Avalanche Peak photos

Good evening, folks!

Whee! We've been in Arthur's Pass in the middle of the Southern Alps for a few days now, waiting for the weather to improve so we could climb up a popular day hike to Avalanche Peak. Well today was the day and yes sir it was a great hike. Over one vertical kilometre was climbed, and over one vertical kilometre was descended. The climb in many places was semi-scrambling, which I appreciated. It was quite steep, no bullshit... we climbed it in 3 hours but we really took our time. I think I could have done it in 2. Yeah. Well despite today's forecast, it was quite cloudy at the top, and we waited at the summit for over an hour for the clouds to go away, but they wouldn't! We were getting cold so we started descending, and not long after things really started clearing up! Oh well, we were still above the treeline at that time and got nice views. Did I mention the keas? NO? WELL.

These birds are hilarious and awesome. They are green with bright red armpits, the only mountain parrot in the world, exclusive to NZ, very intelligent, social, and curious, and in no way shy around people. And they are SO BAD. If you're not careful/smarter than a kea you will defintely get your things that you left lying on the ground either chewed up, stolen, or both. At one spot above the treeline I took off my pack and was changing camera lens and while I did this I got surrounded by 5 very curious kea, who all wanted to know what was in my bag or what my boots tasted like. Fighting off 5 kea is pretty challenging, but don't worry, they don't fly at you or anything. Once they're where they want to be they walk and hop around.

Link to the AVALANCHE PEAK Gallery

A sample:

From Arthur's Pass, Avalanche Peak

Erin faces a kea...


Well, that's it for now. Tomorrow we drive to the northern part of the west coast, where we will hike and camp on the end part of the Heaphy track for one night. Then it's eastward bound where we will before long do the Abel Tasman Coastal Track!