Lake Dispute

Last weekend, just for a change, we decided to walk up a hill. We haven't done that much lately!!

The hill in question this time was above Lake Dispute, which is between Moke Lake and Lake Wakatipu, about 15 minutes drive out of Queenstown on the Glenorchy Road. We walked from the Glenorchy Road up to Lake Dispute and then continued on up to the Mt Crichton Loop Track to have a look at the view. We then walked back down to the lake and had a picnic lunch before returning to the car - a great walk for a lazy Sunday, about an hour and a half all up.

In other news, we've heard tonight that the vettor for Greg's gun licence is coming over tomorrow night (finally!) so hopefully in another few weeks he should have a licence. Unfortunately it is now heading well towards winter and our tramping and hunting days are numbered, as the hunting areas are generally alpine or sub-alpine and can be snow (or ice) covered for a lot of winter. So it will probably be spring before we get into the hunting - but that just gives us something to look forward to!
Our high today was 12 degrees and we're expecting 1 overnight in Queenstown so up at 800m where we were last weekend will be significantly below zero!

A quick stroll

It was a long weekend for Otago Anniversary Day so we decided to head out and test our new camping equipment in the middle of nowhere. We had already pitched the tent etc at home to make sure it all worked, and happy that everything was in working order we headed off.

There are a number of open hunting areas in this area. We AREN'T going to tell you which one we were in, just in case someone is searching the internet for key words.... i.e. deer and where we live.

Anyway, after studying the maps we decided on a particular area. The access in was quite challenging, including an ascent and descent of an alpine pass. In total we climbed over 700 vertical metres on the first day and almost the same on the second day. To say we're tired would possibly be an understatement, but we had an absolute ball. Technically speaking it actually WAS a walk in the park (Mt Aspiring National Park).... but figuratively, not really!!

We saw a wide range of wildlife, including a rifleman, a number of robins, a mother hawk with her baby, kea... the list goes on. But that's not the wildlife you want to hear about now, Dave, is it??

We didn't have a gun with us as we are still in the process of getting our firearms licences - but we managed to "shoot" a deer or two anyway:

These deer walked out of the bush about 60m away from where we had set the tent up and were cooking dinner. They were walking around quite happily out in the open for almost an hour, even with cooking noise just across the river. When we woke up this morning two more came out of the bush, making a total of 6 deer spotted within shooting distance. 5 were Whitetail Deer and one was a Red Deer. Eat your heart out, Dave! You can probably understand why we'd rather not say exactly where we were!

So without giving too much away, here are a few photos taken on the way.

The river which we camped beside:

A stunning waterfall - thankfully we didn't have to get our feet too wet on the river crossings:

And last but not least, the picture below shows not only a great glacier but also how rugged the countryside was. We both feel a great sense of achievement considering we starting off just above lake level!

Out on the water

Summer returned on the weekend (after a week of winter) treating us to two days of absolutely perfect weather. Not too hot, not too muggy, not too windy... just right.

On Sunday we were trying to decide whether to go fishing or wakeboarding. In the end, we decided on.... both. On the way we saw this beach, which we would have pulled up on if we hadn't already finished our lunch. Very pretty! And we also figured out we can walk there (easily) from home - it would take about 20 mins.

We didn't catch any fish this time, which is quite unusual. We think it's because the fish could see us coming:

You wouldn't believe that the photo was taken from the boat, into 10m of water! Because conditions were so still, the water was unbelievably clear - we could still JUST see the bottom at 40m depth which is about the height of an 8 storey building.

After the fishing we met up with Max and Fin and Morgan. Greg, Andrea and Max all got out wakeboarding, with Andrea staying on shore with Morgan so that Fin could watch Max on the board. It was Andrea's first time back since dislocating her shoulder and it went really well - the physio's strengthening exercises seem to have made her shoulders stronger than ever before.

The last photo is Max, photo taken by Fin.

Summer?????

Yesterday (March 11th) was the coldest day in March, in Queenstown, since records began. We reached a high of 6°C....
The wood burner has now run nonstop for about 60 hours and locals everywhere are stocking up on firewood and proclaiming that "a cold one is on the way" (talking about winter). We hope we didn't just jinx it!

Here are a couple of photos Greg took from "the office" this morning. It was the size snowfall you expect mid-winter - about 10cm down to 700m and about 20cm up on the Remarkables Ski Field (700m is at about the height at the top of the Gondola).

Coronet Peak

We got up this morning and decided to continue on and conquer another of Queenstown's hills. Today's effort was Coronet Peak - we walked from the carpark up (and around a bit - always on the lookout for wild game!) to the summit, where there is a radio mast and radar equipment for Airways NZ. The views were stunning, even though it was a bit overcast and a tad windy. Not to mention close to freezing! There is snow forecast to low levels for the next 5 days in Queenstown so we thought we'd get in some practice walking up Coronet before the snow hits and we do it all over again carrying snowboards.

We could see a little bit of snow/ice left up the top of some of the distant peaks of the Southern Alps - hopefully by the end of the week there will be some on the closer peaks again.

Up the top we also ran into a few of the locals, who were very vocal, and seemed highly unimpressed that we left without handing over any of our lunch.

Twizel

This weekend just passed Greg headed up to Twizel with the management team from work.. and fell in love with the place!

He had a great weekend fishing for Sock-Eye Salmon, Rainbow Trout and Brown Trout, and enjoying the views and the atmosphere.

The canals are an amazing feat of engineering, feeding many of the hydroelectric power stations in the area. Greg's interest was more that they were full of fish, and brilliant turquoise in colour (from the glacier melt) but he took some photos for the engineering geeks anyway!

Also in the area is Ohau Ski area - the boys fished in Lake Ohau - and Greg also took a photo for the snowbunnies. Ohau Ski Area is in the valley on the right hand side of the photo.

And last but not least is yet another sunset photo. Because you can't possibly have seen enough of them yet!