Training with Kyle

Chopping in the sunshine, what a wonderful day

While I was in Rotorua I had the extreme good fortune to get to train some with Kyle Lemon, of the STIHL Timbersports New Zealand national team (on stock saw in https://youtu.be/36rmtxWOQCI?t=18m41s ). I first got to know Kyle when we were preparing and shuttling rounds for the Rotorua Axemen’s Carnival, and had some good conversation about woodchopping and Timbersports as I rode with him on trips in his truck. At the Carnival, I then borrowed a pair of chainmail socks from him, and he came over to watch my chop in my second H-chop event. He must have felt pity on (or seen potential in) me, because he later offered to give me tips if I would come over to his house the following week. I gladly accepted, and for my last two months in Rotorua, every afternoon that we were both available I biked the twenty kilometres up along the lakeside to his place. The first half was on a wonderful bike path running parallel to the old railroad tracks, and I got to know every stretch and shortcut of the route. Once I broke my chain halfway there, but, Kiwis being the nice people they are, I was soon able to hitch a ride the rest of the way. As a serious axeman, Kyle had a dedicated area in his backyard. H-chop stands, a V-chop stand, and even a short springboard setup were all set in a concrete pad, next to stacks of leftover rounds to practice on and a pile of chopped halves of round blocks to split for firewood. His son competes in the U-16 chops (he is nine), and sometimes chopped in the stand next to me, displaying his superior technique, though he usually was riding his bike around and over the nearby dirt piles. Occasionally Kyle would also do a few practice chops while I was there, showing why he is on the national team as he blazed through logs at incredible speeds, massive chips sent flying (He makes up for not being as big as Jason and the others by being very quick and precise). Kyle works full-time as a police officer, yet still carves out the time to keep up with his training and remain competitive. He also puts his axeman skills to practical use; one afternoon after an especially blustery day I came over to find him industriously clearing out a tree that had fallen nearby to block half the road. Kyle also always gave me a ride back into town, and we would chat in a way I couldn’t while winded from chopping.

Kyle chopping at the Rotorua Axemen's Carnival

For the most part, Kyle let me borrow one of his older and heavier competition axes to train with (although once he let me do a few chops with a brand new axe that he was ‘seasoning’ before using it in competition). This axe held sentimental value, as he had gotten it from David Bolstad, whose name was etched on the head. David and Kyle grew up chopping together, and the former went on to win five STIHL Timbersports Individual World Championships before he suddenly and tragically passed away as he walked off the field after winning yet another woodchopping competition in 2011. Himself the son of champion axeman Sonny Bolstad (both of whom have championship events named after them at the Rotorua Axemen’s Carnival), his own son (now 13) carries on the woodchopping tradition.

David Bolstad's axe that I got to use

But as for the training! Kyle bemoaned on a few occasions that we had not chanced to meet up earlier. He said he could make me as good as Nathan “Bucket” Waterfield and competitive on the US STIHL circuit if we had a year to train together, and it was a shame I hadn’t found him immediately to maximize my 5 months in Rotorua. We decided that the limited time we had would be best spent in honing basic skills and building up my technique before I tried to go for speed (Please feel free to skip to the last four paragraphs of this post if you don’t want to read about the technical details of going through an H-chop). For simplicity's sake, I’ll walk you, dear reader, through an H-chop (which we concentrated on) as though I were Kyle instructing Nathanael. Any errors I make as such are my own, and due to my mis-remembering rather than a lapse in Kyle’s teaching. Please discuss any techniques you see here with a qualified captain or coach; in woodchopping I am an amateur in the true sense of the word, “for the love of it”, whatever the ‘19s may think.

First, select a round from the stack. It is good to practice on all the different diameters you expect to chop to know how to pace yourself and structure your pattern of hits for each. For training now, mostly use 14” rounds to practice on a medium size, although you can chop 15” and 16” rounds when you are feeling ambitious, or a 12” or 13” round when you are feeling tired and only want a smaller chop to finish off the evening [remember that a 12” round is significantly less wood than a 12” square]. 

