Little Mount Peel via Deer Spur track and return by South Ridge route

Departed at 8:00 am from Christchurch, the morning was just waking up. We took a van and drove to the Mt Peel forest car park.

We arrived around 10 am and started to climb by Deer Spur track. We climbed up through wet forest, after 1 hour we reached the bush line.

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Still wet and muddy (I would say more swampy)
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We continued to climb an extra hour and came out on an open field
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We saw lots of nice landscape
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and the small shelter on the top
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Finally we reached the top
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For a well-deserved lunch
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A nice panorama
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Group pictures…
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At 1 pm we went down by the steep and slippery south ridge track
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Which, exactly as the name suggests, follows the ridge down
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Until we came to a nice stream and the top of the waterfall
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Everyone arrived at the river
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(not leaving without doing some small river walking first)

We continued walking to the bottom of the waterfall walk which is 30 mins from the car park and then we were off back to Christchurch.

TROG Written by Maxime Savoie (trip leader)