I remembered vividly the sleepless nights I had in Plateau hut at the base of Mt Cook last year, also in November, the wind was shaking the hut so violently the first thing I did next morning was to climb underneath the hut to make sure the cables holding the hut were still in place, … Read more
Flying into Christchurch late Friday we had two days and a dodgy weather forecast to get ourselves over Ball Pass. Three of the group had gone ahead early, which left six of us arriving on the 8:15 pm flight to grab the two remaining cars and drive to Mt Cook. The weather on the way … Read more
We started out on Labour weekend with a basic plan of staying a couple of nights around Studholme Saddle Hut, and possibly heading further up the main Kaweka Range during that time. Things didn’t work out that way. For the first time in a long time, at least as far as I can remember, we … Read more
What’s the definition of a M/F-tramp? According to some, it doesn’t even exist as it would be either M or F, and anything in between is just smoke and mirrors. This trip was optimistically scheduled to be a M-trip, but over the weekend the idea developed that it actually should be rated a M/F tramp. … Read more
It promised to be a wonderful weekend in the sunny tararuas. And for once they were actually meant to be sunny! We set off Saturday after a week of rain from the railway station. On the way up I noticed the higher than usual flow in the rivers when we crossed the bridges… it occurred … Read more
One of the easy aspects of this E/M tramp was the Friday evening to sort out your stuff and fill your pack, although a little voice in the back of my head kept telling me we had to get up reasonable early on Saturday. Indeed the alarm went off shortly after 6AM, allowing us to … Read more
Accompanied by a light westerly and drizzle we pulled our packs out of the car, switched on our head torches and headed up the Coral track. This could be a short, steep, sticky night time jaunt to the bush line and back if the wind doesn’t abate we joked, philosophical about our chances. Unlike previous … Read more
The journey to Mt. Tappy is one of the highlights of the WTMC winter schedule and this year was no exception. The trip got off to a poor start from a punctuality viewpoint as we arrived into Picton 90 mins late at half past midnight. The ferry staff put on free fish n chips to … Read more
Around the 3rd to 5th of September Bernie, Richard, Mike and I had plans to do some exploring around the southern Ruahines. We bailed out a day early with too much snow for the gear we’d brought, not to mention an extended mountain forecast of 120km/h galeforce nor-westerlies in exposed mountain areas on Sunday. Okay, … Read more
I looked at the weather forecast on the Monday and it looked alright. Rain on the Friday and Sunday and clear on the Saturday, the climbing day By Tuesday the forecast had gone rotten, two fronts passing through one hitting on our Saturday. I sorted out a good book and made sure we had some … Read more