Second, prepare your chosen round. Slice and peel off the industrial grade cling-wrap that has been keeping the round moist. Set the round in the H-chop stand, using a maul (or a rigger when you are actually at a meet) to firmly set it onto the spikes on one side and lock it in with the swivelling spikes. When placing the round on the stand, take a look at the end-grain and decide whether you want the harder wood, where the growth rings are closer together if the round is not radially symmetrical, on the top or the bottom - whether you want the marginally more difficult section of the round block to be cleared out earlier or last. Next, find and mark the point on the round block in the centre of the stand (I cheated and marked this spot with a log crayon on the stand for later reference). For the most part you will want a V about the diameter of the log; on harder wood, like gum [Eucalyptus], you may want a narrower V to remove less wood, but pine is soft enough for the full width. On a 14” block, holding the tape measure at 14”, centre the 7” on the earlier marked centre of the log. Then shift the measure between ½” and 2” toward your dominant side, where you will start your drives (I usually marked a 14” at 8” drive-side and 6” chip-side). This offset will make sure your drives overlap and your chips connect; the variance in offset is based in part on how well you will be able to keep your line when chopping, 1” offset of the V on each side of the block is usually sufficient.

Third, having drawn a line along the top of the block and marked the centre, draw your Vs. Start with a light, straight line between the chip sides of each measurement (my left looking down over the block). Next draw in the drive lines, at the same angle as the chip line so the points are offset horizontally about 2” and share about 3” of chip line. This gives a bit of leeway when you get to the centre of the block if you have veered inside of your lines, to ensure that all the fibres are still severed and the halves will break apart. What you really do not want is for the points of your Vs to switch sides and force you to sever the halves on a chip. Sometimes, on older rounds that wave gotten a thin film of slime the log crayon doesn’t really take and you have to scrape them with a rigger and follow the marks you can make as best you can, but on dry blocks you can draw more precise lines. With the most precise lines, you want to actually make them slightly convex curves, as I will explain later (see the below image).

Figure 1) Diagrammed block, looking down
Note the angle of the footholds, and how the edges of the V curve in

Fourth, chop your footholds (it is entirely too difficult to balance atop a smooth round). You want to make them large enough to securely stand and rotate on, but not overly long, as chopping into your footholds is an automatic disqualification in competition (removing part of your chopped wood before time starts). You generally chop down 2” or 3” deep to get a wide enough platform to position your feet for chopping (because the Vs are offset, the footholds can be a bit longer on the chip side, but I generally had a tight squeeze against the drive side when I rotated to the chip. I ended up often having to consciously hang my heels out over the edge rather than my toes. Although I always wore chainmaile socks, they don’t have the blunt force resistance of Dartmouth’s robot boots). This chopping is done with a rigger, an old competition axe that is no longer even good for practice, but still serves a purpose. When you have the knack of it, generally choking up on the handle, you can chop out your footholds and shave them down smooth in only a few strokes.

Footholds all chopped out. Add motivational markings on the faces of the Vs, despite the a-/be-mused looks you'll get
Note how the axe handle is screwed back together after Jason Wynyard started to split it with some powerful chopping

Fifth, you can finally mount the block and position yourself to chop. You always want your feet to be pointing at the same angle as the line you are cutting, with your shoulders perpendicular to it and your head straight so your body is square and directly behind the path of the falling axe. Keeping your feet, shoulders, and head aligned helps your sight along the axe’s path and chop precisely on your lines. It is helpful to have someone watching you to remind you to keep square, or even to video yourself for later reference (especially if you tend to get sloppy about it, as I did).

Sixth, either on a “Competitors, on your marks, three. . .two. . .one. . .GO!” or a “Handicap, one. . .two. . .three. . .” you can finally begin chopping for real! Try to stick to your pattern while chopping to maintain efficiency of cuts. Each blow should be aimed at severing new wood fibres, or chipping out already severed sections to expose more wood. Though sometimes unavoidable, repeating a chop in the same place can cost a second in a sport where results can come down to a tenth of that. Similarly, set your pattern to cover the most new wood with each hit, using the full width of the blade rather than overlapping hits by as much as half with the previous hit. This comes down to depth perception and muscle memory; when you are starting out practicing it can be helpful to dismount the block after a hit, before pulling your axe free, and note how closely your perception of how low you hit matches with the actual axe placement (I tended to not reach far enough down). With a 7 ½” wide axe blade it should only take a pattern of two drives/four hits to sever the width of an 11” block, allowing about an inch of steel to hang out on the top and bottom, and to overlap in the centre. For larger blocks you’ll want to use a three drive pattern/six hit pattern, evenly spacing the heights of your hits. Even on a six hit pattern, you’ll need to start with a four hit pattern until the top wood is cleared out and you have established a line of sight for your hits on the bottom wood, ideally in about two or three sets. Whatever the number, proceed in a circle as you chop; drive top, [drive middle,] drive bottom, chip bottom, [chip middle,] chip top, repeat circle (as opposed to the drive top, drive bottom, chip top, chip bottom pattern I have noticed some axemen in the States follow). Repeat a misplaced hit if you have to, but try to keep the rhythm going. Each chip (hit) should take a chip (piece) off the face of the block and expose deeper wood to take out on the next circle. Within a few sets, drawing an inch of steel out the top of the block, you should notice you have pretty much severed the top wood in your V, and can move on to a low pattern of the middle and bottom wood. Once the middle wood is also removed you can move to a few alternating strokes on the bottom wood, and finish a V with a line of hard drives to ensure you have severed the fibres on that side. Repeat this whole process on the other side of the block. If done correctly, the finishing lines of drives on each side will connect (or at least be close enough that more than enough fibres are severed and the connecting piece can pull apart lengthwise), and your block will fall neatly in twain. You’ll be able to feel how close you are by how much the block shifts with each hit, and customize your final few hits to this.

