Skiing, climbing and a touch of tramping (May-July)

In an effort to catch this blog up with the rest of my life I’ve chosen to incorporate a bunch of my travels in the last while month.   I’ve done 3 skiing days; 2 with actual snow and one that was more of a hike carrying ski boots (I put them on for about 10 minutes, but that was better than my partner (James) who had them on for the whole trip including 3 river crossings).   

The first two skiing trips I can detail with photos, the first was to Mt.  Hutt just before it opened with Nick, Johanas and Wouter.  A good day with a fair bit of skiing.  It was great to get back into it.

 

Nick nearing the top of the ridge

Out west

The second was after a huge storm (it was supposed to be the snowfall of the century, but it missed us by just a touch—man you should have seen people buying bread).   Apparently the snow line is never this low (yep at this point that’s still the lowest I’ve seen by at least 500m).  It was a good day, but only involved 1 run due to the long 7 km skin in.   Good day with Andy (Cowen) and his buddy Keith. 

 

Beech + Snow... never happens

Skiing while it's deep  (ish)

The third I’ve already mentioned.  It was hilarious and from now on I’ll always pack boots, ice ax and crampons for any trip (in the car at least!).

There have been two climbing trips:

The first was to Castle Hill (finally) with Terra and Tom.  It’s really cool slabby bouldering.  I think it would take me years to get good at this style, but man it’d be good for me.  There also seems to be a fair few off-widths if I ever get the nerve up to get stuck in some cracks up there.   Some of these photos are courtesy of Terra and Tom; I include them for people who don’t stalk facebook (primarily my parents)

 

A cool V3 to a cave Terra spotting, Tom photo props

The second was a trip to Hanging Rock with Terra and Andy Memory.   This trip was epic.  Hanging rock is just west of Timaru and it faces north ensuring us with an excellent weekend of sunny warm climbing with views of the snowy (and avalanchy) southern alps.   The trip down didn’t quite go as planned; it included a beautiful tire explosion.   The experience changing it might well have been worth it.   We were in Timuka about to start changing the tire, when a rather drunk individual came up to us and yelled “shit that’s worse than anything I’ve ever seen in my 5 years of truck driving.”  We only drove on it flat for less than 100 m.  He asked us where we were from and at the response Christchurch.  “Oh sure you all can handle earthquakes but not tires” and he proceeded to change the tire for us.  

We got to our camp a bit late that night, but no worries it didn’t warm up until relatively late the next day anyways.   The climbing is kind of old school, slabby and the bolting sometimes left something to be desired (I bailed off one route due to a bolt I thought would snap if I had taken a fall)

 

Cleaning an easy lead (hence barefoot) but gives you an idea of the place

 

Well we might have climbed in the Port Hills too.

The first tramp involved a new technique that I think will forever inspire my brother Nick Hanson.  Basically a bunch of us went up for a geology retreat.  The next morning Nick Riordan, Andre, Rose, myself and Jonny were meant to go tramping despite the absolutely abysmal weather (cats and dogs doesn’t even begin to describe it).   Jonny burned the midnight oil a bit more than he intended, thus Nick received the morning salutation of “colonel I’ve got to bail” We proceeded to drudge up to the top of woolshed hill.  At the top Rose looked around and pointed into dense scrub… “lets go down that way.”  What followed was a three-hour descent to the braided river below.   Beech forest it beautiful to bushwhack through, and there were many a snowball fight to be had (we popped up past snow line).  No photos exist because I didn’t take my camera (it wouldn’t have survived.

The second tramp was in the same vein, but with my buddy Joe and around the woolshed creek area of Mt Somers.  Joe had a hard time proving that he wasn’t a smuggler… apparently it’s sketchy to show up in NZ for 2 days (especially with a mustache).  As such our day started a bit later than planned.  We walked up to the top of the rhyolite ridge and decided to pull a Rose…   our bushwhack didn’t end up connecting to the car.   3 hours later we arrived bedraggled and frosted.  I do really want to go back in the summer because the river drainage looks really cool and I think it’d be possible to rap into the river from near the woolshed creek hut.   Mmm Canyoneering…   Again no photos were taken because the camera would not have survived.  The greatest failure of this trip was the late exit precluded me from introducing Joe to the great savory pie… well he has a reason to look forward to his return visit!

 

Underdressed in style at the Fulbright Awards ceremony

Other than that I’m finishing up a paper, went up to Wellington for the official Fulbright awards ceremony, managed to burn out the clutch in dear Betsy (whoops that one was kinda expensive), and thrash my knees to the extent that I need to take 1-2 weeks off of high intensity tramping, climbing, etc.   Despite this I’m quite excited for the next month, it should be fun!