The original plan was to take on Mt Olympus. However, this mountain is on private land and recent floods damaged the access road so permissions to access Mt Olympus are scarce now. In the morning at the petro station, we decided that Mt Winterslow makes for a suitable backup.
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I’ve had the SMD Lunar Solo for a few years now so I thought that it’s about time to write a review on it. I and this tent have been through good and bad together – from a storm and gale to some windless subtropical nights so we’ve had many opportunities to get to know each other well.
After my last trip to Lewis Pass on which we got rained on, I decided that the next time when we’ll be spending 5h of our Sunday in a car, it’ll be on a sunny day. And this was the day! 17 brave CTC souls including 2 adventurous prospective members took off from Palmer Lodge car park at about 9.30 AM.
Last year I co-organised the Godley to Gebbies walk in the Port Hills which was 36 km long. This year I thought I might push it a bit further, so I came up with the idea of meeting at Lyttelton, taking a ferry across to Diamond Harbour and walking back to Lyttelton over Mt Herbert, Packhorse Hut and Gebbies Pass.
Emily and Sienna came down to visit me in the deep South and they timed it well for the Queen’s Birthday long weekend, so there is no excuse not to go to the mountains! Our first thought was to do the Humpridge track off-season (as normal pricing for freedom walk with two nights on a bunk bed and nothing more would be nearly $300, which I had difficulty justify for myself even though I know the track would be amazing).
The weather forecast was pretty poor for the weekend so I postponed my Mt Norma trip and offered a local Mt Herbert adventure instead. In the morning, we left a couple of cars at the end of Monument Track and one at the start of Packhorse Track where we all started.
Avalanche Peak is the most famous mountain in Arthur’s Pass National Park, New Zealand. It’s also the mountain that gets often underestimated, especially if you take Scotts Track on the way up because it’s much easier and the rocky exposed tops may come as a surprise.
I had this very ambitious plan: going to Sudden Valley, climb Mt Scott and Mt Wilson and come back. All that in a day. Kate Taylor was keen to join so off we went, leaving Christchurch just after 6 am.
There wasn’t any CTC trip for the coming weekend. The weather forecast was so good that I just couldn’t resist putting a trip out. I chose The Pyramid where I wanted to go for a while.
The plan was simple: Go from Traverse Peak to Trovatore. The forecast wasn’t too bad, a wee bit cloudy with moderate winds. After arriving at Lewis Pass, the tops were in clouds. We followed a well marked track to the bushline where we had a wee lunch and off we went towards Traverse Peak.