About
About the trip report database
What this is
A searchable, read-only database of trip reports from the Wellington Tramping and Mountaineering Club (WTMC). It holds 3,193 reports and 8,724 photos, one record per trip, drawn from several sources and linked together. It is a work in progress: it is not an official club publication, and the text of many older reports is still waiting to be proofread.
Are you yearning for adventure, new friendships, and a deep connection to nature? Look no further than the Wellington Tramping and Mountaineering Club (WTMC)! Since 1947, WTMC has been the heart of Wellington’s outdoor community, bringing together passionate trampers, climbers, and outdoor enthusiasts of all levels. WTMC is more than a club—it’s a community where adventure meets friendship and growth.
Where the reports come from
Club members have been writing up their trips since the club began in 1947. Those stories have been scattered across decades of paper and the web, and this site gathers them in one place.
- The journals (1948 to 2018). Over 120 of them, plus the anniversary books. The older ones were scanned from paper, so you'll see the original pages. Their text is still rough in places, and volunteers are slowly typing it up.
- The newsletters (1969 to 2013). Scanned from the club's collection. A few issues are missing; see below if you can help fill the gaps.
- The club website. Nearly everything written up on wtmc.org.nz since about 2009, along with a spreadsheet of past trips that helped fill in dates, grades and leaders.
- Trip schedules. The club's trip programmes from 1948 to 2027 list 5,180 planned trips. Where we could match one to a report, the two are linked.
Here's how it adds up. Where a report turned up in more than one place, it's only counted once:
| Newsletters | 1,287 |
| Club journals | 1,046 |
| Website and club sheet | 860 |
And by decade, for the trips we have a date for:
| Decade | Newsletters | Club journals | Website and club sheet | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1900s | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 1940s | 1 | 73 | 2 | 76 |
| 1950s | 0 | 161 | 1 | 162 |
| 1960s | 2 | 215 | 1 | 218 |
| 1970s | 101 | 124 | 0 | 225 |
| 1980s | 258 | 120 | 0 | 378 |
| 1990s | 365 | 229 | 28 | 622 |
| 2000s | 217 | 88 | 9 | 314 |
| 2010s | 343 | 35 | 427 | 805 |
| 2020s | 0 | 0 | 392 | 392 |
| Date unknown | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
The club's publications
How the club shares its stories has changed a lot over the years, from typed pages to a website.
- The journal. The first issues came out in 1948, every couple of months at first, then about four times a year through the 1950s and 60s, and less often in the early 70s. The first annual was Tongue and Meats 1974-75, which proudly calls itself "our first ever Annual" (thanks to John Rhodes for spotting that). After a couple of issues in 1977, it has been yearly since 1978. Some years were doubled up (1974-75, 2001-02), and a few may have been skipped altogether. Along the way there were anniversary books too: Impressions of a Tramping Club 1947-1968 for the club's 21st, then special issues for the 40th (1987) and 50th (1997). The most recent journals here, 2012 to 2018, were made digitally.
- The newsletter. John Rhodes remembers a monthly foolscap newsletter from about 1968: cyclostyled, with a blue WTMC banner across the top of the first page. Our copies start in 1969. From 1974 to 2008 we have them in yearly bundles, and from 2009 to 2013 as single monthly issues. Around 2014 the newsletter moved online, and its stories now appear as posts on the club website.
- The website. Members started posting trip reports on wtmc.org.nz in numbers around 2009, and they've kept coming ever since.
What's missing
The archive has gaps. If you can fill any of them, we would love to hear from you.
- Journals. Paper copies of the 1974-75 annual and the 2005, 2009, 2010 and 2011 journals have been found and are waiting to be scanned. We have no journal for 1976, 1979, or 2006 to 2008, and some of these may never have been published. If you know, please tell us. (2002 is covered by the combined 2001-02 journal.) No journal was published from 2019 to 2025; the next one is 2026.
- Single journal issues from the 1950s to the 1970s. Some years look to be missing an issue or two, which we can only guess at from the gaps in the numbering.
- Newsletters before 1969, and 1970 to 1973. None of these are in the archive.
- Single newsletter issues, 1969 to 2009. Most of 1969 (only February is here) and 1973 (only November), several 1974 issues, and scattered months since: 1975 May; 1977 Feb, Apr; 1978 Jul; 1979 Jun, Sep, Dec; 1980 Apr; 1981, 1982, 1984 and 1985 Sep; 1987 Dec; 1988 Mar, Dec; 1989 Feb; 1997 Aug; 1999 Jun; 2000 Oct; 2002 May to Dec; 2003 Mar, May, Jul, Sep, Nov; 2004 Mar to Jul, Sep, Oct, Dec; 2005 May, Aug; 2006 Jul; 2007 Jul, Sep, Dec; 2008 Dec; 2009 Feb, Apr to Jun, Sep.
If you have copies of any of these, in a drawer, an attic or a clubroom cupboard, please email chiefguide@wtmc.org.nz. A phone photo of each page is enough to start with.
How the text was made
Website posts were typed by their authors. Newsletters and journals were read from scans by OCR software (docTR and Tesseract), or taken from the PDF's own text layer where it had one. Machine-read text has not been proofread. Expect odd characters, split words and the occasional wrong name. Where the OCR was too poor to read, 959 reports are shown as the scanned pages only, with the rough machine text underneath, labelled as unproofread. The report text is kept as printed or as the volunteer corrected it. It is not reworded.
| Website post | 1,115 |
| Journal scan read by OCR (not proofread) | 936 |
| Newsletter scan read by OCR (not proofread) | 911 |
| Journal PDF text layer | 110 |
| Newsletter PDF text layer | 99 |
| Newsletter, typed by hand | 16 |
| Newsletter, proofread by a volunteer | 4 |
| No text yet | 2 |
How to help
- On any report, press Suggest an edit (below the map) to fix text, details or photo descriptions. A club volunteer checks every edit before it appears.
- The Help proofread page lists reports that most need a proofread or a missing date or grade.
- If you have missing newsletter issues or old photos, email chiefguide@wtmc.org.nz.
Photos and credits
Photos come from the club website, the newsletters and the journals, and keep the author's captions where there are any. Photos are shown at web size. Credit lines are as printed with the report. If you took a photo and want it credited, changed or removed, email chiefguide@wtmc.org.nz. When a volunteer proofreads or corrects a report, they can choose to be named as Proofread by on that report.
Privacy
Names (authors, leaders, participants) are shown as they were printed at the time. Some reports name people who have since died or left the club. If you would like your name or a photo of you removed or changed, email chiefguide@wtmc.org.nz and it will be done. The edit form asks for a name only if you want credit; it does not ask for an email address. This site is marked as not for search engines for now.
TODO for the owner: confirm the club's position on publishing names in older reports and photos of minors, and how fast takedown requests will be handled.
Accessibility
See the accessibility statement.
Map credit
Basemap © LINZ and contributors, licensed CC BY 4.0 (data.linz.govt.nz). Map pins are approximate unless a report names a specific hut or peak.
Regions
The area recorded for each trip is free text, so for filtering it is grouped into broad regions by keyword (falling back to the website tags and the title). Treat the grouping as a guide only.