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@lae
Short overnight trip this weekend:
Hiked up the Rock & Pillar range, only three hours straight up...
Snow at the top! Lots of it actually, this is the creek where water can usually be found, it must've drifted ten feet deep here.
Stayed in the appropriately-named Big Hut, which was first built as a cross-country ski lodge. It's absolutely enormous - 40 bunks, water tank, and even a ping-pong table. It's also almost always empty too. Only $10 each. The water tank was frozen solid.
After a chilly night (water bottle froze, ice on inside of windows... still warm in summer bag & polyprops though) we woke up to blazing sunshine which melted most of the snow, but disappeared by our lunchtime walk. This is the view back out to the coast:
And this was the view inland, with Rough Ridge in the foreground, Dunstans behind them, then the Pisa Range in the rear right and the enormous Hector mountains in the far centre.
And that's it, just walked down to the car (only a couple of hours back down).
A friend is helping me refresh my trad climbing skills in a few weeks. Come the summer he has his sights set on Mitre Peak (1600m and not technically difficult, so he tells me) and needs a climbing partner. We'll see...
I also found some old photos of Matukituki Valley:
Me on the way to the world's most scenic toilet:
