20 October 2010

Silver Peaks!

Who would have guessed that there would be a back country tramping track just outside of Dunedin? I guess we do live in NZ so it shouldn't come as a big surprise. This track is so close most people start IN Dunedin. We could have started at our apartment and it would have only added 3 hours each way. In the end we wimped out and instead opted for a 25 minute drive to the trail head. This is because I hate the environment and just didn't feel right doing something without increasing my carbon footprint, oh yeah also due to time constraints.

We started on Friday night, walking about 5 km to a camp site.

Because we didn't have to walk far we packed in a pretty nice meal for tramping. See exhibit A:

woke up the next day to this:

Started to walk toward Jubilee hut, via the devils staircase. The views were pretty awesome. One one side of the track you could see Dunedin in the distance and the other way was nothing as far as the eye could see. Crazy.

We ate lunch at the hut, and then carried on to ABC cave and Yellow Ridge. Had a few stream/river crossings along the way

For the most part it was a clear, hot day (a very novel thing in Dunedin) and we were walking through mostly scrub bush without much shade. It was probably the first time I felt thoroughly warm in months. We camped by a river and after a huge hill climb had a flat walk along the road back to our car.