Last week Thomas,
his colleague Andre and me went on a fieldtrip to Marlborough to
sample soils. Marlborough is a famous wine growing region in New
Zealand, so when we said “we're going sampling in Marlborough”,
people assumed we were going on a wine tasting trip.
They had asked me
along to help carry part of the gear, because the sites were
relatively remote and the soils rather stony, and there seemed to be
more soil coring and digging items than two men of fighting age could
carry. Also obviously I am well familiar with sampling rocky
uncooperative soils in New Zealand and carrying insane amounts of
sampling gear, which is the sort of experience that was needed on
this trip I suppose.
First we drove for
hours and hours and hours. The direct highway North to Blenheim, our
headquarters for the week, was still in repair following the 2016
Kaikoura earthquake, so we had to drive the inland detour. Not only
is the inland detour much longer, there were also roadworks
approximately every 5 kilometers where we had to stop and wait, or
drive very slowly. This because for a year the inland detour has seen
enormous amounts of traffic, for which it is not build.
All sites were in
pastoral hill country, we drove over 4wd tracks until we could get no
further and then proceed to walk. At the first site it was still
around 30C, very dry, it was very steep, and covered in dry silky
grasses that offered no grip whatsoever, so that we were constantly
sliding down the slope. Through some initial difficulties in finding
the site, Thomas had been wandering up and down the slope in the dry
heat before Andre and me arrived with a few tonnes of gear and only 3
liters of fluids, plus some lunch including a bag of grated cheese.
The bag of cheese would haunt me until much later in the week.
We tried to core the
soil with the superheavy core driller, and this worked really well to
our surprise, until it became clear that the stones in the soil had
destroyed the core's end so that we couldn't get the sample out, and
so we had to dig manually for our samples. This proved tricky as the
soil was stony, it was difficult to balance ourselves such that we
could dig without falling down the slope. Meanwhile we were running
out of drinking water, and although we had a nice lunch of wraps with
red pepper and grated cheese, when we were finally packing up the
samples and gear, I noticed my pack was completely soaked in cheesy
fat. The grated cheese had melted into a horrible cheese-blob and the
fat was all through my backpack. Before I noticed I had already
propped the pack up against my legs so it wouldn't disappear down the
slope while I packed it, so my pants were also full of cheese fat.
The rancid smell accompanied us for the rest of the week and on a
tramp Thomas and me did on the weekend, and has put me off cheese for
a few years I think.
We barely made it
back up the hill to the car, each carrying our body weight (or so it
felt) in gear and samples, hanging on to grass to prevent going
downhill again, two steps up one down.
The next 2 days were
therefore perhaps easier, it was less hot, and slightly less steep,
but we got stuck in a thicket of thorny bushes, we sidled a mountain
for ages as the GPS kept telling us we were a perpetual 400 m away
from the site, we despaired over rocks in the soil that made it
challenging to take “undisturbed” samples for bulk density. We
lamented the emails and text messages from our dedicated work contact
and job leader who obviously didn't understand how far, steep and
unkind the sites and soils were and kept asking why we didn't use all
the heavy bulky equipment or elaborate techniques (we never took the
heavy corer anywhere again). Thomas and Andre did some impressive 4WD
tricks, and we met different kinds of farmers who either assured us
they would rescue us at the end of the day, or who complained we
hadn't listened to their vague instructions. I dropped a measuring
tape on the last site and it rolled down the slope, never to be seen
again. We were surrounded by goats who came to check us out and
followed us off the plot, while we negotiated their tracks up and
down a gorge.
All the while we had
magnificent views and desolate country-feel. It was quite a
challenging trip, but I enjoyed it nevertheless. And a good
introduction to pastoral New Zealand soils.
On Friday we
returned, and after much deliberating decided to take the highway 1
that was reopening on that day at an unclear point in time in the
afternoon. We stood in line for 3 hours until they opened the highway
for the first time in 1 year, 1 month and 1 day following the
Kaikoura earthquake (this was a proud milestone for New Zealand), and
it was interesting to see all the landslides, the coastline that had
been raised by a meter through the quake, with hundreds of seals
hanging out. For a change everyone on the highway drove careful and
sensible and slow, enjoying the views and taking care of ongoing
works. And with that milestone, we returned safely to the soil fridge
at work, unpacked and went home, trying to get rid of the lingering
cheese smell...
