Castle Hill, St. Patricks day and my first horseback ride

Were coming up on Fall Break here at the University of Canterbury! I get THREE weeks off to go explore around and see what mischief I can get up to. Doing my very best to get caught up on blogging here, because a lot will be going on in a week!

So: last weekend I went to Castle hill with the climbing club for St. Patrick's day. They don't quite celebrate that as much as we do at home (at least like they do in college..), but it was a good day and there was lots of green silliness going on for clothing. Then we got down to climbing and it didn't matter anymore. I did the hardest climbs I've ever done before! It was great! My forearms were alll chewed up from the rock scraping, can't imagine what climbing on lava rock would be like.. maybe you don't have to drag your body over everything as much as you do here. Whenever someone had to mantle I'd tell them to "Castle hill" instead... pretty much the move you need in every climb here.

Descending is always harder than ascending. But my new shoes did the job!

My first V3! I don't remember the name, but it was right behind "Amazing Grace"  the big cavity above the climber is full of sharp litte things to strengthe your fingers and torment your skin with.. then you "Castle Hill" hard to finish. First shot I got past the crux and to the easy finish and just couldn't push myself up! Then I flowed through the next time.

 

Really cool pit in the limestone! 

And of course I had to work on my new hobby of making panoramas! So beautiful. This is looking at spittle hill I believe. 

After climbing we went over to cave stream and had a great walk through! It was pretty cool in there and every surface was COVERED with condensation. 100% humidity all the time. No algae in the water though since there was no light! Great way to cool off after a sweaty day of climbing. My Mammut headlamp served me well!

We stayed the night at the Environmental Learning Center past cave stream, which was beautiful! The stars were perfect.. and it was St. Patricks day so there was all sorts of shenanigans

I rode Fritz. You might say we were on the fritz together. 

Here we are halfway through! This is where we went jet boating with IES at the beginning of our time here in NZ, beautiful!

But I got into an okay trot by the end and we were good buddies.

Just have to do this weekend, and I'll be all set! Looking forward to going off on break. We'll start in Rarotonga (look it up, cool, very isolated place) with IES and then have 2 weeks of travel with friends, and my birthday!

Cheers,

Thomas

Hike Mt. Herbert, don't miss the boat!

Rather than thirsty Thursday, most of mine have been spent hiking after class. After all, that's what I'll be doing all weekend! Last week I headed over to Lyttleton, then via foot ferry to Diamon Harbour with my flatmate Polly. We decided to do Mt. Herbert, a long continuous climb up to a bit of a peak. Beautiful sunny day! It could have been a run, but it'd be the most brutal 8k XC race you could wish for.. through cows, a dozen styles (steeplechase!), 30 MPH wind and 950m climb. and we'd both run enough recently. So we walked. Great hike, awesome views of Lyttleton harbor and the bay. The summit was cold in my XC jersey :/. We came down a different way - the adventure way! Ran down a little grassy road for a few miles, climbed up to some really nice volcanic rock that probably would have fallen on our heads in an earthquake, more cows, more sheep, a few cliffs, rock hopping down the stream, big vantage rock at twilight, and then 3 or 4 miles back to the ferry. We caught a ride with a nice older lady most of the way and just missed a boat. But fortunately there were 2 more, so we had a bit of margin for error! But we made it back to Christchurch without needing to walk 20 miles in the dark!
As always, the bus drivers were pretty gregarious. We chatted for 20 minutes about all sorts of stuff. I told him I was studying abroad for the semester. He asked me, "oh! is that the broad (Polly) you're studying?" got a good laugh out of that.

Lyttleton Port from the ferry

Quail island and the harbor. Sailboat race!

Starting to climb up herbert, rolling around sheep country.

A little below the summit (covered in clouds and wind and cold unfortunately) looking at the day shelter.

 

Mt. Cook, Sefton Bivvy Bluebird Morning!

Now I'm 2 weeks behind! Good thing I only went to the National Bouldering Competition last weekend! It was great, but this was fantastic. Took a trip with a friend and his flatmates to Mt. Cook national park. The weather was looking a little cloudy on the weather report, but ended up being great. Splitting gas among 4 friends makes for a cheap trip too! Had some of the best trail mix ever (basically candy..). Fun, fun trip. I'll be hard to surpass the beauty in that park. It's not quite as standout pristinely captivating as Mt. Rainier is in one monument, but looking at Mt. Cook with the dry grass blowing and glaciers hanging over your head is as out of this world as I could imagine anywhere. 

