Skip to main content

Cars, camping and climbing - a trip up Mt Turiwhate

 

Hoping to make the most of the day light, we were up early and on the road before 8. However, we were stopped in our tracks half way between Murchison and Reefton when my car – Sylvia – decided she had had enough. 

What started out as the windscreen not defogging quickly turned into the realization the car was overheating. We found a hole in the coolant tube and without a new tube or coolant we were stuck.

 Luckily for us a dairy farmer – Luke – picked us up and let us use his landline to call the AA. After a cup of tea and short stint waiting with the cows we were in a tow truck with Sylvia safely strapped to the back. 

We are heading to a crag out behind Kumara Junction, up Mt Turiwhate. It was developed by Te Tai Poutini quite recently and features rock that migrated up from the Darrens. It is alpine-style climbing with Polytech-approved bolting. 

After a quick pit stop in Murchison to swap into Felix's car and get breakfast from Lee at Tutaki (best pie shop in the country) we were back on the road. 

By the time we started walking, almost 5 hours after originally planned, I was definitely starting to feel a bit tired. The good news was I only had to walk 8km with 900m of elevation gain. Easy, right? 

Nope. There was mud. Lots of mud. But with my trusty Aarn Pack, the power of jellybeans and desire to crawl into my sleeping bag we made it up the hill in time to watch the sun set over Hokitika. Phenomenal. 

Once the sun hit us the next morning we pulled ourselves out of our cozy sleeping bags, scoffed down some oats, and headed to the crag. 

The climbing was fantastic. Sharp, mostly clean rock with some unbelievable scenery. The drop-off to the valley below made it feel like we were much higher than the 30m of our pitch. 

We were a little concerned about the sharpness of the rock, and were quite careful with our rope management and had no issues. 

We had planned to stay a second night but 20 minutes of torrential rain and hail made us reconsider. It was that kind of ‘death-from-the-skies’ type of weather that makes the Coast so enchanting. 

The prospect of wet sleeping bags had us tucking our tails between our legs and skedaddling back down the hill. 

Distance: 16k 

Packs of jellybeans: 1 

Climbs: 6 

Broccoli consumed: 1 

Elevation change: 1800m 

Mud: Lots



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An Armchair traverse epic - misadventure and learnings

Stopping to take in the view and contemplate life choices Our day started off as many of my adventurous days do; with a 4 a.m. alarm. The day before we had hiked up to Lake Wedgemont, suffering our way up the thousand meters of elevation in the late afternoon heat. By the time we got up to the lake, it had started to cool down but a swim was still in order. This left my hair wet overnight and made me severely regret my decision to only bring a thermal liner to sleep in. In all my clothes curled up into a ball my hair still managed to keep me cold and keep deep sleep always a step too far. Matt was comfortably stretched out in a sleeping bag next to me oblivious of my discomfort. By the time the alarm went off, I was ready to get up and go but Matt offered to make breakfast while I wiggled into his pre-warmed sleeping bag to heat up a little. A coffee, some sad undercooked porridge, and inevitable day-bag-packing-faff later we started our hike up towards the scree slopes of Mt Cook. (No
Post a Comment
Read more

Why I think about my motivations

Three years ago I did a very memorable trip in the Tararuas. I started from Holdsworth Road end, climbed to the tops and walked across Mt McGregor, the Broken Axe Pinnacles, The Three Kings, Girdlestone, Brockett and Mitre Peak before walking out down Atiwhakatu Stream. I ran out of gas on my second day and food on my second to last. I got blown off my feet at least twice, took the wrong spur in the low visibility three times and needed to traverse Brockett and Mitre Peak in the incredibly high winds. I loved every second of it. Because at the time, this trip was perfectly aligned with my motivation for tramping. Why? Why did I put myself through the ringer on my weekend? Because it was fun? But shivering in wet clothes, getting tired and hungry, bashing through the bush with a pack that weighs more than a small child, was that fun? Early into my paddling, one of my friends told me, if I wanted to paddle hard, scary rivers, I needed to have a really strong sense of my whys. My whys b
Post a Comment
Read more