This trip appeared on the schedule and immediately got my interest, partly because as chief guide I didn’t put it there and partly because I hadn’t heard of the place.
Mike explained that cloudy peak (well actually not all of this, consider it a narrative thing) is a rock climbers paradise in the middle of the Erewhon station in the South Island. It would be far more popular if you didn’t have to cross the raging Clyde river (or not, as is often the case and if someone built a hut). This list of unpopular excuses used to include a nasty matagouri scrub bash but kind people got bored of hearing that story and cut a path through.
The rock has been described as being as good as the Darrens, but well, I still need to go there. What is also good is there is a range of multi pitched climbs with a large range of grades.
I signed up and so did Brendan.
As this was a rock climbing trip some civilised behaviour was required so we did not meet at Platform 9 on Friday but at Wellington airport on Saturday. We arrived at the station (Erewhon) about 11 am parked our car and got going. Whilst not good for farmers the drought in the South Island meant there was no raging river and you could cross the Clyde in a few places. We then meandered up the braids of the Havelock river to Cloudy stream having lunch along the way.
A steep goat trail leads up the side of the cloudy stream gorge until the gradient mellows out. The mellow out also meant a little bit of a bush bash but we soon got on the way. The track’s white markers have long disappeared in the harsh environment but the track was welcome and easily found if you stick on the true left of the river. The trail emerges to a large cairn.
We then headed up the bouldered flats crossing the river and back again. We reached the GPS marked point and after 10 minutes of looking found the rock biv. The big clue is the cairns but the other clue must be the bolts drilled by some bored climbers into its upper reaches.
The mist was coming in so we had dinner and squeezed three under the rock. We used the fly to make a good entrance door which kept the worst of the moisture out. Good thing Brendan carried it up.
The mist lingered in the morning which does not do well for rock climbing. We did like rock climbers have done through the millennium and went back to sleep. It looked better at 9 am and so we got up for breakfast before heading off at 10am. Unfortunately the rock was still too wet for climbing and we realised from the dark covering that the great prow was not in. We selected the south west ridge as it was the only part of the mountain that had any sun on it.
We started lower than the guide book suggests as we had to avoid wet scrambling. There then followed three hard pitches which mike led and then two easy ones which I did. One more hard pitch (back to Mike) and we came out onto the scramble. We sped up and came out on a ledge about 300m vertical below the summit. We looked around and realised we needed to do a short pitch back to the ridge. Mike went up but it was not obvious that we wouldn’t encounter a few more difficulties.
Time was against us it was 5 pm and we rued the misty morning time loss. We did the wise thing and scrambled down to the steep bits. Three long abseils and a stretch of the rope saw us back on the scree slopes. It was 7:30pm we had descended pretty efficiently.
A very fast scree run took us down to the valley floor, allowing us to reach our camp at 8pm. Time for a yummy dehy meal and then bed.
We packed early in the morning and yomped our way out in 4 hours. A picnic next to the car and we headed off to the airport.
A great trip, thanks to Mike for all the leading