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!
The third Tramping Monday had similar attendance to the first one – only 1 person. Jacqui and I drove to Windy Point which is not too far from Engineers Camp.
Kirwans Hut is probably one of the fanciest huts on the West Coast. It’s located in an area that has been extensively mined. Even the track to the hut was originally built for mining purposes! 6 CTC trampers started off with the intention to reach the hut and hope to not get rained on too much. After having some photography fun at Topffer Creek bridge, we followed Topffer Creek on a very obvious and wide track. We soon split into 2 parties – one was fast, the other one was extra fast.
This was a last minute trip, as I realized a few days before the weekend that there wasn’t a day trip planned for the weekend. There were seven of us including 2 prospective members and Rodney who met us at the Wooden Gully carpark. Wooden Gully Track was closed so we chose the Ridge Track as a suitable replacement. It was the quickest way to get to the tops anyway.
As I don’t work Mondays, I decided to organize some Monday trips. The first one was to Mt Somers with only one brave participant, Heidi. We started off at Sharplin Falls Reserve and followed a well marked trail to the start of Mt Somers Summit Track. From there, a steep section of unstable rocks followed.
After lockdown, a lot of CTC members and prospective members were so much ready for an adventure! To start the tramping season off, I led a trip to Mt Herbert via Gebbies Pass. What I thought would be quite an easy stroll with a few people, turned out to be quite a long tramp of a group of 23 people. The weather was great which probably contributed to good attendance.
The time to lead another CTC trip had come. At the beginning, I wanted to go to Mt Winterslow. Everything looked good – there was no rain forecast, a few of the people who had signed up for my trip were experienced, the wind was due to be around 1 m/s…
Brass Monkey Bivouac is a highly elevated bivvy precisely settled on the tops of the Lewis Pass ranges. There is no direct route to it. There is an article in Wilderness Magazine “5 ways to Brass Monkey Bivouac” that briefly describes 5 ways to get up there. As this was only my second trip as a leader of the Christchurch Tramping Club trip, I opted for a relatively easy route up via Lucretia Stream. For the way down I chose the route via Duchess Stream which was a bit more… ehm – let’s stick with the word “adventurous”.
This was my first trip as a leader of the Christchurch Tramping Club. I scheduled the trip for Friday 15th November which was a public holiday. Until Thursday night it was only me and a couple of prospective members on the list which I thought would be fun. Then unexpected happened: all 3 multi-day trips that were planned for the long weekend were canceled due to a bad weather on Saturday.