Body positioning is very important for maximizing power as well as accuracy. You should start a chop in position, waiting on the block for your “go” or handicap, lined up with your drive line and with the blade of your axe lightly resting on the top wood. Your hit is allowed to land as soon as time starts, so about a second beforehand you can lift your axe and have it falling with the signalling syllable. You will be starting with a drive, on your dominant side, with your dominant hand (my right) further up on the axe handle and guiding it. Like with batting baseballs, usually your dominant hand in woodchopping is also your writing hand, but this is not guaranteed and you should try a few swings with your hands switched to see what is most comfortable. As you raise your axe, your dominant hand should slide up the handle to right below the head (and indeed I barked my knuckles a good many times on the base of the head). At the top of your swing your axe should be above, but still slightly in front of you; The power in your stroke comes from the momentum of the head from gravity and pulling down on the axe, there is no advantage to a huge wind-up with the axe far behind your head. As you begin your downward stroke, your dominant hand should slide down the handle, reaching your non-dominant hand right before the head strikes. As it drops, your dominant hand should push the axe head slightly out away from you, lengthening its arc and speeding it up, as the non-dominant hand pulls slightly back to whip it around. Keep that top hand loose and let the axe follow its path; clenching both hands together at the bottom of the handle may pull the axe slightly off course and cause you to miss your line, just like how gripping a pencil too tightly will draw a crooked line. At the same time, you should add power by bending your knees and dropping your hips down and back (the affectionately named “butt pop” among Dartmouth Woodsmen).

At the top of your swing the axe is still marginally in front of you

Slide your dominant hand down the handle, and butt pop!

It is always valuable to keep the shapes of your chop in mind; the shape of the block, and the shape of the cut you are making in the wood. The blade of your axe is curved, so a line of chops where the horns of the axe overlap only by an inch or two leaves at those overlaps small triangles of uncut wood. Also, you want to try to hit the curved face of the round block close to perpendicular, which requires a slight modification of your swing to sever the full bottom and full top wood. For getting that bottom wood you will want to keep your hands further out in front of you so at the bottom of your swing, rotating your hands further forward, you can reach around and wrap the axe to get at the bottom, your axe handle ending up almost vertical. To contrast, to chop the top wood you’ll pull your hands closer to you as you finish the swing, ending with your hands right down between your legs, your elbows near your knees and your axe handle only a bit above horizontal.

Once you are practiced enough to hit exactly where you intend, due to the shape of the axe blade you will need to start rolling in the face of your cut. (Think of your block in three-dimensional space; the long axis of your block on the X, the horizontal short axis on the Y, and vertically on the Z.) Your axe is one of the simplest machines, a wedge, and as a wedge you cannot perfectly chop a plane (for this you’d want a woodworking broad-axe). If you try to repeat a chop in an identical plane, the bevel of your blade will hit before the edge of the blade, causing your blow to skip. The trick then is to place every deeper hit on a slightly greater angle to the x-axis, starting off on a shallower angle and finishing almost chopping square into the centre, so that the final face is faceted and curves in [see Figure 1]. This brings you back to your footwork; as the chop comes in at the angle your feet are at, you can fine-tune the former by adjusting the latter. An ideal face of a cut will be a smooth transition of facets; it is sloppy and less efficient if there are large ‘steps’ in the face where you kept missing your line to the inside. Failing to keep to your line on the inside will also cause you to bottom out on your V before you reach the middle, and force you to either go back and try to cut in at a steeper angle (and likely skip your axe a lot trying to restart cuts at such a slightly different angle) or to baseball your way through, driving straight perpendicular without any chips. When the professionals practice chopping they are dissatisfied with any hits more than about an eighth of an inch inside the line of the previous hit.

