Routeburn Christmas

In the weekend we were invited to a mid-winter Christmas dinner. However the catch was, it was at Routeburn Falls Hut, about a 3.5 hour walk in up the famous Routeburn Track. The Routeburn Track is one of the "Great Walks" spread throughout National Parks all over the country. Over summer you have to book in advance and a maximum of 100 overnighters a day are allowed on it (3 nights for the full track). Off peak (winter), however, bookings are not required and it's a bit more of a wilderness experience. The huts only have coal and cookers supplied in summer so we really had to rough it in the 48 bunk hut with built in washing up facilities.....

As we parked our car at the Routeburn carpark, it began to snow lightly. Much to our delight, this continued pretty much the whole time we were up the valley, with the flakes getting bigger and floatier as we got higher up.

It turns out that they are called "Great Walks" for a reason. The scenery was nothing short of breath-taking!

The Routeburn river:

A dusting of snow on the peaks across the valley:

Getting higher:

And higher still (this photo taken from Routeburn Falls, looking down the Routeburn Valley):

The following morning we decided that instead of just walking down and out, we'd start off with a bit of a walk up towards the saddle (the highest point on the Routeburn Track) so that we could play in the snow. The others with us learnt the lesson Andrea learnt a few years ago: never challenge Greg to a snowball fight!

Before we hit the snow, we found the icicles:

Up near the saddle, looking over Lake Harris. The dinner party numbers had dwindled at the last minute but the 4 of us left were still keen. The other 2 in the photo are Louise (Andrea's friend and Pilates instructor/Physio) and our flatmate Mark.

Easter

The first two days of Easter we were busy around here sorting out a few things around the house and helping the neighbours with a few things. When Sunday arrived the forecast was for showers with light winds, which wasn't ideal, but we thought we'd stick with our plan to go away camping for the night down at The Catlins. Afterall, what are a few showers?

On the way down we stopped off for Greg to do a spot of sea run trout fishing. After only 10-15 minutes of casting (much to Andrea's delight) he hooked up a brown trout which gave a bit of a fight on it's way in, including some tail thrashing:

It was about an 8 lb Brown Trout:

With that box ticked, we continued on down to Curio Bay, where we've been camping a few times before. We could see the showers following us so we set up the tent in record time and sat down inside to start cooking an early dinner and to watch the showers go by outside.

Only it turns out the showers weren't really passing through. And they weren't really what we'd class as showers. Overnight we had torrential rain, hail, gale force winds and sleet. We lay in bed listening to it all (not getting a lot of sleep!) but were grateful for our good tent. We heard car doors slamming in the middle of the night and when we got up the next morning we discovered of all the tents that started the night, ours was the only one that survived it.

We opened the tent to find the weather starting to clear - well, in between torrential showers - it was a tropical 5 degrees. We had a bit of breakfast and packed up the tent.... and decided that what with the temperature being so warm, we'd go for a swim. A handful of tourists stood by the campground shop and shook their heads in disbelief, but we're pretty sure it was actually warmer in the water. Refreshing though.

And really, with a sunrise like this one, it was definitely worth it (taken from the door of the tent).