Rod Donald Hut from Kaituna Valley
There are many ways to Rod Donald hut. This is my favourite one. It starts at the end of Kaituna Valley Road where a small carpark can be found. Carmela and I parked her car…
Banks Peninsula
Mt Herbert and Packhorse Hut from Orton Bradley
Sadly, strong winds, drizzles and heavy clouds forced me to cancel my X attempt to do Traverse Peak to Trovatore. On the other hand, it allowed me to come up with an alternative that I…
Mt Herbert from Purau via The Monument
I put this last-minute CTC trip up just a day ahead. It was picked up by 3 CTC people. We took a morning ferry from Lyttelton to Diamond Harbour at 7.50 AM. I managed to…
Port Hills ramble: 1000m ascent, please
The Sunday weather forecast wasn’t favorable for any other parts of the South Island but Christchurch. Well, we’re very lucky that on days like these we have this beautiful sanctuary of ours, Port Hills. The…
Port Hills Walking Marathon: Lyttelton to Lyttelton
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.
Mt Herbert via Kaituna Valley and Monument Track
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.
Packhorse Hut with a newborn
As fresh parents, everything is still very new to us but we thought that we’d done enough reading and short trips that it was time to tackle the first wee tramp with our little man.
Scenery Nook on Banks Peninsula
Scenery Nook is a wee inlet on the far side of Banks Peninsula. It’s accessible by boat or across private land – as the CTC unfortunately doesn’t own a yacht just yet, we chose to approach on foot.
Round the Mountain via Curry Track
The plan was to do the Ben More circuit but the weather forced us to look for a less exposed location as far from the Main Divide as possible. Akaroa seemed to be far enough.
Godley to Gebbies: Traverse of the Port Hills
The Port Hills are the closest hills to Christchurch and I’d been thinking about traversing them since I first moved to the city. One day in July I asked Emma if she’d be keen to co-lead this trip as we would need 2 cars, and I knew that Emma was used to running trips like this before breakfast. She enthusiastically agreed – though at the time we had no idea that 30 trampers would sign up for the trip!