Nice View

It was Greg's day off today (Tuesday) so he decided to go for a walk up into the Wye Creek catchment area and took along his gun just in case. There had been a heavy snow fall overnight which made everything look like a postcard first thing in the morning. There is still a good snow base up on the hills, which is still making it difficult to get up to where the deer are but he did manage to shoot a "100 year old billy goat" (in his words). Apparently it smelt 100 years old too and had a good set of horns on it. Unfortunately he forgot to take a photo of it in the excitement as it took off into the scrub and took some chasing down!

Wye Creek rises steeply up from lake level to nearly 2000m and makes for some spectacular scenery, as seen below:

Looking back towards Queenstown - the first peninsula on the right is Jack's Point and the second one is Kelvin Heights

Looking towards Cecil Peak. And yes, that's the road at the bottom of the picture. "Rising Steeply" is an understatement! These photos were taken from about halfway up.

Daley's Flat Hut

We looked at the weather forecast on Friday and decided it looked nice for a tramp, but still a bit cold for tenting, so we decided to walk from Chinaman's Bluff (at a place called Paradise, near Glenorchy) up the lower Dart to Daley's Flat Hut. The signposts said 3 1/2 to 5 1/2 hours each way, summer tramping time. It took us about 5 hours in each direction, but that included looking around each of the grassy flats for deer sign (and following the odd stream up to the tops) and also crossing the odd fallen tree.

The tramp was a pretty hard slog in places - it varied between beech forest bluffs and large grassy flats. The following photo shows where we stopped for lunch on the way in.

When we reached Sandy Bluff, there was a fantastic sign that said "Sheer drop offs for next 200m, then track decends steeply". This next photo was taken from the top of one of the sheer drop offs - looking out over Dredge Flat.

We did see a couple of deer - Greg got pretty close to a big stag - but the wind was behind us so he didn't have a hope of getting a clear shot at it without it bolting. And as the last thing you want to do is injure the deer, he let it bolt! We also went for a walk in the evening to see what was further up the valley and saw a deer up there - but it was on the other side of a large flat surrounded by scrub and again no clear shot.

We don't know how valuable a hunting area it will be - at the moment it's still really frosty in the mornings so nothing for the deer to feed on, but by the time the frosts are over it's peak tramping season and the track is really busy. A great experience none-the-less and with the blisters we had on the way out, we're almost glad we weren't carrying a deer!

Dilemma

Greg was going to mow the lawn this morning........

But there appears to be a minor technical difficulty

Nice work, Met Service

We couldn't decide how to name this blog. We came up with a number of possibilities: Cold as a Mother-in-Law's Kiss, The Mad Jarvises but decided on the one above.

The weekend's weather was forecast as follows:

Saturday: fine, with light winds and early morning frosts. High of 17, overnight low of 6.

Sunday: Warm Nor'westers rising to gale late afternoon with rain by evening. High of 17. Free air freezing level 2300m.

Hence we decided that although there was the chance of getting a bit wet on the way out, we'd head into the bush anyway as we were keen to sight in the new rifle Greg has just bought.

The sighting in of the rifle went really well. This involves shooting at a target with inch scales on it, and adjusting the scope up, down, left and right until the point you aim at is the point you hit! It involves a bit of accuracy on the part of the shooter. It only took us a dozen shots to get the rifle shooting accurately at 100m. At that point, Greg decided Andrea needed to take a shot with the rifle so that she knew what it was all about. She took aim, fired.... and hit the bullseye from 100m. Much to Greg's disgust. Andrea maintains she won't shoot it again now - why ruin the perfect record?? Hehehe

Saturday morning indeed dawned fine and frosty with light winds. By evening the winds had gotten up a bit so it looked like the forecast was right on track.

We reached our camp site at about 2.30pm and set up the tent. We had a bit of a look around, then had an early dinner and headed up the flats to see if we could spot any deer. We didn't. We put this down to a number of reasons. Firstly, it's a bit early. There's still a lot of snow around, and the grass down low hasn't really begun to green up for summer yet (which is what the deer come out of the forest for). Secondly, DoC have been flying choppers into the area, dropping 1080 for Possums and Stoats in the area, which may have spooked the deer into staying in the bush. We weren't aware that the 1080 drop had been in this area, but we're pleased we had carried in all the water we needed. Not a risk you want to take.

We got back to camp shortly after 6.30 pm and headed into the tent. The temperature was starting to drop and we were also getting pretty sick and tired of being eaten alive, so we got into the tent and spent the next 15 minutes killing all the mozzies in the tent!

The temperature continued to drop. And drop. And drop. And so did the wind. We are very grateful we invested in top quality sleeping bags and a good tent. And that we had the common sense to put our thermals on before climbing into our sleeping bags!

