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.
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| Nick nearing the top of the ridge |
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| 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.
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| Beech + Snow... never happens |
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| 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)
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| 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)
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| Cleaning an easy lead (hence barefoot) but gives you an idea of the place |
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| 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!
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| 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!
