Roy, you are evil!

Well the day dawned, lightly cloudy, so off we set to Roy's Peak, boy was it a slog, switchback after switchback, down to shorts and vest in no time despite the fact it was still cloudy!

Mt Iron that we romped up yesterday ( I was actually pointing at a bush, but it seems to work)

I'm not sure if the cloud was a good thing or a bad thing, it meant we couldn't see the top, which didn't seem to get any closer. We stopped to talk to all the people who were coming down (whatever time had they started?) 10.00 for us, which seemed quite civilised, 07.00 for one couple who'd had to play peek-a-boo with the view, and we didn't ask the guy who had had no view at all!

well there's the ridge, but we still don't know where we are going!

 Once on the ridge it cleared quite a lot and the views started to appear, worth it as you can see.
Though I wasn't sure I wanted to be informed that at 1575m it was about the height of Ben Nevis as we were part way up!

We were even there together - now that makes a change!

We got to the summit just after the helicopter had landed and some maintenance guys had done something to the telecoms mast on the top (and given some water to those already there - apparently they always get asked so now they just take some. Kiwi's are really lovely people!





After a quick lunch stop we set off back down, not looking forward to that any more than the up really - it's down that kills my knees, but the glucosamine and the lack of hard surface to walk on seemed a good combination, we were glad to get to the bottom, but it wasn't as painful as expected.


We are pleased to report we are still beating book time on everything - 5-6 hours, the board and the paperwork said, 4 1/2 hours including stops Crosses say!

We even felt we'd earnt the iced coffee (B's new speciality, he whips cream and crushes ice cubes, the works) and cake!

Despite the forecast rain we remained dry, except for a few spots shortly after this photo out of a seemingly clear blue sky.

I sat outside, as per picture and 13 quail pottered about within 6' of me, some adult, some young. Very cute they are too, though a bit shouty!

B missed the quail, but he's just put a crust out so we are now inundated with sparrows, and they won't give up, they wanted the french stick we had for supper too!

Wanaka

Wasn't planning on doing another blog entry today, but got a really good internet connection and credit that has to be used before 17th Jan, so have the luxury of not having to worry!

We're in a place called Wanaka, which is in the South of the South Island,  near Fiordland and, along with Queenstown is the action place in NZ. They do everything here! Bungy jumping and jetboating started here and they are well known for every kind of adrenalin action available, but of course, it all comes at a price!

The clay cliffs

Inside the clay cliffs

On the way here we stopped off to look at some clay cliffs we'd been told about. They are a strange geological phenomenon, originally laid down by sedimentary deposit and then uplifted by earthquakes to reveal a cathedral like set of columns. We walked inside and they towered up above us, possibly being as high as 40 or 50m, just made of clay with large pebbles embedded in them. How safe it was I don't know, I just wouldn't want to be around in an earthquake or after or during heavy rain, you could pull off chunks easily in your hand!



Yesterday and today we've been climbing in the locality at some really nice crags. Yesterday we climbed at a roadside crag and met a French couple working out here, he is a paraglider instructor but is unable to work as he can't get to work! He works on the Treble Cone ski area (no snow now of course), but the recent flooding has washed away a bridge, closing off the whole area. Its just along the road from where we are, maybe 10km. Last night we stayed at a campsite right by Lake Wanaka and found the water level lapping round the edge of the campsite, on the way in the road dropped to lake level and it was no more than 300mm below road level. Not sure what the level normally is, but we can see trees poking out of the lake, so that's not normal! My guess is its at least 4 metres higher than normal.

Wanaka Lake looking out to the Triple Cone ski area, from the top of Mount Iron

A NZ Magpie, slightly different from UK

Today we again went back to the same area, picked out a crag we wanted to go to from the book we bought and off we set across the fields. We were no-where near the crag, but found some other crags, with bolted routes on and decided to give those a go. We could find no descriptions in our book, but they looked OK, the first two were easy'ish, then we did a quite committing route up over a small overhang that worked really well, then Jackie led a fourth route that she thought was going to be easy - in fact the section over the first 3 bolts was, but then it got really interesting and when I led it afterwards it was a really exposed route with small but positive holds and we both thought it a great route. Definitely has three stars from us and possibly a grade 17 (about French 6a). A first class day!

A pretty bird we saw, no idea what it is - John McCowan will know!

Tomorrow I want to go walking (and I think I've talked Jackie into it), we've got two routes in mind, Roy's Peak, which is a 6-8 hour round trip graded 'hard' and includes what looks a great ridge walk (you can see a bit of it on the LHS of the Wanaka Lake picture above). The other is Rob Roy's glacier, which is 3-4 hours, but and hour's drive there, not on the same day obviously! Probably means we'll need to stay another day as I know Jackie wants to go climbing again at least for part of a day. The only problem is we've been told its going to rain tomorrow, so fingers crossed it doesn't!