So, to anyone out there who has ever said either of the following: "There's NOTHING worse than putting your feet into wet boots!" or "There's NOTHING worse than taking down a wet tent", we plead otherwise. Replace "wet" in both of the above sentences with "frozen solid like cardboard". Greg's water bottle even froze slightly in the tent. And there's photographic proof:

If anyone was wondering about the unusual shape of the tent, it's designed to withstand very strong winds and heavy snow and rain.

As you can see below, a very picturesque place for a camp site... it just wasn't the temperatures predicted. Free air freezing level 2300m - not exactly! We would have guessed the temperature outside the tent first thing this morning at about -4 or -5. The dew was freezing on the outside of our thermals! Looking on the bright side, the frost got rid of the mozzies and we were able to eat our breakfast without competition. Or extra protein.

The temperature came up considerably once the sun hit us and we walked out in brilliant sunshine (which we were grateful for as the water in the rivers was extremely cold). We went back a slightly different way to the way we went in, and we're very excited by the deer sign we saw on the way back. Watch this space!

Cracker of a Day!

We woke up on Saturday morning just in time to catch the most incredible sunrise.

After much oooooing and ahhhhhing, in that order, we thought we should make the most of the day and headed up the Remarks for a couple of hours on our boards, closely followed by a couple of hours on skis. On the way back down, we stopped take a look at this "wind lip" - which is formed when a big dump of snow is accompanied by gale force winds. This one was about 25 feet high.

Further down the road we couldn't resist this photo of Lake Hayes reflecting the mountains behind it.

And after that, we topped the day off with a couple of hours' trout fishing down by the golf course, where Greg let all the small quinnat salmon go... and then remembered that it would have made a good meal for Burton. Oh well, what he doesn't know won't hurt him....

Spring??

Tuesday was officially the first day of spring. However, with the warmest, wettest August on record, we felt like we've already had spring for a month here. It was colder all round in Autumn than it was in winter this year!

Anyway, Spring arrived properly...... and so did winter, again!

Here are a couple of photos taken by Greg this morning from our balcony once the skies had cleared. It was a beautiful day today - blue skies, fresh powder on the mountain, and work committments that neither of us could re-schedule... annoying!

The first photo is a close up of the Gondola and Ben Lomond. We like the snow in the trees the best! You may also be able to pick out the gondola building - like a little island in the middle of the snow covered clearing.

And a wider shot, showing Bowen Peak on the right.

It snowed to lake level for pretty much all of Wednesday, being Andrea's birthday (she was pretty impressed with the 'present' from Queenstown). We went out for dinner to a place called 'Prime' on the waterfront and sat at a window seat watching the snow lightly fall under the lights outside. Very pretty!

A warm spell?

Since our last post, we've had Adrian here to stay. Adrian was involved with Scouts with us up in Auckland, and was the MC at our wedding. Pete, who married us, was also planning to come down but due to family reasons unfortunately had to pull out at the last minute.

With Adrian here, we took the opportunity to explore the options for possible Gold Level Duke of Edinburgh award expeditions down around here. It's possible that some of the kids from All Saints Birkenhead might be coming down here in a couple of years for a tramp, so we wanted to show Adrian the possibilities. We took Adrian down to Glenorchy to show him each end of the Rees-Dart track, which looks to be the most promising option. We also did a short walk through to Lake Sylvan, which we did earlier in the year as part of another tramp. http://gregandandreajarvis.blogspot.com/2009/04/going-bush-again.html

It's a short walk through Beech forest, coming out at Lake Sylvan - giving Adrian an idea of the kind of forest the kids can expect to see.

This photo is the Rees Valley, the start of the tramp.

This weekend, we decided to head up on Friday night to give night skiing a go. The weather has warmed up a lot in the past week or so, and the snow conditions have deteriorated. On Friday night we were basically snowboarding on wet crushed ice, which had been pushed into 2 foot high moguls. We're still pleased we went up, but the conditions made the boarding less than impressive.

On Saturday, with the weather still warm, we headed out to explore a new hunting area and have our first day tramp of the season. True to form, we managed to pick an area that was steeper than planned, and then made it progressively harder for ourselves by deciding to climb ridges to see if we could spot any wildlife (verdict: only sheep). The track we decided to take back to the car was mostly covered in snow, varying between ankle deep and waist deep. Very hard going! But loads of fun.

Here's Greg, halfway up the steep ridge we decided to climb:

And here's the view from the saddle, a couple of minutes walk from the car on the way back. We were up the back of Gibbston Valley, looking across at the Crown Range.