Two and a half hours of sleeping later my alarm went off at the bright and early time of 5am. That’s what happens when you host the CUSSC Intro BBQ at your flat the night before.
Congregating at the foundry car park we were off in no time, driving out of the city in two cars – Shaun’s 16 person hatchback and Martin’s Subaru “The Dickster”. Speeding down the highway, listening to loud music and feeling finally free of the city, we got an unfortunate call. The Dickster had overheated. 40 minutes beforehand. At the Groynes – barely even out of Christchurch! While the sun rose, we turned around for the long drive back.
There were six of us and only one car, and for legal reasons, Shaun’s car only fit five. Martin made the difficult decision to make sure his car was okay and went to a mechanic instead of coming on the tramp. So off we set again. Round two.
Our plan was to head up the Nina valley, turn off to go up Lucretia valley, find a specific spur at the head of the valley and follow it onto the tops. I thought it would be a mass bush bashing nightmare as I couldn’t find too much info about it on the web. Turns out there was a rough track from Lucretia Biv right up the spur which was fantastic! So can confirm the spur right after the third stream on the right is good to go. No getting lost for us this time! The spur was a bit of a grind, especially on no sleep the night before but we made it. A quick sidle around and we were at the bivvy.
After a lovely swim in the barely thigh deep tarn, a cheesy radix photoshoot and setting up our exclusively orange tents in a cute culty circle, we decided that there was only one thing to do. All gather in my two person tent and play yahtzee, obviously. The pot luck of chocolate, oreos and two flasks of whisky went down a treat, despite only two of us drinking. I can’t remember who won yahtzee but Shaun did make a nice comeback after completely failing with an accidental Yahtzee on his last roll.
In the morning, us girls decided to go summit Pt. 1602 while the lazy boys slept. Back at the tent, we plotted our route for the day which included a summit of all eight high points on the way and off we went. After Lucretia we stopped and had lunch by the double tarns where we went for a cool explore and another swim in silty knee deep water. It was an absolute stunner of a day and boiling hot.
Next we went up The Apprentice for the first successful summit attempt in Crocs, a monumental occasion. Before long me and Shaun ran out of water after betting our luck on a beautiful far off tarn that, once we were up close, was actually really filthy. It was not long before we found this massive bad boy of a tarn, skulled half a litre of water and all had a good cool off. Before long we were in the St. James car park, 10km away from our car. After a bit of quick thinking, the multipurpose Trog Book turned into a hitchhiking sign and soon enough we were back at the car. A very necessary stop at Culverden Takeaways turned out to be so good I even rated them on tripadvisor!
An all round stunner of a trip.
8 peaks summited, 7 ounces of homebrew each, 6 rad people, Jk 5 rad people, 4 empty gas canisters, 3 orange tents, 2 radix meals, 1 car with a blown head gasket, and a hell of a good time.
Georgia Prince
Date: 29/02/20
CUTC 