Mt Crichton Scenic Reserve

Well, not just Mt Crichton, but mostly!

On Saturday morning we went into town for the Anzac Day Parade and then headed towards the Gondola. We walked up the track that leads from the gondola base building to a bit above the restaurant at the top, with Max, Fin and Morgan. Fin took a nice photo of the two of us in the "frame" they have erected up the top (much the same as the ones around Auckland).

On Sunday we woke up to discover it had mostly stopped raining, so headed out again, this time to Mt Crichton Scenic Reserve. This is an area of Beech Forest just off the Glenorchy Road, near to Lake Dispute where we walked a couple of weeks ago (about 10 minutes out of town).

The track is a loop track, marked as "2-4 hours" but we must be getting fitter or something as we churned it out in 1 hour and 40 minutes... yay for Weight Watchers! We even stopped to take a few photos:

These first 2 photos are of an old miner's hut now used by hunters and other trampers (the reserve is on the border of a restricted hunting area). We were amazed at how well looked after the hut was, and how much respect is shown by all who visit it. There are numerous old mining tools hanging up outside the hut - they'd be worth a bit of money, but everyone leaves them for everyone else to enjoy. It's great!

People do still stay in the hut - although we think we'd bring our own bedrolls.... the matresses are almost old enough to be the originals from 100 years ago.

Just past the hut we came across this waterfall... AaaaHhhhhh!!

And these toadstools - which were the size of bread and butter plates. Everything else in a beech forest is brown or green so they stood out miles away.

Going Bush... again

Friday morning dawned clear, calm, crisp..... and COLD. It was -4 degrees according to the car's external thermometer just before we set off on another tramp. Crisp mornings like that lead to great photos though, and once we'd been walking for about 20 minutes we weren't particularly cold anymore.


The first part of the tramp was nice and easy, with a marked trail that worked its way around Lake Sylvan (pictured below), after starting lower down the same valley as the well known Routeburn track.


The first half an hour was the tramping equivalent of a 4-lane highway... wide, flat, with bridges across the little streams and a gravel track. Once leaving Lake Sylvan it turned into a proper tramping track - with markers every hundred metres or so and no bridges to speak of, until we reached the Rockburn river. We spent a bit of time and energy keeping our feet dry on this section of track (avoiding bogs and finding good stream crossing points) which soon proved to be a bit of a waste of time.


After the Rockburn, the trail was not marked at all. We made our way down to the Dart River Flats and walked upstream to the Beans Burn river, using map, compass, GPS and a bit of common sense.


We walked across Beans Burn (up to our waists in snow melt - i.e. not overly tropical) and (eventually) found the marked trail up to the flats halfway up the valley.


We reached our camp site shortly before the sun went behind the surrounding hills. Of all of the thousands of acres of national park that we were in, we were a little bit disappointed to have a couple of hunters pitch their tent 50m from ours... but there's not a lot we can do about that!



The plan for Saturday was to explore further up Beans Burn, camp in the same location, and then walk out on Sunday. However, we woke up on Saturday morning to discover wet, warm weather, which meant large amounts of snow melt and rising rivers. So we packed up quickly and headed back down the valley to get across the Beans Burn river prior to the waters rising too much. Everyone else in the valley had the same idea - we met others heading hastily down the valley (including some who needed to cross the Dart - which is a FAR bigger river to cross).

We thoroughly enjoyed it, even with cutting the tramp short by a day. We got to know more of the locals... i.e. deer, birds, and the local flying elephants (sand flies). We got our own back on the sand flies though, we're both pretty sure we ate as many of them with our dinner as they ate of us. Extra protein.

Summer's over

The last couple of weeks of fine settled weather appears to be over. Autumn is most definitely here... and for that matter, winter possibly is too!

We had a high today of 4 degrees and a forecast overnight low of -2. Weather today started off as rain, with snow flurries to lake level and some pretty impressive hail. The snow didn't settle but the hail did! The hills around Queenstown have been restored to their proper colour: white.

(taken from Greg's office)

(taken from Greg's office)

(taken from Cedar Drive, one of the two streets our house is on the corner of)

We know it probably won't stick around, especially down lower, but with the low average temperatures we've been having, who really knows? Here's hoping....