A foggy morning

A slow moving high pressure system is over the South Island. Most mornings we wake up to thick fog which begins to lift around 10:00 or 11:00 am.

Fog lifting

This morning the fog didn’t start to lift until after 11:00.

A sunny afternoon

It’s hard to believe this blue sky was sitting above the fog blanket. This has been the pattern for several days and is forecast to continue. These photos were taken from our back porch looking down the river.

It is now 8:15 pm and the full moon is shining but the fog will roll in before midnight.

We might be the rainbow capital of New Zealand

Last Monday, April 30, was one of those odd days with lots of sun and clear blue sky interspersed with heavy rain. When the rain comes when the sun still shining, we know there will be a rainbow. It’s just a matter of going outside and looking in the right direction.

Rainbow across the river

This rainbow was unusual in that it stretched right across the Arnold River.

Each time the sun came out we thought the rain was over but a few minutes later the sky would turn black and there would be another downpour.

Capleston carpark

The sun was shining at Arnold Acres when we were picked up just after 9:00am to drive to the start of the walk north of Reefton. The fog rolled in as we neared Reefton (notorious for winter fog) and was still hugging the ground as 24 of us gathered for the briefing in the carpark.

A group shot at the trail head by Bill

The lookout

It didn’t take too long walking up a fairly steep track to arrive at the lookout. The lingering fog was evident but we had climbed above it.

Another fog shot

Most of the walk was in bush but the few times we had a view we had a look at and beyond the fog bank.

A good spot for lunch

We walked for about 45 minutes then turned around. Lunch was enjoyed just a short distance from where we parked. There was full sun by then and lots of fantails and robins. Fantails like to put on a show but by the time you get the camera out they have moved on.

An unusual fungus

Someone noticed several of these fungi near the end of the walk. As far as I could find out they are called red stinkhorn fungi and grow in areas of rotted gorse. This specimen was about 150mm across and we didn’t get close enough to see if the name was appropriate or not.

Now I’m going to figure out how to get rid of the date stamp on the lower right hand corner of the photos. It takes too long to Photoshop them out.

Cloud lifting about 11:00 am

On April 18 we set out with our friend Fr Kevin Mears with the intention of walking to the Crow River Hut and then up and over Avalanche Peak the next day.

We visited the Arthur’s Pass DOC office to check on the weather and the warden told us “The route  is unmarked, steep, and exposed to the weather and should not be attempted in poor visibility or high winds. Going up the scree slope from Crow Hut is possible but like taking one step up and sliding back two. It would be safer to walk in and out by the Crow River.”

Considering the low cloud shown on the next photo, we were happy to take his advice.

Low cloud over the Waimak

The first part of the walk was on the Waimakariri River bed. The map below shows the river as wide deep water but in fact it is one of Canterbury’s unique braided rivers with several branches meandering over a wide stoney bed. It was necessary to cross several times but we were able to stone-hop and keep our feet dry.

The track from Klondyke Corner up the Crow River

The track was 10.4 kilometres from the car park by Klondyke Corner just east of Arthur’s Pass village. About half was  up the Waimak and the other half up the Crow with a gain in elevation of 382 metres.

Food for a two day tramp

Tramping is really just an excuse to eat a lot of junk food. We divide each day’s allocation into “breakfast”, “lunch” and “snacks”, each in a labeled medium zip lock bag. Dinner goes in the bottom of a large zip lock bag and the other meal bags go into the same bag. We make sure we have plenty of snacks, including nuts, dried fruit, and mini Whittakers chocolate bars. On a short tramp such as this we take “heavy” food such as apples, oranges, bananas and yoghurt.

Cliff rounding the corner of the grassy flat

The grassy flat is a break between the stoney Waimak and the rocky Crow rivers.

Small white flowers

These little white flowers were fairly prevalent in the grassy flat. Each petal was about 10–15mm wide. I couldn’t find out the name but did read that most flowers in Arthur’s Pass are white, even if they are coloured in other places.