Congratulations! You have now chopped through a horizontal log! Work on getting your hits precise and rhythmic, then build up speed, and before you know it you’ll be sailing right through in no time at all!

When I showed up for one of my last practice sessions, Kyle explained to me that he had noticed a bit of a dent in the axe I usually used, and in attempting to hammer it straight a sizable chip had just broken off in the centre of the blade. Every cloud has a bit of a silver lining, however, and that chip in the blade left an obvious reference mark on the cuts it made, so going back to the cut faces of the block when I had finished I could easily tell where exactly the axe was for each cut and how much overlap my middle hits had with my top or bottom hits. This can be seen on a less prominent scale with any small imperfections there are on the edge of an axe, though, there is no need to seek out chips.

There is no better practice for chopping competitively than chopping practice blocks. It can be expensive and/or labour intensive to acquire as many fresh blocks a week as are needed for a rigorous practice routine, however. With saws, at least you are only using up a few inches of wood with each cut. One way to go about practicing chopping if you are limited on wood is to make single cuts, to stand behind a log and shave off an inch at a time at a 45⁰ angle as if it were a single side of a V. This allows you to practice accuracy and get a feel for the axe in wood, even if it doesn’t practice you in switching sides and other chopping aspects. For training the movements and weight, you can stand on a large tyre and hit it with a sledgehammer of the same heft as your axe, but there really is no substitution for actually putting axe to wood.

Kyle has gone to the STIHL Timbersports World Championship almost half a dozen times now with the New Zealand national team. The last few, in Europe, have been literally on the opposite side of the world, and he is debating whether it is worth it to go very many more times. He says there’s not as much exploring and socializing as he would like, flying all the way out there, as the team trains hard in the days leading up to the event, both off- and on-location, and then they are usually whisked back home as soon as the closing ceremonies wrap. Kyle talked about how he would like to extend the next such trip by another week or so for sightseeing around the spectacular locations they like to host these Championships in. The team relay tends to be on Saturday, however, and especially for those who are not competing in Sunday’s individual championship Saturday night is the time to cut loose, eat, drink, and be merry, hang out with the collected best woodsmen in the world. Kiwis being among the best in the world (3 out of 6 World team titles, 18 Individual titles since 1997) this is usually a joyous time, but Kyle will speak bitterly of the 2014 Relay. The Kiwis started off strong against the Hungarians, and ended up beating them by 14.5 seconds in an event that usually runs on the shy side of a minute total. However, instant replay showed that the guy on stock saw, relatively new to the discipline (Kyle was on H-chop that year), had only had seven of his requisite eight fingers over the line centred on the top of the log when the starter’s gun went off, one pointer finger hanging a few hairs too low. This mistake cost the Kiwis a 15 second penalty, abruptly kicking them out of the bracket of 16 in the first round by half a second in a year when there had been high expectations that they could capture first place for the third time running. This only goes to show how close everything is when you are competing at such a high level, small things like a split-second timing mistake or a hard knot can shift the balance against the best laid plans of mice and men.

Thank you, dear reader, for bearing with me through this exceptionally long blog post. I hope you learned something, or at least found it interesting; please feel free to leave me comments with your thoughts and any questions! Thanks again!

This old rigger is no longer the sharp, shiny comp axe it once was, but it still serves a useful function.

Axemen's Carnival!

The weekend finally arrived in January for my first competition in New Zealand woodsmens! Held during the Rotorua Agricultural & Pastoral (A&P) Show, this Axemen’s Carnival was one of the larger ones of the year, with several national or world championships and a few thousand dollars (NZ) of prize money to be distributed. I was lucky enough to be able to sign up to participate, the annual membership waved due to the brevity of my stay and only the modest entry fees and handicap booklets to purchase. I was all prepped the Friday before, when I realized I hadn’t assembled my outfit yet. It is the official dress code for New Zealand Axemen to wear white shoes and pants. This is probably to match with the posh uniforms of cricket and polo, but I suspect it is also to make it more obvious if you cut yourself on a razor-honed axe. White shoes were easy enough to find, if ill-fitting, but I could not find any long white pants for love or money after a long time searching. Eventually I wandered through the women’s section, and found the closest thing available, an extra-large pair of stretchy white skinny jeans. And I was to wear them chopping alongside some of the world-class legends of the sport; joy. Mercifully, no photos exist of me in these.

