This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
4-6 July 1997
The climb was well rewarded with a panoramic view of nearby Mt Richmond, the Marlborough plains, the Kaikoura ranges and the peaks of Nelson Lakes and Kahurangi clearly visible in the distance.
We dropped off the summit onto another ridge and after a couple of hours of up and down travel through beech and snow we descended in the gloaming down to Old Man Hut, a tidy new four bunker (complete with veranda) ina snowfilled clearing. We hit our sleeping bags soon after a large meal of chicken curry cooked by Nick’s master hand, and cheesecake from the freezer outside. One advantage of winter tramping is that it gets dark so early that there is no reason to stay up. The “Old Man” and Jeanine stayed outside in their tent, leaving more room for the rest of us in the warm hut.
Sunday — another fine day. We dropped down from the hut through the trees into a narrow valley which we followed for a couple of hours. The chill of the night still lingered out of reach of the sun.
Feter Wills
shadow still had a heavy coating of frost and the air was crisp. The track steepened and after a short slog we reached Lake Chalice. We had lunch on a rocky beach on the lake shore. The still green-black waters of the lake stretched away to the steep hillside of beech forest on the far shore. A peaceful spot.
We continued around the lake after lunch, passing Lake Chalice Hut. The track left the lake after the hut and we had a steep ascent to the roadend that seem to go on forever. Each time the track turned a corner I thought we had reached the roadend but there was another long straight stretch of track heading upwards. Patches of snow started appearing.
We reached the end of the track at the agreed pick up time of 3:30 with the taxi company but no taxi was there. It seemed that the taxi companies didn’t want to risk taking their vehicles to the track end. This left us in a spot of bother since we were 20 km up a rough logging road. Luckily we were able to get a ride out with some day trippers in their 4WDs to the roaconfluence with the Goulter River and proceeded to follow the track upstream. The beaches on the opposite side of the valley in the waiting, avoiding have to spend another night in the forest.
Punters: Nick, Lindsay, Wayne, Jeanine, Rob, John, Peter (Scribe)
dend_ proper where the taxi.was