Kevin crosses the Crow

Cliff's turn to cross

Not exactly a secret, but a good way to keep water out of your boots is to wear gaiters. You might have noticed that Kevin had them on and Cliff didn’t. We will be wearing them on our next tramp!

Lunch on day one

By lunch time it was hard to believe the low cloud and poor visibility when we started out.

Cliff and Clare with the Crow River flowing in the background

Cliff by the Crow River

If you look carefully you will see Kevin Mears a little above and to Cliff’s right. Kevin must be part mountain goat, he seems to skip from rock to rock even without hiking poles.

The view from the Crow Hut

Arthur’s Pass is on the other side of this peak.

Some of our hut mates

The Crow Hut is a modern, 10 year old hut with 10 bunks. It had a big stainless steel counter for cooking on and the usual wooden table and benches. The water supply was the Crow River.

When we arrived eight bunks were already spoken for. Two grandmothers were there with four of their teenaged grandchildren and two hunters, who were out hunting, had come in the night before. Luckily for us, two of the smaller girls were nice enough to double up on one mattress. By nightfall there were about two dozen trampers vying for bunk space. Some ended up camping—with and without tents—and two slept on the floor. It was warm as toast inside the small hut with so many warm bodies but there was frost on the ground by midnight and the stars, including the Milky Way, were brilliant.

Moss covered beech trees

The forest was like a fairyland. The three small beech trees were covered in pale green moss and seemed to grow straight out of rocks.

Another great lunch spot on the homeward leg

By this time we had crossed the Crow a few times. Even Kevin’s gaiters didn’t keep the water out of his boots. Cliff is emptying his the easy way.

The same view up the valley on the second day

A great view of Mt Speight and Mt Harper. The weather on the second day couldn’t have been better, clear blue sky and no wind. We can’t wait until the next overnight tramp.

Reflection on the Ahaura River

The day started out windy and cold with a cloud bank that seemed to go on forever. Since our house was on the way from Greymouth, Graham and Trevor picked us up. We had to retreat into the gorse by our letterbox (across the road from our cottage) to get out of the cold wind while we waited. By the time we got to the turnoff on the Ahaura-Kopara Road the cloud bank had virtually disappeared and it turned out to be a hot, clear day. The photograph above shows the reflection of trees at the top and shadow at the bottom on a mirror-smooth river.

Ahaura area map to Jim’s Flat

We drove east on the Ahaura-Kopara Road then turned left onto the logging road at the bottom right. I’m not really sure which way we went from there but the old logging road was more like a wide walking track even when we were driving.

Road to Jim’s Flat. Photo by Trevor

After about ten or 15 kilometres on the Ahaura-Kopara Road (shingle, but good) we had about 10 more on this logging road. It looks picturesque but try telling that to the bottom of Graham’s car. We even got out once to move some large stones from the middle and the long grass hid all sorts of other potential obstacles which we found out about the hard way.

The Ahaura River at Jim’s Flat

River levels are monitored here, some of the equipment is in the foreground of this photo.

South Island robin. Photo by Trevor

South Island robins are always popular. These little fellows eat insects but like to hang around people who will scuff up the soil and expose some tasty morsels. They are fearless and photogenic, no one with a camera can resist taking their picture.

Jim’s Flat Hut

The hut looks new but it is an old hut that has been rebuilt and extended with five bunks with mattresses. It is popular with local hunters, fishermen and campers and is maintained by the Ahaura community.

The tidy kitchen has running water. Photo by Graham

Another river view

Notice the platform at the right hand side of the photo above.

Cage on hut side

The cage to cross to the other side by flying fox. It’s not for anyone though, but for NIWA workers who monitor the river levels. (NIWA is the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research.)

In case someone can’t read, the cage is padlocked. It can’t move unless you have a key.

Starvation Point hut

This is an historic hut and better left to the rats who now inhabit it. Quite photogenic from afar but a bit past its use-by-date.

A log overhanging the track to Starvation Point. Photo by Graham

You hope you aren’t under the log when it decides to let go.

A clothesline in the bush

A shirt, shorts and shoes carefully hung in some branches on the way to Jim’s Flat. I wonder what happened to the owner?

Snail crossing sign

We met up with a giant snail a while back. This sign graces a welcome marker letting the tramper know the hut is one kilometre away. The one kilometre before arriving at a hut seem to be at least twice as long.

We found several themes on the Heaphy Track. A prominent theme is bridges. All rivers and major creeks are bridged and they range from the traditional forestry-style bridge to wooden swing bridges to wooden fixed bridges.

A forestry-style one person bridge

These old forestry-style bridges are gradually being phased out, being replaced with wider bridges to cater to mountain bikers who are allowed on the track in the off season. We’re just as glad there weren’t any when we were on the track.

Cliff makes his way across the one lane bridge

The Heaphy River meets the Tasman Sea

This was a milestone on the track. At this point we were one day from the end and the number of sandflies multiplied by about a thousand.

The Tasman Sea framed by flax plants

The pale pink sand is very fine but swimming on West Coast beaches is treacherous. Swimming holes abound on the rivers if you can outswim the sandflies.

Another beach view

Just as on the previous days, the scenery changed regularly even though the track followed the beach.

A longer bridge—over the Wai something river

The view downstream

The view upstream from the same bridge

20 minute beach

We don’t know who named this beach, but it did take about 20 minutes to get from one side to the other. We took the path, not the sand, as it was too powdery to make good time.

Yet another bridge. This one holds a few more people

Sea grass

This photo was taken for Mike, my niece Sarah’s husband who is finishing up his PhD in sea grasses.

This sign means business

There is no chance of mistaking the danger of trying to walk the beach too close to high tide when the seas are rough. The paper at the top right on the sign is the updated tide chart.

Picturesque boulders

These boulders came from up on the hill above the track. There were several pairs of signs which said not to stop in the next 50 or 100 metres due to falling rock. Luckily, we didn’t see any actually falling.

Clare and Cliff at the end of the track

The track ends at Kohaihai Shelter, 15 k from Karamea. When we got to the shelter we were greeted by some of the friends we had made on the way. There were three Australians who come to New Zealand at the end of summer to escape their heat, two Germans travelling separately, and the young French and Dutch couple who were woefully unprepared, sore and exhausted but kept smiling and gained the affection of everyone they met.

A local transport company sends a bus out every day at about 2:00pm to drop off and collect trampers. It is a wonderful service with reasonable charges. After completing the Heaphy Track only the diehard would want to walk 15 k on a hard clay road to get back to Karamea. The most welcome part of the trek was the shower back at The Last Resort where we stayed one more night before heading back to Arnold Acres.

Ellerslie International Flower Show symbol

This blog entry was definitely in the garden, but certainly not in our garden.

Thursday and Friday Cliff and I were volunteers at the Ellerslie International Flower Show in Christchurch. We were all set to go last year but the February 22 earthquake intervened and it was cancelled. Christchurch was in no position to host the flower show and the showgrounds were instead used as a temporary shelter for some of those displaced by the earthquake.

This year the show the show was back on track, bigger and better and comprised a riot of colour and texture spread over a large area in Hagley Park.  Volunteers were used in many areas, we helped people vote for their favourite display in the “Yates People’s Choice” award. It was a lot of fun talking to visitors, helping them figure out what their choice was called and giving out assorted information. For the pleasure of mingling with the visitors we were given free entry, official T-shirts, hats, food vouchers and a goodie bag full of seeds, sweets, and assorted samples.

The photos below are just a sample of some of the displays we enjoyed: some indoors, some out, big and small, serene and comical.

Love (in) Your Garden by a Gold Medal Designer

Designers who had won gold medals in previous years were invited to create an exciting new look for an inner-city garden for Christchurch. I can’t quite figure out this garden from the description (which was all too philosophical) in the programme but it was visually exciting. The cylinders were filled with assorted things including food, cans and other interesting shaped and coloured items.

She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not

This garden by Ben Hoyle, a previous gold medal winner, won the People’s Choice award. The garden is a giant water lily floating on a pond edged by bricks from destroyed buildings. The interior of a large water lily was accessible by walking on leafy stepping stones. Inside the water lily were areas to rest, recline and relax—a place of tranquil serenity in a ruined city.