Some world-class axemen

Pants aside, Saturday I bounced out of bed bright and excited. I set off to bike the 13 kilometres around the lake to get to the fairgrounds, and rolled in alongside throngs of other fairgoers in the morning sun. I had a bit of time to stretch and warm up, but it turned out that I was in not only the first event of the day, a 19” single-buck, but also in the first heat of that event. To top it off, I was on the stanchion next to Jason Wynyard!!! (Jason is a legend of woodchopping, has won the STIHL Timbersports Individual World Championship 13 times, and holds the world records for 12” V-chop (12.11 seconds) and 19” single buck (9.395 seconds)). Bevin was kind enough to let me carefully use his peg-and-raker, but rusty in practice skills as I was I did not have a very impressive time, especially next to Jason. Watching later heats, I noticed that kiwi woodsmen single buck at a much more aggressive angle than I am used to seeing in the US, with saws drawn back up to shoulder height for additional weight to be thrown behind the push. The stanchions we used were infinitesimally adjustable for height, being of the design of two sunk steel posts welded to a steel pegboard to which the rounds were screwed, and each sawyer would have their wedger help then adjust the round height to the centimetre before sawing.

Setting up the saw I'll use, on some of the blocks lined up for chopping

This meet was just as packed with activities as Spring Meet, with more than two dozen events over two days, and dozens of competitors with their families. Although there were only six disciplines (H-chop, V-chop, springboard, single buck, crosscut, and team relay), for most disciplines there were multiple events on different sizes of wood, for different classes of competitors, and many events had multiple heats feeding into a bracket to place winners. Like at North Haverhill, competitors entered each event individually (excepting the relay and crosscut) and paid a participation fee that funded the given prize pot. Most competitor entered many events each day, carefully calculating how much energy they could expend in any given chop. The participation fees ranged from free for the little kids, 5 or 10 NZD for the smaller events, to around 50 NZD for entering an (inter)national title. Additionally, for the non-title events kiwi woodsmen use a handicap system (handicaps are written down after each meet in the little books you purchase and hold on to). This makes events more interesting to watch by closing the range of finish times, and gives slower choppers a bit more of a chance. Usually handicaps are under 30 or 45 seconds, but for some of the really fast choppers I saw handicaps past a minute or two (the chap who won the NZ title in springboard had a full 3 minute handicap when he later participated in a normal springboard event).

My next event was an H-chop, and this time I drew the stand furthest away from the announcer’s booth. Bevin again loaned me an axe and a pair of chainmail socks, and away I went. The rounds had been randomly assigned, and I found one with ‘N. Friday’ pinned onto it on a green card (next to the round labeled J. Wynyard). An elderly axeman volunteering as a timer helped me chip out my footholds on the round timber as I put on the protective socks. I enthusiastically started chopping when I heard my handicap, and in my excitement soon lost track of my pattern. Bevin called out tips as I went, which I filed away to apply the next day. Unlike many of the axemen the sides of my V were not plane smooth, but I had loads of fun.

A block of wood with my name on it!

With my events over for the day, I alternated my afternoon between watching others chop and saw, and exploring the rest of the fair. There were several acres of fairgrounds packed with everything you’d expect to see at a 4H show. Stock were paraded around and judged on their appearances, from alpacas and sheep to cows and pigs and horses. 

I did not expect quite so many alpacas

Strong men lifted and flung and carried many heavy objects, and children ran around hitting each other with inflatable hammers. There were waterslides and carnival games, carriage rides and parades of antique cars. I followed a cool bagpipe and drum band around for a while, who were decked out in full kilted regalia. A whole tent was set up with woodcarvers selling their wares, with some of them carving knick-knacks with portable tools right there. I bought a beautiful kauri (Agathis australis) pen, turned not from a protected standing tree, but from wood that had sunk into a swamp many decades ago and been preserved. An adjacent exhibit showed artifacts of the history of logging, from old saws to a coal-powered small train engine that had been used to pull trees out of the forest along narrow tracks. The saws included several two-man chainsaws with a handle on the end of the bar, and even a coal powered engine that turned an arm that pushed and pulled a crosscut saw blade! 

