North-West Nelson: Haupiri Range and Anatoki Valley

This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.

Further west in' NW Nelson, Tony Gagley, Trevor Bissel and myself copped the lot during a four day trip in and around the Anatoki Valley. It was fine but windy cn Saturday as we traversed the Haupiri Range from Handcock Creek to Doulder Lake, but it was already snowing whén we left Boulder Lake next morning. And talk about windy: The ridge from Green Saddle to Needles Eye was exposed to the full blast of the S to SW winds although we had a bit of protection further along where the route sidles impressive slabs and pinnacles before the Needle. There isn't much worse than wet snow on S labs and snowgrass so progress was slow to Adelaide Tarn. The view from Needles Eye was. a true winter scene and itif finally became obvious that the next bit from Adelaide Tarn around the Dragons Teeth and up the Anatoki Peak bluff wasn't on in such conditions. We stayed the night at a cosy little hut by the tarn. Next day with the weather worse than ever, we were swept through the Needles Eye, then sidled onto the spur dropping to the top fork in the left branch Anatoki River. A two hour bash brought us to Anatoki Forks and the mosh hut here - but somewhat later however, you see the river was rather full. Another day was taken in getting back to cur vehicle along the pack track. We were all tremendous ly impressed with this area and are determined to return and finish what we failed to do. A traverse of the Douglas Range is rarely done and what we saw of it from a distance looked very challenging. Not shown on the map is a hut at Lonely Lake GR 972660 and one at the SW corner of Lake. Stanley called Smokey Drip. Theret is a new track around Lake Stanley down to the old hut at Waingaro junction. The ridge between Drunken Szilors and Kakapo Peak shown as scrub on the map is said to be tussock and rocky sidles with bush in the saccle. before Lonely Lake. There is a cut track from Handcock Creek up to 4135' through Devils Dip Saddle and up onto the Haupiri Range but it's a 5000' climb roughly. the route we used. The best ac cess to the Anatoki packtrack is from the McCallums Roadend flat.

There is a rough track through gorse and bracken which starts at GR 131762 up to the packtrack which saves you a long climb from Kotinga Road, It's raally. good country in there - why not try it sometime? :