A garden in progress

Even in two short days this garden was transformed from barely started (in this photo) to a nearly finished urban sanctuary.

One of the floral arts exhibits

The Floral Art & City Care Hort Galore Marquee was full of stunning exhibits by individuals and garden clubs.

Gone to Seed

The gold medal winning garden in the Emerging Designs/Student Designer of the Year competition, all plants are edible in this cleverly designed garden. At first it looks like a riot of unkempt vegetable plants but it was, in fact, carefully designed and tied together with some large lettuce plants which had gone to seed along with a variety of veges in various shapes and sizes. Quite an accomplishment to plan a garden based on plants past their prime.

Head over Heels

This whimsical indoor piece in the floral arts marquee has a Parisienne flavour. Take note of the French poodle constructed of cauliflower!

All in all, we thoroughly enjoyed all aspects of the 2012 Ellerslie International Flower Show and look forward to volunteering again in 2013.

Heaphy Hut from the air

New Zealand has nine “Great Walks”, multi-day hikes with huts spaced out so the trampers don’t need to carry tents unless they prefer to camp. Everyone says the Heaphy Track is the most interesting with the most varied scenery and if you do only one Great Walk this should be the one. Cliff and I have been thinking about walking the Heaphy for a while and started to seriously plan at the end of 2011, finally making our bookings on January 20.

For more information, click on either of these links:

http://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/tracks-and-walks/nelson-tasman/golden-bay/heaphy-track/

http://www.heaphytrack.com/

Heaphy Track map

The track starts at either Karamea on the West Coast or Collingwood in Golden Bay. There is no easy way to get from one end to the other (except walking) so we arranged to get a ride to the first hut with a helicopter company located in Karamea which is just up the road from Greymouth—a three hour drive. That way, when we finished, our car would be waiting for us.

We drove to Karamea the day before we were due to leave. New Zealand had been in the middle of a fairly big low pressure system and visibility was poor. We hoped the cloud would lift in time to go but no such luck. If the pilot didn’t want to fly, we certainly didn’t want to go either. The following day was more promising so we asked to be dropped off at Perry Saddle hut, where we would have spent the previous night. All the huts have helicopter pads adjacent to them to bring in coal, building materials and trampers.

Heaphy Track profile

Although we were disappointed to miss out on a day’s tramping, a good day to miss was between Brown Hut and Perry Saddle as you can see on the elevation above. It isn’t actually as bad as it looks because the climb is over 17.5 kilometers.

Wayne, the helicopter pilot, flew low and slow over the route and he pointed out various features including the huts. The Heaphy Hut is the little red spec on the first photograph. It was where we stayed on the final night.

Wayne unloading our packs

The helicopter heading back to Karamea

The weather was starting to become fine at Perry Saddle but we were heading back into the drizzle. Luckily, that’s all it did the first day. Other trampers we met who had started at Karamea had suffered three or four days of heavy rain.

A small waterfall

Without rain there are no waterfalls!

Clare crossing a bridge

The scenery is what this track is all about. It starts out lush, moves into tussock, back into lush rainforest then on to a beautiful coastal track bordering the Tasman Sea.

Saxon Hut in the Gouland Downs

We stopped for lunch at the Gouland Downs hut then proceeded to Saxon hut, another red spec in this picture.

Gouland Downs boot pole

Luckily we didn’t need to shop at the famous boot pole which holds all sorts of footwear from high heels to worn out boots. We met a young inexperienced couple who were tramping in jandals (flip flops) because their boots hurt their feet and an experienced woman in Crocs whose expensive and well-broken-in boots lost both of their soles simultaneously. All three checked out the boots on this pole!

Flood warning sign

Shiner Brook

Not exactly in flood (it would have been a few days before) but we didn’t fancy crossing Shiner Brook.

Shiner Brook bridge

The more practical way to cross the brook, a one-person forestry style wire swing bridge.

