Chasing Ryrie through the Fiordland mists

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Chasing Ryrie through the Fiordland mists

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Not too many know that erstwhile Tongue & Meat Dave Ryrie, back in'77, led a couple of others on a "merrie" iaunt across the range of the same name and eventually out to Monowai. Trouble is, on the critical day when we crossed two ranges, very little was visible other than Dave's rear as we chased him through the murk. Ever since then

\ o it was one day in late Feb '01 that four of us clambered aboard the legendary Bill Black's trusty Squirrel ZK-HNIY for the 3O-minute flight from Te Anau to Lake Roe (sure beats two or more days slogging through the mud of the Dusky Track). That afternoon we ascended Tamatea Peak, which Dave R, Richard Ibbitt and I had earlier climbed and named. At 1640m, Tamatea Peak affords magnificent views of misty ranges, innumerable lakes (including lake Ursula, named after another former Tongue & Meat, Ursula Furkert, when she was still in nappies) and oufto Dusky Sound.

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Next day, glad to quit the seriously overcrowded hut, we crossed theMenie Range in gloriously fine weather and camped beside a snow-fed lake high above the Florence. A second high camp followed, this time above the Russet Burn, when rain and mist called a halt to progress. Disaster was narrowly averted when high winds (unprecedented in our experience, which collectively exceeds 100 years in the South Island mountains) threatened to demolish our tent. Lashing ski poles to the tent poles saved us from otherwise certain misery.

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(glass) e days. re with r't beat t party

From then on, aided by fine weather, the trip lapsed into comfortable predictabili!. We crossed the second range under ,haihai 'laffow

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Trampi ng and Mou ntaineeri ng 2001 /2002

Hugh Middleton

I've intended repeating this crossing in clear weather.

(unnamed, like most features in the area) and marvelled at Dave Ryrie's navigation, which earlier saw his party safely through mazes of spurs, boulders, bluffs, snowfields, tussocks, screes, saddles, lakes and waterfalls in very poor visibility - not country to be trifled with even though he had the benefit of having done the same trip with Allen Higgens and Mac Riding a year or two earlier. Then, as now, we found not a single cairn or other route marker.

Once in the Jaquiery our navigation anxieties vanished. We took a day to follow this stream down to its confluence with the Grebe. Then it was up the Grebe and Fowler

(preferable to thrashing through tussock, swamp and scrub) to the old Clark Hut, which is still habitable. There we picked up an old track, which was followed around the bush-edge to the new Clark Hut from where proper tracks led us past Island and Green lakes to Lake Monowai Road. Our only disappointment was having to abort a side trip to Cleughearn Peak when clag stubbornly refused to lift from the open tops. Other peoplewere encountered on the last two days, after five days of seeing no-one else.

Those on the trip: Keith Thompson, Lindsay & Sue Cuthbertson and Hugh Middleton \eader).

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