Excellent hike this weekend. Back for a second attempt on Mt Fyffe. First time was back in September with Mhairi and Marcel Totally different conditions this time – no snow to speak of, and my knee wasn’t in total pieces.
Headed up on Friday night (to avoid the 6am start) with Dave, and we had a pretty nice camping spot – at least the sunrise was something pretty special!
Then we met up with Anthony, Thor, Gabriella, Peter, Steven, Fernando, and Sven (but spelt differently) – 3 Kiwis, 1 Swedish, 1 Icelander, 1 Dutchman and 1 Chilean. Pretty typical bunch ;) Really fun bunch to hike with.
So we headed off up to the summit of Mt Fyffe, making pretty short work of the hike up (though I was pretty tired by the top.. must be getting old..) 1602m. Then a really fun walk along the ridge. Last time totally covered in snow, and with no crampons or ice-axes I was really really glad we turned around before we went too far along the track.
There was quite a lot of running / sliding down scree slopes.
We were making quite good time really, but as there was a little bit of faffing about at the start, we started down the river – boulder hopping (read fun) section, as it was beginning to get dark. We got about 1/2 way down the river, before we really had to put on head torches, and it became a lot more difficult to find the path. I must admit, I thoroughly enjoyed it, was still happy to get to the hut in the end, but I really love hopping down rivers, takes quite a bit of concentration and balance.. excellent.
Then a windy night – thankfully in the shelter of Kowhai hut. 8 of us in a 6 bunk hut (and 1 camping outside)… I elected for a thermarest and the floor…
And this morning – a 3 hour walk out along the river. All in all a really varied and fun trip – excellent scenery and fun ppl to hike with.. will miss the ability to (easily) get away hiking for the weekend – in places where you’re really unlikely to see anyone else (the last ppl in the hut were there 2 weeks ago..)
Leave a Reply