Saxon Hut facilities

All the huts have sinks outside as well as in to alleviate crowding. The composting toilets are in the background. Some huts even had flush toilets—that’s luxury!

On the way to Mackay Hut

Grassy flats by the Saxon River which join the Gouland Downs to the Mackay Downs. This area looks sparse at a glance but is actually rich in a variety of beautiful plants.

Tussocks in the Mackay Downs

Lots of colour among the greenery

Back in the bush it seems as though everything is shades of green but there is actually lots of colour, mostly shades of red.

Southern rata

Southern rata is a more subtle cousin of the Pohutukawa (New Zealand Christmas tree) which thrives in the North Island.

Another bridge

Gotta love those bridges—useful and photogenic.

I couldn’t resist this natural still life of boulder, tannin-coloured water, grasses, and who knows what else.

A giant snail

This area is famous for several dozen varieties of giant snails. Some are even carniverous. This fellow (or lady) was startled by us and we didn’t want to wait the ten or fifteen minutes it would have taken for him to pop his head out and be on his way. Take our word for it, there was a live snail inside the shell. Since he was right on the path we thought we were doing him a favour by moving him off the track. Later on we mentioned doing so to a conservation worker. He said, I hope you moved him in the direction he was going. Whoops! We moved him back where he was coming from because it was closer. We hope it didn’t take him too long to get back to where he had been before we “helped” him.

Distant river

Well, we should have paid more attention to where we were when we took photos but we were so awe-struck we just clicked away. The golden hue in the river is caused by tannins in beech tree leaves. To be continued.

Light and water flowing through a tunnel

The main point of interest in this walk was a tunnel about 30 metres long with a creek running through it. The tunnel was dug out by goldminers many years ago. You can see the piles for an old flume at the right hand side of the tunnel. Some of the framework on the wall was still hanging on but it was too dark for a decent photo.

A directional arrow

When there is a choice of which fork to take, one of our group places an arrow on the chosen path. This one was particularly artistic.

A dirt biker, one of about a dozen or so, stopped to tell Keith he was the last one.

The last biker

The last biker—and the first one I thought to photograph. They showed consideration for us walkers.

Denise enters the tunnel

This photo shows the tunnel on the return trip. There was more light in that direction.

Mom and Michael at his wedding

This picture shows why my mother looks so happy in the first photo in this post. She is sitting next to Michael at his wedding on November 5 2011, just three months before she died. We all miss you, Mom.

Croesus Track map

Last week our walking group went up the Croesus Track from Blackball. Unlike the last time we went, in September, the weather was perfect: sunny, warm but not hot. Most of the way we were under a thick canopy of trees so we didn’t feel the heat.

Our group walked at a fairly fast clip so it was not possible to stop to take photos. If I had, I would have been left far behind.

Most of the walkers went as far as the Ces Clarke hut where we stayed in September. Instead of going up to the big hut Cliff, Kevin, Christina and I decided to check out the historic Garden Gully hut and the Garden Gully Battery site as we hadn’t seen them before.

The historic Garden Gully hut.

This track comes off the Croesus Track at the Garden Gully junction and is quite different to the main track. An old miners hut dating from the 1930s stands in a grassy flat. The government had a work scheme during the Depression where men were sent out to mine gold. They lived in huts like this—it wouldn’t have been very comfortable with its canvas walls.

Sign on the door of the historic hut.

You’d have to be really desperate to want to sleep in this hut.

This roof wouldn’t keep much rain out.

A forestry-style swing bridge.

This is an extremely basic bridge, definitely a one person at a time experience. It is made of netting, wire, slats and mesh fencing.

Closeup of bridge.

Christina and Kevin study the sign at the stamper.

This fairly elaborate machine crushed quartz in the gold  mining process. Most of the pieces are still there.

Some interesting historic goldmining junk.

Blackball Creek

Cliff tightens his shoelaces at the site of the 2nd Hotel.

We were on our way back when this photo was taken, an hour back from Garden Gully. The footing on most of the track was fairly tough on the feet as it was composed of sharp rocks of many sizes and shapes.