A coal-powered crosscut saw

I wandered through the food tent zone and purchased a cone of ice cream freshly blended with berries of my choosing, and circled back around toward the woodchopping. The stage around the corner from the woodsmen’s field hosted a variety of events. On that first day there were competitions of Scottish and Irish dancing, performed by very serious young girls in plaid skirts and sailor suits respectively. The bagpipes of the musical accompaniment at 9 in the morning were a fun soundtrack for the first few chopping events, but after a few repeats of the song over the radio (I suppose it is most fair to have everyone compete on the same song and dance) it got a bit old.

The afternoon chopping events I came back to included springboard, which I had only seen live before in Tokoroa. Here they added another board level, and the blocks 12 feet in the air seemed to touch the sky on top of their poles. I was yet again amazed by how solid the wedges of the boards could be set into the notches only a handful of blows made in the poles, the speed at which axemen could swarm up and down, and the composure they could maintain doing a V-chop while balanced on a board 10 feet in the air. The way that day’s springboards went, every competitor had to set a trio of springboards curving up the side of the pole, chop one face of a V-chop at the top, then descend and repeat for the other side. One of the springboard events was the New Zealand title, and it was a nail-biter, coming down to only a few blows and a few seconds.

Spectacular springboard

Another set of events I made a point of catching were the specific women’s divisions. Most of the lumberjills competing were on the New Zealand national women’s team, the Axeferns. Recently I was shown an article, https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/female-competitive-woodchoppers-are-axing-gender-stereotypes, which took a lot of pictures and interviews at this meet. It was three of these Axeferns in Tokoroa who invited me to sit with them to watch the chopping and gave me the contact info of the Club to follow up on which led to me competing at the Rotorua meet. As with the broad field of axemen, there were competitors ranging from Mikhayla’s rising star at 21 to Sheree’s decorated experience at past 60, all serious competitors but free with the congratulations and advice once everyone’s block was chopped. Their finishing time order changed with each event, and most of them also entered and placed well in the gender-inclusive events as well.

Women's single buck: From left: Sheree, Darcell (newly married to Charles, her wedge-man), Alma, Mikhayla, and Kylea.

Yet another set of events of interest were the U-16 H-chops. Competitors ranged from ages 8 to 15, but all were serious and practiced. Smaller lumberjacks wielded shorter, but no less sharp, axes, and as exaggerated handicaps got to start with a bit of their 10” blocks already chopped out. One family had four kids in the group, all third-generation choppers, and the sibling rivalry meant that no quarter was given between the youngest son and daughter, ages 10 and 11 or so, golden ponytail vs. honey buzzcut as their axe-heads flashed in the sunshine.

U-16 H-chop, ages (from L) 8, 10, 9,  11, 13, 15

It was also hugely educational to watch all the axemen, especially those who made the finals in each event. Five out of the six members of the STIHL national team were there, as well as international competitors from Australia, England, and Wales (and, as the announcer delighted in announcing once I introduced myself, America!) No one is perfect, but these guys and gals came pretty close, with few a misplaced stroke and smooth rhythms born of grueling years of practice. There were axemen still competing in their 70’s, slow and steady, and I heard many stories from a man in his 80’s who had only retired from chopping the year before (and who lived along my way home from work). At some point in the afternoon I went and got a few autographs of Jason's to send to friends back in the States along with some Tuatahi stickers. I brought my Dartmouth lumberjacket to rep my woodchopping origins, but it was such a fine summer day that the wool was excessive.

Jason winning a chop

The second day of the Carnival was much like the first day. I again competed in a single-buck and an H-chop. Bevin was also competing in the latter, so I borrowed chainmail socks from Kyle Lemon, of the NZ national team, who came over to watch me, and as well as giving me tips invited me to come over to train with him. Instead of dancing next door there were sheep-shearing contests, with a flood of wooly sheep on one side of the building pouring out the other side pink and sheared. Being the second day there was also the most hyped event, a 15” world championship H-chop with a total prize pot of NZ$2400. This attracted all the best axemen to enter, and had a bit of a dark horse winner in the 18-year old brother of a national team member, whose time of 27.31 seconds shaved a full quarter second off the previous record (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysxd73f6o8s). The day finished off with the team relay race, which comprised of a single buck, a V-chop, an H-chop, another V-chop, another H-chop, and the massive ‘butcher’s block’. The ‘butcher’s block’ is a 2-man ~16” V-chop, with one axeman chopping each face in succession.

The team relay; note the butcher's block

After an exciting weekend, it was relaxing to clean up, piling the mountains of chopped blocks into a truck to be hauled away for firewood, and hearing the thud as we pushed over the unstrapped springboard poles. I am so glad I got to participate in this amazing bit of New Zealand culture and share this bit of my experience with you, my readers.

