Craig, Rachel, Pip and I headed off for some adventures South of Christchurch after Christmas.
27th Dec
We started with a BBQ at Holly’s with Jane A, Pip, Rachel and Craig and of course the hosts.
28th Dec
Craig and I went for a short climb at Britten Crags in the afternoon.
29th Dec
We went canyoning at Woolshed Creek and drove on to Nimrod reserve in South Canterbury in the evening.
Craig picked up Pip in the morning and I collected Rachel and we began driving South. Rachel was a little unhappy with the amount of gear already in the boot of my car and made some comments such as “this is a disaster” but after some faff we managed to leave, even packing the camping chairs, and drove to the Woolshed Creek carpark. Rachel and I stopped for a quick pie on the way and we turned up at the carpark as Craig and Pip were decanting the car onto the grass for a good old gear faff. The weather was a bit patchy and although we set off in sunshine, not long after, we were hit by a rainy spell, forcing us to take cover in the entrance to the old abandoned mine. We ate lunch, for me, a combination of wraps and bits of Pip’s sausages, baked potatoes, and beetroot. It is of course important to record what we had for lunch.
The rain passed and we continued in the sunshine and strong headwind until we reached the Woolshed Creek Hut. We organised our gear and got into our wetsuits. We all took turns assisting Rachel into her slightly too small wetsuit by lifting the waist of the wetsuit and shaking vigorously until Plod sunk slowly into the neoprene. Once we were ready we walked down the track to the river and began the canyon. It was nice and sunny and the water was surprisingly warm. We abseiled then floated down the first narrow sections. The canyon was chilled and we had a good jumping session later on at one of the last features. Then came the long slog out down the riverbed. We packed our wet gear into the cars and drove to Nimrod reserve as the sun sunk lower into the hills.
30th Dec
Julia and her partner Eric turned up and we all went canyoning together. It was fairly grey but still a nice day out.
The day started with sunshine but it wasn’t long before it was replaced by yucky grey fug. Julia and her partner Eric drove over from Mount Cook Village and met us mid morning. We did the Nimrod canyon with them. It was quite fun but cold and grey. Julia and Eric had very light weight gear and spent most of the time shivering. They vanished after the canyon, heading towards Mt Somers and we camped the night again at the Nimrod Reserve.
31st Dec
We drove towards Timaru in search of better weather and spent a windy afternoon climbing at Spur Road.
The weather was a bit better although the next few days were supposed to be iffy further West so we drove towards Timaru and stopped to climb at Spur Road. I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired to begin with as it was very windy and not super warm. We wandered along a fence line next to a paddock and dropped down to the start of the crag, a big band of rocks forming small cliffs running around the top of a shallow valley. Craig and Pip set up top ropes from the pine trees above the rocks and we climbed a mixture of easy climbs. The rocks sheltered us from most of the wind and it was quite pleasant climbing. The routes were all trad and we were all quite happy to top rope.
We drove into Timaru for fuel, food, and fish and chips for dinner. Rachel navigated us to a high school playing field and we sat in the stands and ate our crumbed fish, spring rolls and chips. Making use of the tap on the side of a building we filled up our water bottles with strange tasting Timaru water before getting out of one of New Zealand’s least inspiring towns. We drove to Lake Poaka to camp for New Year’s Eve. We were not the only ones with this idea and the camp had a high proportion of bogans driving around in big 4wds with unnecessarily raised suspension, perhaps belonging to dad.
1st Jan
We had a day of faff, driving South and ending at Cameron flat in the evening.
We drove South. We had various plans along the way but it turned into a day of faffing. We had a lazy lunch beside the Clutha river before looping through Wanaka and then driving North towards Haast Pass. We ended up stopping at Cameron Flat and wandering down to see the Blue Pools, a typical tourist attraction. DoC had closed all the bridges so we crossed with hordes of other tourists in our underwear. Following this we decided to call it quits for the day and set up our tents at the Cameron Flat campsite. After setting up our line of yellow minarets with one blue nemo tent we cooked dinner. And that was about it for the day.
2nd Jan
We drove to Jacksons and walked into Stafford Hut camping on the beach near the hut.
Keen to catch the weather window, we drove over Haast Pass and down to Pleasant Flat where we had breakfast and a big gear faff. We then drove down to Haast and out to Jacksons. I’d never been there before. It felt like a little NZ backwater. As we drove out there the road was narrow with tall native trees on each side. We rolled out of the car and grabbed our tramping packs. The walk in was nice and we were in forest for the duration of it. We spent some time walking up a river and had lunch on the side of it on a large stony area where it took a large bend. I went for a quick dip in the cold water. At some point we got a tag along named “rockie”, a reasonably sized rock that nobody could part with, except Rachel who made a couple of attempts to get rid of him, throwing him over a bank and into a bog. I carried him all the way to the saddle before ditching him. We descended from the saddle into a river bed and to my surprise rockie reappeared from Craig’s pack. So we had to take him all the way to Stafford Hut.
