The ski season has been slow to arrive in NZ. July 2023 is the hottest month on record, and that’s not great for ski fields. I think it’s almost certain in my lifetime, if not the next 10 years, that all of the club fields will be closed (and perhaps all of the ski-fields).

Anyway, we took a sneaky midweek day and headed up to Mt Hutt with Ian and Paddy. We left around 7am, maybe a little after, and the top carpark was already full by the time we got there. Now, with that said, they’ve really upped their organisation – there were frequent shuttles up the hill, there were about 10 ticket booths, and queuing for the lifts never took more than about 5 mins… it really was pretty good.

Legs were just screaming by the end of the day!

I’m incredibly lucky. I work 4 days a week and I can juggle the 5th day off. Usually I take Wednesday off, but, this week I took the Friday off and headed in to woolshed creek hut with Maaike & Anna, and Anna’s friend Ahi and his parents (Nik & Leigh Lowe). Turns out Nic is the brother of Ben Lowe, who I knew for many years through the Canterbury Uni tramping club. Small world.

Anyway, we headed off to do the hike with them. It was actually the first hike they’d done with other kids, and, like us, found it’s a heluva lot easier with two kids to run around and pull each other along that having just one kid moaning and getting bored with their ancient boring parents.

They did really well. It’s 5.6km each way, and ~400m uphill..  It’s always a gamble going tramping with people you’ve not hung out with before, but, we got on well. Of course, it definitely helps that the kids have spent a lot of time together at daycare.

The hut was (to me) surprisingly full. I guess I wasn’t expecting that for a Friday night in mid June. Shows what I know. The skies were crystal clear and the stars were just breathtaking. It was so good to be out and about!

Thanks very much to Nik and Leigh for a really excellent hike – looking forward to the next one!