Kyle and Brathan pushing over a springboard pole

Wood Collecting for the Axemen's Carnival

My first practice with the Rotorua Axemen’s Club was quite similar to my first practice with the Dartmouth Woodsmen’s Team, if they each could be called practice, as they both consisted of collecting rounds to be chopped later. After a short delay, rooted in the effect an accent can have on relaying street names, I was picked up by the Club president, Bevin Cavey, and we met up with half a dozen other axemen of the Club. Thus gathered, we proceeded south in a caravan of pickup trucks (called ‘utes’ down there, for ‘utility vehicles’) and trailers. Our task? To retrieve some poplar logs kindly donated for the upcoming Axemen’s Carnival at the Agricultural and Pastoral (A&P) Show. The logs came from a no longer needed farm windbreak, which another Club member had felled and bucked the week before, and lay as they fell. We started by extracting, with hooks and rolling, the rounds we wanted from their entangling brush. The rounds were each marked with their tree of origin and order within the tree, to best match up the rounds for events.

Rolling the rounds out into the field for pick up through the neighboring paddock was a maze, avoiding the deposits made by the recently vacated cows. It made little difference for the bark, however. All of the rounds were of a more than adequate size, and some were even too big to fit in the lathe. Thus, we determined the range of sizes we needed, drew rough circles a few inches larger in radius than necessary, and split off the excess sides with axes and mauls. 

Rounds were rolled out of the brush and trimmed of excess mass

This was like an inverted giant dot split; chop everything outside of the line

We had enough rounds to fill every truck and trailer to overcapacity, and half of them had to make return trips. Bevin had been driving the tractor, piling the brush away from the logs, so he tossed me his keys to drive his truck out to the road. He was off to park the tractor before I could point out my inexperience, so I carefully drove across the field for my first and only time operating a manual transmission with my left hand. Back at the fairgrounds, where the meet would be held and we collected the wood, the club had a large lathe. One by one we loaded crude-split rounds into its jaws and set the proper stop points for the blade, and then the large gas engine started spinning them. Back and forth the blade moved across the log, sending showers of wood shavings like confetti arching up into the sky. 

With showers of shavings crude rounds are spun into blocks for chopping

Occasionally the blade would dig too deep and send a larger chunk of wood rocketing a dozen metres, but luckily no one was hit. In the end we had many dozens of rounds shaved into perfect cylinders, then packed in their own sawdust to keep then fresh and wet for the next week’s chopping. It took longer than expected, and I didn’t end up getting any competitive chopping or sawing practice, but it was still a great day. 

Amassed fresh blocks assembled at the fairgrounds

Whirinaki

Welcome back to my blog, noble readers! I have fallen quite behind in my journaling, but now that I am back in Hawai’i I will endeavor to catch you all up on my assorted adventures in tramping and woodchopping! This entry brings us all the way back to November, when I made contact with the Rotorua Tramping Club and went for the first non-solo backpacking trip of my time in New Zealand…

Whirinaki Te Pua-a-Tane Conservation Park is southwest of Rotorua, almost to the sea, home to one of the world’s last remaining prehistoric rainforests. After the decline of the native timber industry after extensive efforts by the Maori and conservationists to save what remained, many towns in the area likewise declined, although the infrastructure for tourism is increasing and breathing new life into communities. The Whirinaki Forest Park’s 136,000 acres is home to many miles of hiking trails, 32 miles of mountain bike track in two long loops, and 9 Department of Conservation (DOC) huts. The forest contains many remaining giant native podocarps that escaped the logging of days past. The native bush is also home to many native animals, such as the whio, or blue duck, and like many places in New Zealand there is an aggressive trapping campaign to lower the numbers of voracious alien pests like rats and stoats.

The Rotorua Tramping Club is one of the oldest of such on the North Island (I think trailing Auckland and Taranaki). They meet once monthly, and I caught their last meeting of the year. It started off with a Christmas trivia game; I started off strong with my knowledge of magi gifts and reindeer names, then quickly faded as the questions turned to Kiwi geography (that I now know a lot more about), finishing with about 16 out of a possible 69 points. I was runner up for the booby prize, won by an Italian exchange student I would get to know on the upcoming hike. The RTC seemed a lot like the AMC groups I have met, largely middle-aged and retired folk who had a propensity for scheduling hikes and activities during working days. However, their penultimate tramping of the year (their ultimate tramp in the Kaimanawa Ranges conflicted with attending the Tokoroa Axemens Carnival) fit nicely into a weekend I had free.

