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    Overnight facility use in the Tongariro Northern Circuit : a thesis submitted to the Institute of Information Sciences and Technology in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Applied Statistics at Massey University
    (Massey University, 2002) Olsen, David
    The Tongariro Northern Circuit is located in the central North Island on the volcanic plateau, and encompasses both Mt Ngauruhoe and Mt Tongariro. The Circuit has high day and overnight use during the summer season and has been classified as a Great Walk by the Department of Conservation who administer it. This thesis focuses on the summer season use of the overnight facilities on the Tongariro Northern Circuit (TNC) with the intention of providing DoC Management with an accurate and detailed profile of users, the factors that influence use and the problems being generated by it. • Profile of users: This describes who uses the facilities, when they are used, the tracks and directions predominantly used and methods of transportation to and from the Circuit. • Factors influencing use: These include the time of year and week, the weather and the effect of weather forecasts. • Problems: Congestion in huts is discussed, including the related hut design flaws. The thesis makes comparisons with information gathered seven years ago and identifies the changes in the both the user groups and their preferred routes within the Circuit. The profile of the New Zealand users as a group differs significantly from that of international users. These differences are explored. Two models are presented that account for about 80% of the variation in the highly fluctuating overnight use. These models also estimate the effects of weather on use. Three main sources of data have been used in this thesis. They include a survey that was designed specifically—the full process of gaining approval, creating and running the Tongariro Northern Circuit 2000/1 summer survey is presented along with the results. The other two main sources of data include the Great Walks pass butts and the hut wardens' observations of use.
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    Making meaning through movement : hiking the Cathar Trail in the south of France : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Social Anthropology at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2016) Menzel-Bruhin, Ariadne
    This thesis explores how meaning is formed through movement. It argues that the way in which hikers perceive, experience and make sense of their environment is contingent on their movement. Specifically, it explores walkers’ lived experiences and perceptions of their environments on a long-distance hiking trail. The thesis is based on participant observation on the Cathar Trail in the south of France in 2013 and on archival research. The Cathar Trail lends itself to such an investigation because it invites visitors who are intent on hiking and on the history of the Cathars, a persecuted thirteenth-century religious minority. To interrelate processes of interpretation and interaction in an anthropological perspective, I adopt a phenomenological approach and Ingold’s (2000a) ecological approach to human-environment interaction in combination with interdisciplinary and interpretative approaches. The thesis situates hikers’ journeys in socio-political and geographical contexts by deconstructing the twentieth-century historical narratives, heritage discourses and sites (ruined fortresses) which are the basis of the Trail. I then show that hikers came to know the Trail through their physical engagement with their environments. To highlight that walkers’ environment-related movement was constitutive of their sense of place, I propose the holistic concept of terroir as an alternative to ‘landscape’. My discussion of wayfinding demonstrates that hikers made their own way, shaped by movement, topography, sensory perception, technologies and other hikers. I show that walking the Cathar Trail produces a knowledge particular to people’s bodily movement along a path and to histories. Crucially, I develop the theory of a hiking spatiality which is generated by, and specific to, hikers’ movement along the Trail. Locally specific but encompassing in its scope, the thesis seeks a common ground in movement. Throughout, I use photographs to engage the reader through intimated and intuited bodily experience. Interweaving epistemology and methodology, the thesis is at one and the same time about meaning making in movement and is in itself a form of knowledge formed from movement (in particular through the employed 'walking-with’ method) according to a research agenda.