First Footing

Winter has arrived in New Zealand. After the worst week of weather for ages we finally got a chance to play in the snow today with a quick trip up Foggy Peak from Porters Pass.



Starting at over 900m meant we didn't have to get out of bed early. A simple two hour walk saw us at the top of Foggy Peak, with reasonably solid snow for the last few hundred metres. It was cold and miserable on the way up with a mixture of rain / ice and wind blown snow but the sun appeared miracuously on the summit and we could see over to Castle Hill Peak. We'll come back later in the season and do the traverse I hope.









It was fun (trying to) ski down. I see that my skiing hasn't improved much. Finally went back to walking a couple of hundred metres above the road, as the snow became too soft and I kept cart wheeling.



This year we miss the Main Act for the NZ winter, but we'll be back for the encore. Hopefully it sticks around a bit.

Little Mt Peel

Another day trip this weekend – to Little Mount Peel. We’d planned on camping at the DOC campsite in Peel Forest Park, but it had closed for the winter, so we ended up coming back to Christchurch late on Saturday. The best laid plans…

We took the Deer Spur track up to the summit, climbing in the sunshine whilst a growing blanket of cloud was smothering the plains. A couple of people were already on their way down. Near the summit we overtook a family with some enthusiastic kids, the oldest could have been no more than ten.

After enjoying a lunch in the warmth of the summit sunshine, we dropped down the steeper south ridge route on the return already in shadow. The ridge is open with a great feeling of space and you descend steeply towards the plains.
A quick diversion to the Emily Falls at the end saw us back to the car after a relaxing six hour round trip.

Mt Vernon

A quick trip to the summit of Mt Vernon this morning.

Up the Mt Vernon farm track and down the top of Rapaki then the Valley Track. Good to see lots of people out walking, running and mountain biking. Such a warm day, reminded me of the summer we never had.

Great views from the top. Over the Lyttleton side:

And back to the City :

The Grand Duchess

From 1st - 2nd May

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.

Mt Grey Sickie

From 18th April

We had been planning on a weekend tramp, but I was sick from Friday night through to Sunday morning. I slept over 23 hours in total. I blame the flu jab that I had earlier in the week for all of this!
By Sunday morning I was feeling better and a stretch of the legs was called for. We chose Mt Grey, the closest summit to us in the Canterbury Foothills.



We started from Lake Janet (more of a pond really) and despite dire warnings of a ‘no longer maintained’ trail, we found the going easy enough and made our way up through exotic forest to the summit ridge, complete with it’s oversized communications tower.

As the nearest summit to the ocean, Mt Grey commands a fantastic view along the Canterbury Coast as well as inland towards the Southern Alps. The only thing we couldn’t see was the Banks Peninsula, - it was covered by the only cloud in the sky the whole time we were there.






For the return trip we dropped off the side of the mountain, passing one other party on their way up. This time we were in Native Forest, there were plenty of wasps still about too. Halfway down we picked up the less used Bypass Track to cut back across the face of the hill and down to the car for lunch.