I was picked up Saturday morning by the club president, a snowy-bearded gentleman originally from Scotland. As we drove out toward Whirinaki, along the same road I took to work in Kaingaroa, we talked about tramping around the world and how Kiwi tramping compares to that in the States. He said that he is in competition with his son as to who can visit the most DOC huts. He has a head start with his years, and has bagged a few that his son will never see, as the DOC loses a few of their over 950 huts every year to fire and new ones are constantly being built elsewhere to replace them. The rest of the group arrived at Whirinaki a few minutes after we did, and the five of us piled into the 4WD van of the local shuttle service to the trailhead.

Our objective for the trip was Central Whirinaki Hut, a relaxed XXX miles up the trail. The trail started with an informational board explaining the significance of the native podocarp forest we were entering, some of the largest species of native trees, whose populations have been decimated by logging in most places. We passed many such podocarps, the first few with small identification signs. Three members of our group were retirees and set the leisurely pace. The fourth group member was an exchange student from Italy named Sergio. Sergio was from a small city in the North, and quite conversational about his home region, hiking in the Alps, land access, bits of Italian vocabulary, and how confusing English names were when he first got here.

We pushed on, and shortly after came out into a clearing of tall grass and wildflowers, with a shelter and picnic table to stop at for lunch. The shelter was far beyond my expectations. I had an image in my mind of the classic 3-sided shelter from Dartmouth’s AT stretch, but an open front was about where the similarities between the two stopped. This shelter had a counter in the center of a 200 square foot floor plan, complete with sinks with running water from a rooftop catchment water system. A woodstove sat in the offset corrugated iron chimney box, along with an axe by a pile of firewood and a set of pots. Four bunks, complete with mattresses, lined the walls to complete thus quasi-cabin.

For most of the remainder of the hike the trail followed the river, albeit carved into the bank 20 feet above the water. In a few locations the steep bank had given away in a slip, and the temporary reroutes involved short, steep climbs up to go over the tops of the slide footprints. Otherwise the trail was wide, flat and smooth enough that I could have happily biked along it; at one point shortly before the hut a tunnel cut straight through a ridge rather than climbing an extra 15 feet. As well as all the markers for stoat traps, and the orange triangles nailed to trees that serve the same purpose as white blazes, I noticed other periodic markers, with sequentially rising numbers. One of my guesses was that these were marking the percent of the way we were to the hut, which seemed to be supported when we hit 100 right before rounding the corner to see the hut, but I lost track of them on the return hike and couldn’t verify their beginning number and location.

As for the hut! This was the first DOC hut I had been to, and I had high hopes based on the quality of their mere shelters. The hut had what I would later find to be a standard layout, two bunkrooms to sleep 25, and a large common area with a woodstove and food preparation areas. Cut off by an internal wall was the locked warden’s quarters, where he or she would stay when making a periodic visit for monitoring or maintenance. All this for only NZ$10/person (US$6)! Our party was the only one there that night, but I decided to stick with my original plan (and save NZ$5) and camp out, given I had packed my hammock set-up. There were ample trees nearby, halfway to the familiar stream, which now burbled merrily in riffles and was home to a remaining population of the whio (blue duck).

On Sunday we bid goodbye to my original ride, who was taking an additional two days to complete the full circuit (if only I had the time), and packed up to retrace our steps. About two miles from the end three of us elected to walk the other side of a loop track that covered some new terrain and small waterfalls. Our shuttle had not yet arrived, so we set down our packs to wait at the trailhead benches. Up until this time Sergio had done a better job than I had in sticking to the group pace rather than distractedly hiking faster, demonstrating youthful spryness mostly only in clambering over the landslides. I was happy with the hiking we had done so far, but Sergio apparently had a bunch of bottled up energy and pointed out that there was a short trail to a notable waterfall that left from the same trailhead we were at. Ever game for a challenge and extra scenic points, I agreed with him that the prescribed 45-minute round trip could be done in the 20 we had until the shuttle’s scheduled arrival, if we ran. Sergio had been hiking in trail running shoes, I in full hiking boots, and I was out of breath after we went up and down several small valleys on the mile to the waterfall. The falls made it worth it though, as they were pleasingly tumultuous and voluminous. There was a pool at the base, much like the one I would visit later on the Kepler Track at Iris Burns, and we took a short, frigid swim before jogging back to meet the shuttle on time. 

A very fancy shelter!