Solo
One afternoon in Auckland, journalist Hazel Phillips decided to close her laptop and head for the hills. She then spent the next three years living in mountain huts and tramping alone for days at a time, all the while holding down a full-time job.
As she ranged from Arthur’s Pass and the Kaimanawa Forest Park to the Ruahine Range and Fiordland, she had her share of danger and loneliness, but she also grew in confidence and backcountry knowledge. Her story of this solo life is an absorbing blend of adventure and humour, combined with her research into tales from the past of ambition and death in the mountains. She also casts a feminist eye over the challenges women climbers and explorers faced.
Full of pluck, courage and resourcefulness, this book is for all those who long to wade through emerald rivers and breathe the mountain air.
Hazel Phillips is the author of five non-fiction books, including Fire & Ice: Secrets, Histories, Treasures and Mysteries of Tongariro National Park and Solo: Backcountry Adventuring in Aotearoa New Zealand. She has a background in newspaper and magazine journalism, and her work has appeared in media outlets and literary journals across New Zealand and Australia.
Hazel was awarded the Friends of the Hocken Collections Award 2026 and a Ministry for Culture & Heritage Whiria Te Mahara New Zealand History Grant for her research on early women climbers. She has held writer residencies at the Michael King Writers Centre and the Robert Lord Writers Cottage, and in 2025 became the inaugural recipient of the Luna Foundation Writers Residency.
Hazel holds a Master of Creative Writing with first-class honours, as well as an MA in media studies. Her work also appears in the essay anthology Otherhood (Massey University Press, 2024) and the Atlas of Mountaineering (Phaidon Press, forthcoming).
- ISBN-13
- 9780995135451
- Publisher
- Massey University Press
- Imprint
- Massey University Press
- Publication date
- 9 June 2022
- Format
- Paperback
- Pages
- 256
- Dimensions
- 234 x 253 mm
- Language
- English