This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
by Emily Moss
This trip had a few people that were just new to using alpine skills as they had just completed their Snowcraft course. I was looking forward to getting away because we were going somewhere with snow and that's always exciting. We were lucky enough to have a nice smooth ferry crossing on the Friday night but it was very cold. On arrival we found there was a luxurious rental from Rent-A-Dent - A Toyota Previa people mover. It didn't have a trailer so with 7 people and packs it was a tight squeeze. It was a nice evening and when we arrived at the road end there was no other cars - so thinking we probably have the Mt Fyffe Hut to ourselves on Sat night :) . We put the flies up and got to sleep around 1:30am, one person slept in the van. We set the alarm for 7am but I didn't hear it and no one else was up. We got up around 8:15 then other people started getting up around as well which meant we were going to start later than planned. We noticed a few more cars in the carpark as well and just before we got on the track around 10am a ute pulled up with some older guys, they told us their sons/grandson had just killed a deer so they were just waiting for them to come down the track. We went on our merry way stopping quite regularly because the views were awesome. The most direct route up to Mt Fyffe is via a 4wd track, we finally passed the deer hunters and another guy who had been up to nearly the top who said it was really windy. It was 3 hours to the hut. We were going to go onto Kowhai but some people weren't too keen on going over and just having done snowcraft it would have been too much. We got to the hut around 1pm, in time for some lunch. Around 1:30 one of the group asked us what time we were going to head off to the summit of Mt Fyffe 1600m, we replied about 1/2 hour. Well we then all lay down on our bunks and fell asleep I woke up around 2:30pm and then everyone else started waking up. We left around 3:30pm to go to the top, 6 out of 7 people went one person decided they didn't want to use their alpine skills and this person also offered to light the fire in the hut. We tramped up to the top - some people turned back about 2 thirds of the way up so it ended up being 3 of us plus one other that didn't make the top. it took us 1 1/2 hours to get up there, we didn't use crampons just the ice axes. Took a few photos, we could see Manukau in all it's glory along with Snowllake, the Kowhai Saddle, it was amazing to see it with little cloud. Pretty gutted that the camera battery had run out earlier so we were turning the camera on getting one photo...we ended up getting a few photos. We headed back down and it took like 35 minutes, we took heaps of shortcuts by sliding down through trees etc, using our ice axes as brakes. At first I was a bit scared but on the second/third go it was really fun! We ended up sliding down quite a long way and nearly ended up outside the hut, we turned back and could see our slide marks. It was great fun, worth going up there for the views. Anyway back at the hut, the fire had not been lit, we were away for nearly 3 hours and no one figured out how to light it! :( Steve ended up getting it going and it was really hot. Paul & I made Toasted Pita with pumpkin and kumara with brie cheese - yummy, then for mains Thai Green Curry with Rice. When the fire went out it was freezing in the hut especially in the morning when we woke up. I woke up really early and saw the sun was just coming up on the horizon over the sea (cos we could see Kaikoura township from the hut :-) ) it was awesome but it was very windy outside.
We got on the track around 8:30 - plenty of time to grab that coffee on the way to Picton. Took us 2 hours to get down due to some snow on the track and potential of sliding off the side of the hill - eek! So we took our time. It's a steep walk down of about 1000m to the Kowhai River! Walking along the river on the way out it's a tad nicer than the way up to the hut the day before. Did a few river crossings which was good fun - the water was very cold. About 20 minutes from the end we got onto a track by the river, it was pretty much a gravel road and I swear it had tractor marks on it! I would have been a bit disappointed to see a digger or tractor in there! We got back to the "People Mover" and it was a really nice day. We got on the road around 2pm. On the way our new traditional stop is The Store - which is near Sawcut Gorge. They are a boutique cafe in the middle of nowhere in State Highway 1 about 45 minutes from Kaikoura towards Picton. They do lovely coffee and the best Carrot Cake EVER! Got back on the road and arrived in Picton around 4:30pm. Dropped gear off then headed to our second tradition top - Le Cafe, now I have never been to the Toot and Whistle but I rate this cafe very highly! They do lovely steaks/pasta etc. Us trip leaders shared a bottle of Pinot Noir to ready ourselves for the 3 hour ferry crossing. It was on the Aratere and we couldn't get a seat in the front lounge so we got a movie ticket and went to see RV with Robin Williams. It was very funny - he never fails to amuse the audience. This movie he was a dad who tries to be cool and hires an RV for his family trip to go camping rather than go to Hawaii!!. Anyway this is not a write up about a movie! Allin all the trip was fantastic I highly rate it.