Summers Coming

Machine-read text (unproofread)

Read from the scans by software, so it contains mistakes. Typing it up properly would help blind readers: use Suggest an edit.

SUMMERS COMING This year we decided to head for central Westland for our traditional November trip. On this occasion all our theories turned out to be wrong since the weather was really fantastic and the snow conditions abominable. Our first encounter with snow was on the climb to Pk 5450', that cornerpost of the Wilberg Range at the back of Harihari. From here we took in a magnificent view of the country ahead of us before ploughing down to Exit Creek, a delightful little stream of gritty boulders and babbling water, subalpine and sunshine. In the afternoon we made tracks up the North Poerua which is a real beauty with its cheeky blue ducks, pools, rapids, rocks and scrub. We picked a bombproof campsite tucked under bluffs on the left side. Next day' we crossed to Adams Flat over the impressively high Alpheus col. It was an exhausting effort in scorching heat and horribly deep wet snow all the way up and all the way down. It just wasn't our day. In a dazed condition we wandered around this beautiful flat next morning before modifying our plans and clambering up Alpheus Creek for the long pull to Kensington's east ridge. As we neared the top Huey turned all. sour, but we were beyond caring so as we gained the ridge Huey turned on a smile and treated us to a magnificant spectacle of icefalls and rock walls, snowfields and peaks while the mist and drizzle rolled away. Wonderful: We dropped back a little and made camp on a large flat rock. It was a magnificant route of unrelenting steepness up from the Adams. An ominously black sky next day chased us onto the snowfields past the Arethusa and the icefalls off Farrar up to Angel Col and the Garden of Eden. More slogging in the soft cold snow brought us around to Vertebrae Col and steep sliding snowslopes down onto the Farrar Glacier. This is an incredibly a desolate and lifeless place of crumbling cliffs and receding soia ice - good travel though, hence to the Barlow Flat and camp. Oy I Grass and fires again. -

Acompulsory rest day followed while a thunderstorm passed over. 4 In the evening we found - a bivvy rock and some WTMC treasure, leftover from Brian Hunt's trip of 2 years ago. Easterly winds again next: morning so we floundered down the Barlow to the first tributary, right side. We started our high level sidle from here and little did we know how hard it would be. This side of the valley is riddled with slips and deeply chopped up gullies so progress was very slow to just before Escape Stream (North Barlow) where we camped in superb surroundings. Next day we had some easy travel around to Escape Glacier where we opted for the col which 'saddles' with the head of Dry Creek. Malcolm did a magnificant lead plugging all the way while I trailed with blurred vision. There was a truly fantastic view from the col especially to the Barlow head and that amazing Barlow icefall. - Our planned route to Mt. Adams was a bit revolting so it was down to Dale Creek, wading through monstrous snow drifts all the way to the mythical lake at 4500 feet. I've never seen anything like Dale.Creek before, and the amount o of snow at such low levels was almost unbelievable. After lunch at the - lake we crossed to the western tributaries through bit of S a. monkey puzzle and pickeda campsite near tarns where the creeks join. Next morning was gloriously fine once the showers had cleared. We climbed to Pk 4875' where we needed most of the morning to recover from the view. It was rather funny really. We'd stagger to our feet and. declare "It's so hard to move!" then collapse into snowgrass again and have another round of biscuits." d But we finally packed our belongings, said our last farewells and headed for a long spur south of Parker Creek. At the end of this we dived off for the Whataroa bridge, but got fouled up in the feeder system of the three-pronged creek. It was all scunge so we felt decidedly ragged as we crawled out of the bush and back to the lowlands where it was all over. Those who had a great week were Malcolm Fisher and Paul Richardson. PAUL RICHARDSON