Category: hiking

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general hiking

The first Winter Ha Ling Peak hike

Early February – it’d been warm for weeks, so the decision was made to hike up Ha Ling Peak (aka Chinaman’s). The trail was mostly covered in packed snow – some icy patches before the first switchback, but otherwise, largely snow all the way, and easy walking with Yaktrax on. A few other people were out there with mountaineering boots, even crampons – and on the other end of the scale, a stubborn couple was managing with just sneakers.

 

From the summit – looking out over Canmore and the Bow Valley towards Banff

 

A gorgeous warm day, it was warmer than some Summer days I’ve hiked up there. And once you broke free of the trees, it was pretty easy to pick your way along snow-free scree (or stay on the snowy path).

 

From the summit – looking out over Canmore and the Bow Valley towards Calgary – and long mountain shadows, as it’s getting late (we got down to the car just on sunset I think)

 

Not the winteriest Winter.

 

Hiking down again, looking across from the saddle below Ha Ling towards the peak of Lawrence Grassi proper

 

Categories
european bike epic general hiking trip reports

Tramping the Routeburn (21 – 23 Nov 2009)

The Routeburn track is one of New Zealand’s “Great Walks” in the South Island. It winds through Mount Aspiring and Fiordland National Parks for 32km of some spectacular scenery – provided it’s not raining. Raining is the default weather condition on the west coast though, so we were lucky to hit one dry day on our hike.

We parked the car in Queenstown and took ourselves and our backpacks down to catch the shuttle bus. That’s one thing about the Routeburn, it annoyingly starts on one side of a range and finishes on the other. It’s a huge drive to get from one end of the trail to the other, so taking the shuttle bus (or hitch-hiking) is the obvious option. So, we were dropped off in the rain and the hiking began.

 

Rainy beginnings and roaring rivers

 

 

With Mum at the start

 

 

Crossing wibbly wobbly bridges

 

It actually began to clear up a bit after the first hour; the rain stopped and the clouds lifted a little.

 

Looking down to Routeburn Flats (site of the first hut, which we didn’t stay in) from a large landslip

 

And so we reached Routeburn Falls Hut, our home for the first night. Huts have to be booked well in advance through the New Zealand Department of Conservation (DOC). They’re not cheap, but are pretty nicely equipped. Camping is an option too, but again, spots have to be booked well in advance (for the tramping season anyway, out of season it’s first come, first served, like a lot of the smaller NZ backcountry huts always are).

 

Routeburn Falls Hut, and Routeburn Flats beyond

 

 

Alpine Flowers

 

 

Sunset from the balcony of Routeburn Falls Hut

 

The next morning we hung around to receive our helicopter rendezvous time. So far this season, everyone tramping the Routeburn had been shuttled by helicopter over Harris Saddle, as there were a few patches of snow hanging around threatening the track. The quoted time was pretty late in the day, so we had a relaxing morning, and wandered up Paddy’s Peak to watch the helicopter flying back and forth dropping explosives on the threatening patches of snow. One slid, but the other took about seven blasts without budging, so they changed tactics and the helicopter started scooping up loads of water from Lake Harris to dump onto the snow. Back and forth for hours.

 

Down to Routeburn Flats from Paddy’s Peak

 

 

Looking across to Harris Saddle from Paddy’s Peak

 

When we finally reached the rendezvous point, we were told that we’d be hiking through, no helicopter ride today.

 

Hiking through the snow – we were the first group through for the season, everyone else had been helicoptered across this small section

 

 

Lake Harris

 

 

The far side of Harris Saddle, hot and dry. Thankfully there were a lot of waterfalls along this stretch to refill water bottles. And the warm sun was definitely preferable to driving rain.

 

 

Looking down on Lake Mackenzie and the hut – lots of switchbacks to descend

 

Reaching Lake Mackenzie Hut, we dropped our gear on bunks and I was one of a few mad enough to go for a dip in the lake before dinner. It was not warm.

 

Lake Mackenzie, with Emily Peak in the background

 

The third morning we woke up to more rain – persistent rain today, it kept going as we hiked all the way out to the highway.

 

More traditional South Island west coast weather as we hike out on the third day

 

 

Lots of waterfalls happily flowing across the track

 

And back at the highway with plenty of time to spare, we lurked in the shelter and brewed up some lukewarm tea, and waited for the shuttle bus to take us back to Queenstown.

Categories
canada hiking trip reports

almost entirely unlike the edge of a knife

Mount Lady Macdonald – with an altitude of 2,606 m (8,550 ft) gives a 1200 metre elevation gain hiking from town. It was named in 1886 after Susan Agnes Macdonald, wife of Sir John A. Macdonald, the first Prime Minister of Canada (this is what wikipedia claims anyway, but there are all sorts of made-up things slipping in there these days, we all know Canada doesn’t even have a Prime Minister).

A typical 9 o’clock start had us leaving the house around 10 (we being Siggs and I, not Alex, who is stuck doing 14+ hour days at work this weekend), and walking towards Lady Mac – along a cunning short cut that actually forced us to walk uphill, and then ended up being tantalisingly close to the path we wanted, without actually reaching it. So we had to walk downhill again.

With the sore legs of people who had spent yesterday doing silly things (a 60km bike ride and hiking up Cascade mountain respectively), we hit auto-pilot on the way up, and told our legs to shut up and just keep walking.

