A leisurely 8.30 am start saw 6 of us heading up to Klondyke Corner for the trudge into Carrington Hut. Two Poms, a Scot and 3 Kiwis, we soon discovered we were pretty evenly matched with fitness.
We arrived at Carrington with plenty of time to recce a route up through the beech forest and abundant bluffs.
An early start had us making good progress through very steep Beech forest, comments of ‘this isn’t too bad’ rapidly changed to ‘bloody alpine scrub’ as we hit a very dense band of the dreaded plant life. Eventually we broke through to the joys of steep snow covered tussock, the struggle through this really took it’s toll on all of us, but after a couple of hours of scrambling we fell upon the main ridge. Our reward was breathtaking views of Mt Harper, Murchison and Rosamond, the sun was shining and not a cloud in the sky.
The main ridge was long, but offered easy travel on good snow, from this we kicked up the final snow slope onto the summit ridge and peered over the void into the Crow Valley. With time against us and a bank of cloud signalling an approaching North Westerly, we called it a day and made haste back towards the bush line.
Not content in letting us pass unscathed; the alpine scrub claimed a rather nice ice axe, lost forever, and destroyed a good pair of over trousers on our way back through.
Back at the hut we consumed all the remaining caffeine we could muster and headed down the Waimak in the dark. A good coating of verglas on the river bed had us walking on marbles for four hours and we finally escaped bruised and battered after a thoroughly enjoyable 14 hour day.
Steve Marcham
Four of our party were on their first CMC trip and they are all looking forward to the next one, thanks all for a great weekend.
Steve Marcham, Andy Cowan, Nigel Devery, Pam Ellison , Laurayne Robb, Paul Swettenham.
