Anna and I set off quite late. It was around 12PM when we left Christchurch and around 2pm when we arrived at Greyneys Shelter by SH73. We left some chips in the car to welcome us on our return, and off we went up Mingha River.
Going to Black Hill Range wasn’t our first choice for this weekend. We reaaally wanted to go to the West Coast but the weather was so bad that weekend that we couldn’t do anything else but stay on the Canterbury Plains. So, we decided to do the Comnys Hut – Cookies Hut traverse via the North Branch Ashburton River / Hakatere.
Mons Sex Millia (1835m) is the highest point of Poplars Range near Lewis Pass. It was quite a lazy looking Sunday morning when 11 CTC members, yawning after the early start and being eaten alive by sandflies, appeared at the Boyle Village carpark. After a short briefing, we took an obvious path leading to Boyle Village.
Karpaz peninsula has always reminded me of a rhino. It sticks its massive long Cypriotic horn right into the Mediterranean Sea. It’s the least developed area of Northern Cyprus. It’s full of olive orchards, wild donkey, farmland, stray dogs and amazing rocky sea coast. There are quite a few hikes you can do but we just decided to go for it and cross the whole peninsula there and back in its full length. I mean sort of. Sometimes we cheated a bit hitched (see further).
It’s actually not as big as it sounds, but you should reserve all day for this in case it gets too muddy in the forest. As is often with other things in life too, the hardest is to start…
Lake Montbel is a quiet reservoir close to Chalabre. In the summer it’s a popular swimming spot and in the winter, when the water level is low, it calls all the hikers and mountain bikers from local towns…
The hike starts at Fontestorbes Fountain. It’s a very unique natural phenomena – from July until October, the flow of the water coming out of the cave stops and starts at approximately half hour intervals…