 

Looking up Mount Lady Mac from the abandoned teahouse

 

We reached the teahouse and begun some heavy duty snacking. You could probably have even called it lunch, but for the fact we had a second one a few hours later. And the teahouse isn’t so much a teahouse as an unfinished wooden construction with lots of burn marks from where teenagers with no self-preservation have been lighting fires ON the teahouse using wood FROM the teahouse. It does provide a nice viewing and lunching platform though.

 

 

Following the teahouse there was a thankfully short slog up a scree slope until we reached the *dramatic chords* KNIFE-EDGE RIDGE. This was where I left Siggs, who has far too much common sense to be ignoring the fact she’s on a very skinny bit of rock with a definite cliff on one side, and a very steep slide on the other. There was only a light breeze, so the scramble across was actually really fun – there’s no technical difficulty to it, just the difficulty of ignoring your brain going ARGH, MY GOD IT’S A CLIFF, WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE! Thanks to climbing I’m accustomed to my brain’s panicked warnings of impending doom. Although I didn’t stop to get my camera out along the way – I’m coordinated when it comes to not dropping me off a cliff, I have a bad track record when it comes to cameras and cliffs however.

 

Looking back along the ridge from the summit (this photo doesn’t really do justice to the steepness either, it’s really quite narrow at the top, though you can spend a lot of the time with your hands on the top of the ridge, walking your feet along holds on the slopey non-cliff side)

 

So I hit the summit – finally, that ridge seemed to go forever. Maybe it’s about 150 metres? I had Siggs at the start of it as a reference point, and she was certainly a distant blob. The journey back was quicker and easier, as I spent much less time going “Am I at the summit now? Nope, this isn’t it, maybe it’s that next bit.”

 

 

We sat at the top of the scree slope and looked down at the teahouse, helicopter pad, and Canmore while enjoying a second lunch. Followed by interminable plodding back down a path that seemed a lot less steep than it had done on the way up, and gradual removal of layers as we hit the warm valley air.

Categories
bikes canada general hiking trip reports

on the rise

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming with an exhilarating account of Megan’s ascent of Ha Ling Peak.

 

Bike rests at the pass (note water crackers in drink bottle holder)
 

The cycle from home, through town, and up the hill to the pass between Mt Lawrence Grassi and Mt Rundle went something like this:

 


(click to embiggen)
 

Then the bike was hidden in the trees, and bike shoes were switched for Chaco sandals. And the hike went something like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

The summit of Ha Ling is at 2407 metres (7897ft), so an elevation gain of 700 metres for the hike, or 1.1km if you count it all the way from cycling through town. Basically, it was high enough for the intermittent rain to turn up as snow just as I arrived at the summit (while I was quite warm in shorts and a t-shirt down in the valley).

 

 

After some summit photos and snacks, I trotted back down the hill again, singing along to the songs in my newly created adventuring soundtrack…

I’m burning through the skies Yeah!
Two hundred degrees
That’s why they call me Mister Fahrenheit
I’m trav’ling at the speed of light
I wanna make a supersonic man of you

(Queen are fun – although I’m not sure how much sense some of the lyrics make, particularly that one about a racing car passing by like Lady Godiva).

Back down from the hiking, I collect my bike and just after taking this photo, realise my wallet is not in my pack. This was nearly the sad tale of a wallet lost somewhere on the wilds of Ha Ling Peak, but instead is the feel-good story of a lost wallet found by someone and handed in to a passing Park Ranger, who in turn got the wallet back to its owner.

 

 

Thanks for that Tom. After the weather, we’ll be coming back to you with more hard hitting news from the Yukon.

Categories
general hiking travel

parque nacional torres del paine

One morning we got up before sunrise (not hard to do in this part of the world at this time of year) and climbed into the little Toyota Yaris we had hired, and drove towards Parque Nacional Torres del Paine. The sun rose just as we were driving into the Park and got our first view of the Torres del Paine, swathed in grey cloud, but still visible.

 

 

We decided to just hike up to the viewpoint to see the Torres, as avalanche risk meant we couldn’t do the circuit hike in the park anyway. So we drove over the bridge of doom, and further into the park.

 

 

This time of the year was very much low season, and we only saw two other people the whole time we were there – a couple out on the path to Torres del Paine, with overnight backpacks.

 

 

We found a carpark, and wandered around til we found a likely trail to start hiking up. The streams we were crossing were full of rocks with little ice rings surrounding them, but were still flowing. As we gained altitude, patches of snow quickly appeared, and we were soon walking on a very snowy trail – becoming thankful that there had been other people around silly enough to come out here in the cold season.

 

 

The weather wasn’t looking promising, and the snowy path was getting deeper, and as we reached the Campamento Chileno it started to snow on us. We sat in the shelter of the verandah of the locked hut, and watched the snow and the grey clouds, and wondered whether it would be worth going on – would we even be able to see the Torres? After some food it had stopped snowing, and we decided we may as well keep going, at least for a bit, to see what the path was like – if the weather turned bad again we could always turn back.

 

 

We started trying to make quicker time, remembering how little daylight we had down in the far South here. We start slogging up the final hill, a slippery track of snow covering boulders, with big steps up, and of course snow covering everything we can use to balance ourselves or push up on. Between the snow and the pace we’re scrambling up the hill, we’re getting thoroughly soggy. But we finally make it to the top, and see the Torres del Paine, with their pet glacier and lake. Although there’s blue sky behind us, the Torres remain swathed in grey cloud – it seems they like to be atmospheric.

And then we hike out again, and the weather and the colours of Patagonia were beautiful.