Saturday
I’m lying in the Crow Hut after a nice day of tramping with Jeremy.
It went like this. Katie and I drove down to Klondyke corner and picked up Jeremy from there in the morning leaving his car in the car park.
We started walking up the avalanche peak track. Katie told us to go ahead as she wanted to walk her pace. We walked ahead and took a break at the bush line. It was sunny but fresh but it looked like the weather might pack in later. We kept going. It was warm in the sun but then the cloud rolled in as we reached the last climb to the summit ridge. The cloud vanished again as we reached the ridge and we had great views and almost no wind at the top.
We dropped off the summit towards Bealy and then looped back around under Avalanche Peak to a saddle. Then it was a descent into the main ridge towards Rolleston.
We had periods of cold wind and then points where it was completely still again.
It was mostly sunny.
We stopped for lunch and I decided that it wasn’t too shabby all in all.
Jeremy agreed.
The scree descent is well marked and the screes before this all end in bluffs so should be avoided.
Unfortunately the scree was decidedly average and not runnable. We slipped and slid down the slope trying not to do our ankles (as we are old men after all).
Once at the bottom it was a short walk down stream to the very nice Crow Hut.
A family showed up later in the afternoon and pitched tents outside the hut.
We drank a lot of tea and ate a variety of junk food and freeze dry meals.
A nice day of tramping.
Hopefully it won’t rain tomorrow and we’ll scamper out the Waimak and head home.
It took us about 4.5 hours-ish with breaks to get to Crow Hut.
Sunday
It was grey and threatening to rain as we left the hut but we could see blue sky down in the valley. We walked down the crow river leaving the spots of rain behind and emerged at the waimak. We were greeted by a rainbow and nice views up the valley. The mountains reminded me of Europe. We walked out to the car and headed back to Christchurch.
