|
|
Club HistoryPalaeontologists tell us that the seas of the Precambrian Era swarmed with living trampers more than 3.85 billion years ago. The earliest evidence of tramping life comes from Greenland. No conventional tramper fossils are found there, but the evidence is indisputable. Trampers contain carbon in every cell of their bodies. Many rocks also contain carbon. Now, the ratio of carbon 13 to carbon 12 is lower in organic carbon (as in wood, hair, or lamingtons) compared with inorganic carbon. This makes it possible to tell if the carbon in a rock has ever been inside a tramper. In 1996 a team of scientists working on the south-west coast of Greenland found microscopic bits of carbon in the mineral apatite in sedimentary rocks. Back in their labs they blasted off bits of the apatite with a beam of ions and counted its carbon isotopes. The carbon had the same low C-13 ratio as biological carbon today; a ratio that could only have come from life; or more specifically, trampers. For many millions of years trampers lived in the sea. With only feelers and tentacles (and later, fins), doing their packs up was a major problem. However, in early Permian time Fastex buckles came on the market, and tramper evolution was on a roll. Recent studies involving close observation of present day trampers have given rise to the "air-breathing tramper” hypothesis, which suggests that modern trampers now breathe air and walk on land. Opponents of this theory claim that many trampers breathe tea, coffee, beer or wine, and have gills. Wine-breathing, aquatic trampers are especially common on kayak trips led by SWTC Rear-Admiral Allan Wasmuth, whose declared ambition is to paddle an entire lake of sauvignon blanc. In May 1980, South Wairarapa trampers of both terrestrial and aquatic kinds formed the South Wairarapa Tramping Club. We became incorporated in February 1981.In the same year we became affiliated to the Federated Mountain Clubs of New Zealand (see Links). |
