J: Ohhh I'm not sure what the biggest surprise was. What was the biggest surprise on your trips for context?
D: Hahaha. My biggest surprise was how boring paddling across big lakes at 5.6km/h is! The amount of podcasts you get through is astounding!
J: Okay… the most surprising thing was how good sphagnum moss is as a toilet paper substitute. I felt like a savage going back to 3-ply!
D: What advice would you give anyone thinking of trying a similar endeavour?
J: For those thinking of doing something similar, probably start small and work your way up - especially with whitewater. Plan an overnighter, a 3 and then a 7+ dayer. Once you have your kit and your techniques dialled you should be ready for most stuff. Become friends with topo maps and trip reports (though some of these reports can be wildly inaccurate). If on water be incredibly wary of whitewater and wind and tides on flat water. Do courses, spend a couple of years learning the skills and buy Luc Mehl’s packrafting guidebook.
D: How do we find out more about WilderWheels and what they're capable of? Can anyone order one?
J: Unfortunately I'm a bit of a perfectionist and also have too many hair-brained schemes and ideas, so they currently aren't yet for sale, but hopefully soon. When I finished the trip I moved back to Australia and the landscape and mentality there are not great for scooting. Combined with some health problems, pandemic and a couple of years spent sailing I didn't work on the scooter for a long while. Now I am back living in Queenstown, NZ, it is the top of my list of things to do. You can find out more about the scooters at WilderWheels.com.
Right, just Dunc here again now. Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed my chat with Jeremy and found it inspirational for your next mission, whatever that may be. You can read all their blogs by visiting titterplatt.wordpress.com.
Catch ya next time!