February 14, 2012

In early January Tanya and I went on a three day hike into the Matukituki Valley in Mt Aspiring National Park. The first day started easily with a trek along the valley next to the beautiful blue Matukituki River, through farmland for a couple of hours before we entered the national park and left the sheep and cows – and their glorious smell – far behind. The scenery in the valley is just spectacular; recent drier weather hadn’t stopped giant waterfalls from flowing down sheer cliffs, and as we moved towards the head of the valley Mt Aspiring reared up from behind other peaks and its true enormous size became apparent. After about 15km we left the flat valley and ground up an unrelentingly steep and increasingly exposed path, which 2 hours later delivered us to the newly built Liverpool Hut, which is perched above the valley with bluffs on three sides and the delightfully named Mt Barff on the fourth.

On our second day we decided that French Ridge hut, clearly visible on the other side of the valley, looked like a reasonable destination, so we gingerly took the steep path down to the valley floor again. It took 2 hours on the way down as well, which is a good indicator of just how steep it was. After battling sand flies for a few minutes we crossed the river and pushed up the other side of the valley to French Ridge Hut. It turns out that the hut sits right below the usual summer snowline, and given that the snow was pretty light we were able to explore past the hut a good distance, and were only stopped when we got to the base of part of the Bonar Glacier that runs down the Quarterdeck.

Our third day was sunny and unbelievably still and calm, and we used it to descend back to the valley for our third visit to Pearl Flat, and from there walked through the beech forest and back to the car at Raspberry Flat. What a valley!! With crampons and ice axes the world above would open and the possibilities for (relatively) safe peak-bagging would be almost limitless. Mt Aspiring sits above it all and watches quietly over the comings and goings of tourists at Aspiring Hut, of the Kakariki that live in the beech forest and the ebb and flow of the ice with the seasons. As you see it’s difficult to go there and not be so taken in by the majesty of the place that you feel compelled to write lyrical-yet-rather-pointless sentences like the previous one. Oh well – I’ll let the pictures do the talking from now on.

February 12, 2012

February 10, 2012