Happy New Years

[Ryan]

I hope you all have a happy new years and stick to any new years resolutions you may make :) My resolution is to ensure that when I get stuck doing boring client work, that I either do interesting work in my spare time, or that I just work like a mofo until I get the boring stuff done. I spend too much time avoiding the boring stuff, when I should really be working on the interesting stuff more.


I will be spending new years camping on the valley floor of the Matukituki valley and doing day walks up the sides of some of the surrounding mountains. Which basically means I'm walking into the middle of absolutely nowhere, far away from the internet or phone reception. The only electronic devices I'm taking with me are a camera and two torches! Even my watch has no battery :)

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&sour...44246&t=h&z=15

[Jeffro]

Looks like a refreshing a great time in store for you. Not sure what my New Years resolution will be except that I really hope 2011 is a much better year for me and my fiancee than 2010. What a bitch of a year.

[DannyGSmith]

Wow that is gorgeous! Is that the treeline, what is the elevation? Looks like a good time. Congrats!

[dgwyer]

Looks beautiful.. What temperatures will you be camping in?

Why don't you post more pics, or a link. :) Would love to see more of that scenery.

[Ryan]

Just got back now. Will be sorting out my photos shortly and will upload a few from the trip. The ones above are just ones I found via a Google image search.

Wow that is gorgeous! Is that the treeline, what is the elevation? Looks like a good time. Congrats!

First photo is above the treeline, second photo was from below the treeline.

I think the car park starts at around 400m above sea level, then we slowly worked our way up the valley to around 600m above sea level (with 50-100m climbs and drops on the way). Then we were supposed to be going up to the French Ridge which is 1463m above sea level, but ended up arriving at the bottom of the hill a little too late, so instead of risking coming down in the dark, we headed up the side of Mount Liverpool to ~1100m before dropping down the hill to a little hut perched on a ridge and then heading back the way we came and camping in the valley overnight.


We saw an awesome avalanche come crashing down off the side of Mt Joffre (~2 km from us). It made a hell of a crack. Biggest avalanche I've ever seen and was glad not to be underneath it at the time!

Looks beautiful.. What temperatures will you be camping in?

On the valley floor it was around 25 deg. C during the day and around 15 deg. C at night (estimate - I didn't actually take a measurement) with almost no wind. Up on the ridge it would have been around 13 deg. C during the day and a bit blustery. We conveniently left at just the right time as a major storm hit just as we got back to the car park.

[Ryan]

I don't have any photos of myself since we haven't gotten around to swapping photos just yet, so any pictures of people here are of my friend Chris.


Chris with our tents in the background. I think the big peak in the background is Mount Joffre. You can also see the very top of Mount Aspiring poking out over the top too. Mount Aspiring is very high at 3030m and is the largest mountain in the park.


Crazy looking dragonfly. It was around 10-12cm long and buzzed straight past us before landing about 1m from me :)


Chris at the highest point we reached:


The remains of an avalanche (I didn't get my camera out quick enough to catch it before most of it had fallen into the valley):






Totally awesome fresh water beach we had lunch at:



There's some more photos in the following blog post ... http://ryanhellyer.net/2011/01/02/pearl-flat/