Some people maintain that tramping isn’t worth the effort. At 5am on Saturday morning I was beginning to think this for the first time in my life. Mind you, I personally reckon it might have had something to do with drinking until midnight with Kiwi, English, Scottish, Irish and Slovakians (a dangerous combination if ever there was one)
So.. up at 5am, and after meeting the others from the CUTC we drove up to Arthurs Pass to start up Mt. Bealey (1836m)
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The route climbs steeply up through the bush (beech forest) and then becomes a really impressive arete with side ridges coming off it. I was here 1 year, 11 months and 3 weeks ago with Florian. It was misty then.. we managed to get onto a side ridge and went completely off route. It was actually hilarious – Florian was adamant we were heading North (look at the sun) when we were infact heading South. It wasn’t until someone pointed out he was in the wrong hemisphere and showed him his compass that we finally turned around!
Anyways – blue skies for us this weekend.
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Summit Pic L->R: Sharon, Caroline, Olivier, Carol, James and Volker. A great crowd to go tramping with (not a kiwi amongst us.. though I am getting there I feel)
So we trundled along through amazing scenery (though I am so out of shape I wasn’t admiring it as much as it deserved.. more cursing it really)
Once we got onto the top of Avalanche Peak (where they have races up and down every year, for fun, as you do…) it was a shortish trip down the ridge to find the exit off the mountain. The exit is a really long scree run which you can see below.
You descend about 500m. Quickly. It’s super fun as it is really easy to slide down it (acts like sand). The bottom of the slope was agony though – thighs screaming blue bloody murder with all the big rocks (which don’t slide *quite* so easily) having already fallen to the bottom! It was good to get to the hut that night.
The walk out the next morning was quite straight forward along the river valley. I had thought by the end of yesterday how funny it was to have dry feet on a hike… Fortunately there were more than enough river crossings to make up for it today!
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So all in all a great weekend, it was good to stretch the legs again.
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