Friday evening ten
trampers set out for Te Anau, with a tea stop in Gore. We reached
our camp-site at the Upper Eglinton Valley carpark at 11.30pm.
Up early, we met
Scott Tibbett at the entrance of the Mistake Creek track and we all
set off at 8.30am. The day was overcast and apart from a few spits
of rain here and there it stayed fine.
The trek up Mistake
Creek went without a hitch and we stopped for lunch at the head of
the valley. Turning left and following the river up we came to the
waterfall below the U Pass plateau. Here was our first major hurdle
- where and how to climb it?. After viewing the options we decided
to take the true left which proved to have it's scary moments but
everybody came through with flying colours.
By now we were well
into the snow line, which proved to very soft and made the going very
slow and difficult. Our original plan was to camp on the U Pass plateau,
but the snow was too deep and too soft. It would have been a very
cold and uncomfortable night. Since we had made reasonable time and
arrived there at approximately 4pm we decided to carry on over U Pass
and camp at the head of Hut Creek below the snow line.
Travelling down
the gut from U Pass, the snow was a lot firmer which made the going
a lot easier and quicker. We set up camp just on dark approximately
under Glade Pass. It was Tony Malcolm's 29th birthday, and members
of the group decided to celebrate the occasion. You name it - they
had it!!. Birthday cake, candles, marshmallows with cream, party hats,
balloons, wine, and of course, a birthday song.
It rained all that
night and the next day. Sunday, we boulder hopped half-way down Hut
Creek until we picked up the marked track which led us down to the
carpark at midday. Lunch in Te Anau, and home by 5.30pm.
Rowan Meddings on
behalf of Robyn Bridges, Robyn Bell, Zena Roderique, Shelly Coleman,
Vivienne Brennsell, Peter Sanderson, Nigel Boydell, Tony Malcolm,
Chris Wells and Scott Tibbett
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