Clouds on the way down to Cook! The drive was maybe 4 hours of very crampt car. Aparently Japaneese people are a little shorter on average??? 5 6 foot + guys was pretty crampt. Pretty scenery though!

Lake Tekapo.. Color unedited. About 40 minutes from Mt Cook village

Board with all the huts and capacities, fun to be able to see, and ours was empty! I was amazed at first, but then we looked at the logbook up there.. it'd been about 2 weeks since anyone had been there. Amazing how empty the National park around New Zealand's highest, most spectacular peak is.

Started the tramp (walk, really at this point) along the glacial fill of Hooker Valley toward the lake and glacier. Hooker glacier is easily one of the largest in New Zealand, and flows right up to Mt. Cook. Makes for some nice views facing the other way!

Lake at the moraine of the Mueller Glacier. Lookin up generally toward our hut and climb for the evening! Off to the right is Mt. Cook and the next bit of the track.

 

 

 

Cook!

Always the navigator :)

If you look close, you can see the hut way up there! 

Day shelter in Hooker valley, getting better with panorama shooting slowly! need toget the edges lined up a little better still, hard with all the mountains.

Ansel Adams Hut. Reminds e of the Chapel of Transfiguration in Grand Teton National  park. Amazing spot. I could have just stayed here, but the next morning at a mile high was so fantastic.

The hut's view down to lake Tekapo, Mt Cook village is right there too. I took so many pictures, it was hard to know what to put up. The color and images never quite look as good as real, it was so fantastic.

Our own little glacier for the day! (The Tewaewae). The names here are harder to pronounce than our Native American place names in the Northwest.

Huge old boulder right by the hut, you could bivvy in there too, there was the outside wind break and a cave inside that would be cozy even in a snowstorm! We still opted for the hut

We took a moment to look around the hut, but the clouds were heading away and we had about 2 hours of light left, so we headed straight up the hill right after we dropped our packs. The snow was a day old and everything was slick so it was a bit of a climb. Snow on the way down was a little sharp.. not that any of us slid at all. Ended up having a great hike and booked it down for dinner. 

 

There's the hut from afar! Mt Cook does a radio broadcast every night to tell all the huts the weather and check that  everyone got in ok. Little solar battery charger and wall mount radio worked out quite nicely. We didn't get asked if we were there due to some technical problems, so we got to call and chat with a ranger much more concerned that we have an awesome following day. Sweet as! I took the honor of saying "Sefton Bivvy, over and out"

More pictures will follow! I hit my limit for a post and need to go enjoy the sun while it's still summery! 

Sawcut Gorge and Kaikoura

This is posted a week late. I've been busy during the week too! There's something to do most nights and afternoons in Ilam apartments.. I'm climbing every monday, sometimes going for a bit of a local hike during the week, IES kids have a group dinner about once a week, the common room is always awake and Thursdays are Friday since I'm gone tramping most fridays!

The trip to Sawcut gorge was our first real trip out of Christchurch as a bunch of clueless Americans ("where are you from", "the states", "oh we thought so"... our accent is always a dead giveaway, though you can be Canadian once in awhile).
Polly found the hike in both of her guidebooks so we had to do it! As you'll see, there was a lot of river walking, which was great as it was a warm day.

The drive up, along the coast! Followed the tracks nearly the whole way in the few meters between he hills and ocean.

This hundred year old bike was downtown Christchurch when I was here 10 years ago.. the earthquake moved them out to Kaikoura where the main business was apparently. This might have been the same guy we met years ago?

The beach at Kaikoura. The sand is fairly large grained, hurt a little to run on.  Awesome coastline and bay!

Driving up to where we might have camped... there were a lot of bugs and people, so we opted for the coast.

50m from where we camped! There were dozens of these guys. Lots of tide pools and rock hopping

 

This one's for you dad.. they were a lot quieter than the wind, but there were  1 or 2 overnight.

... I had a pack straddled between my legs the whole way.

Ate breakfast in Kaikoura (I opted for my ramen over $12 bacon and eggs) then headed out to Sawcut gorge. Parked in a nice couple's driveway (only place to park for miles) and headed down. You have no option but to get wet as there's about 10 or 15 stream crossings!

 

Image stitch of the gorge itself. Pretty fantastic as this is well over 100 ft tall

...More 

avocados...!

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Panoramas!