A week of rain on The Divide (over 500mm at Carrington Hut apparently) saw us heading for Lewis Pass for the first time in a while. After not having been out for a couple of weeks we wanted something fairly challenging and decided to have a look at the Grand Duchess.
An early morning start from Christchurch saw us at Palmer Lodge well before 10:00am. We were on familiar territory up the Nina Valley until the first footbridge, before picking up the ‘old’ track, staying on the true left of the river. We stopped shortly afterwards – the sun had made it to the flats by then, and were surprised to be passed by a guy almost immediately. He must have been on a mission as he disappeared almost as quickly on the other side of the flats.
The track up to the Lucretia Stream is probably even nicer than the main Nina Valley Track. The track is on the flats more often, giving better views of the Nina. Once we reached the Lucretia Stream the character changes again, the bush becomes thick and a little reminiscent of The Coast.
We stopped at Lucretia Hut for lunch, again on flats in the sun and were then pleased to find a well marked and cut route (not mentioned in the guide) that took us out on to the tops, with great views over to Mt Technical - which just had a dusting of new snow.
We’d originally planned on camping at Brass Monkey, but we could see from above that the biv was taken, so we camped at a lake a little back from it. The setting sun turned the lake a most astonishing gold colour for a while, then it was time to go inside as the temperature dropped quite rapidly.
Sunday dawned fine (and cold with some ice on the lake and inside of the tent), and we were soon down at Brass Monkeys, surprising the occupants of the biv.
The route became more time consuming from this point, involving a sidle around the east side of several basins on Grand Duchess. From the final basin we had to climb almost to the top as a line of crags barred any further progress on this side.
Quite frankly we faffed around on the top for a bit, not wanting to commit ourselves to a loose looking traverse below the summit and wondering whether we should go over the top instead. Eventually we sorted out the traverse, which was ok after the first couple of metres and then picked up the south east ridge down towards the Nina Valley. The picture below shows the route from the second lake.
It was pretty much plain sailing from here. The ridge was easy with great views to the Duchess Stream and across to the Sylvia Tops. The spur down was easy with only a little undergrowth near the bottom.
By 3:00pm we had a final rest stop at the Nina Hut before heading back out to Palmer Lodge on the main (and now increasingly muddy) Nina Valley Track.
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