The remainder of the walk was fairly slow going down the river. Rockie was joined by sticky and forced handshake and exchange of item became the accepted way to offload all manner of rocks onto others. Stafford Hut was full and we hunted around in the bushes near the hut for a place to pitch tents. We decided it might be nicer down on the beach and crossed the river pitching our tents amongst bushes a few metres back from the sandy shore. We had an acceptable evening in the company of sandflies.
3rd Jan
We walked back out via the coastal route and camped up the Cascade road.
We packed up early enough the following day to coincide with the tide and started out along the coastal route. It was fairly slow going but well worth it. We found long sandy beaches and other stony ones. Pip got caught by a rogue wave in one of the narrow bits and covered in salty water. The last section before Smoothwater was narrow and although we hit it almost directly on low tide it still required some rock hopping to avoid getting wet feet. Craig clambered through the water instead. We made hot drinks and had lunch at Smoothwater Bay, a nice long pebbly beach with a river flowing out to sea at one end. The map showed a cave near a stream that ran down to the beach at the far end. The others were motivated to find this cave and I headed down to the end of the beach with them before turning around citing my bare feet as a good reason to return. More cups of tea later and then we headed off. It was deliciously hot and after some time Craig decided to walk up the river rather than along the track. We decided to find a place to swim and it wasn’t long until we were doing little laps in our birthday suits, floating down the river and hobbling back along the stones to start again. More river walking and then we were back onto the main track to Stafford Hut. We retraced our footsteps from the day before and ended back at Jacksons were we cooked up some noodles after discovering the fish and chippery was closed.
We plotted our next move. The weather was predicted to deteriorate. We decided to camp up the cascade for the night and we began driving back along the straight road with tall trees on either side to the turn off. Craig and Pip went ahead and at some point I got my flying camera out and followed the Outlander while Rachel drove. The campsite turned out to be very nice. It was grassy and large enough for our little village of tents. Craig made “fart potion” for dinner, his speciality, and we had another acceptable evening.
4th Jan
Craig and I packed down the river and out to the ocean where we met the others.
The weather was beginning to do as was predicted. Craig and I tried out his new packrafts walking in to Lake Ellery from the road. Without disasters we launched and paddled down to the main river. From there we paddled out to the ocean exiting at the mouth of the river. The packrafting was good. The river was mostly very calm except for a couple of sections with strainers, which we portaged. The rain came in as we paddled and it was drizzling and quite fresh as we packed up the rafts at the sea. We walked along the sand and found Pip and Rachel waiting with both vehicles.
Next stop was Haast for some expensive lunch and scheming. After some debate we decided to stay in the area and stick out the rain in a hut. So we drove North and walked into the Blue River hut for the evening. We met a couple and their dog in the hut and spent the evening cooking, chatting to them, and playing a new card game they taught us.
5th Jan
We walked out from the hut and went packrafting.
A quick walk out from Blowfly Hut and we headed north to Lake Paringa where we dried gear, ate lunch, and went tried out Craig’s packrafts on the lake. We drove back to Pleasant Point in the afternoon and camped there for the night.
6th Jan
We walked up to Brewster Hut and then on to the glacier where we camped the night.
We’d been talking about a day trip or overnighter up to Brewster Hut for a while and we decided to use a couple of our valuable remaining days and do it. It was a steep slog up from fantail falls across the river from the overflowing carpark, rammed full of cars. I’d run up to Brewster Hut in 2019 while traveling around the South Island with Ari arriving in under an hour but this time with heavy packs we’d be much slower. To pass the time as we climbed we greeted the stream of day walkers coming back down from the hut and played a game of “would you rather”, which was new to me. It went “would you rather X, or Y” and we amused ourselves for quite some time finding interesting and sometimes disturbing combinations of X and Y. These ranged from mundane things like “X=beach, Y=mountain” to the unsavoury such as “X=constipation, Y=diarrhoea”.
We reached Brewster Hut after some hours. It was fairly busy with various walking types. After a short break we continued onwards and within 1.5 hours we reached the terminal lakes below the Brewster Glacier. It was all very pretty and the sun was low in the hills, which bathed the rocks and lakes in golden colours. I was eager to take photos and took a few snaps while the others set up camp. It was quite busy amongst the rocks and finding a campsite took a bit of work but as the light faded from the sky we were eating a hot meal near our tents slightly above the lakes. Someone had piled rocks together to form a wind break, presumably for a tent, and we sat between the two lines of rocks with our backs to the top of a large flat boulder protruding from the ground.
7th Jan
We returned from the glacier and camped the night at Pleasant Flat again.
Another sunny day. We had a not-very-early start as usual and wandered over to look at the glacier. It was very photogenic and offered us floating ice in turquoise water below the face of the glacier and blue colours through the ice in a small cave further along. We took posy photos and then returned to camp.
We walked back down to the valley and stayed another night at Pleasant Flat.
8th Jan
We did Cross Creek canyon and then drove back to Christchurch late in the evening.
We spent our last day of nice weather doing the Cross Creek canyon. It was all very chilled and good fun. Unlike the last time I did it, I didn’t lose a camera.
We said goodbye to Craig and he trundled back down to Pleasant Flat for the night. Rachel, Pip, and I drove to Wanaka for both types of fuel and then drove into the night, arriving in Christchurch very late, or very early, depending on your perspective.
The end of an excellent trip.
