Surviving Ahuriri to Erewh By Ben Kellett
I
love making the most of the weekend, I have 2 days of work during the week and working as a chef this is often midweek, luckily for me I had a lot of cracking XC days land on WednesdaysThursdays (my days off)! So, I have a 48 hour window to get some adventuring done and make the most of the good weather.
This starts with long deliberation at work on Tuesday evening poring over the forecast and staring at maps. Eventually I concluded that no matter how many times I read the forecast, it’s not gonna change. Now it’s time to decide, where to
Above; Mt Bath, northern Ahuriri on the right start from? I’ve decided on the Ahuriri at the pass that leads over into the Dingle Burn. I decided here because it’s in a dry area away from the stability of any lake, it is close to the big mountains, but most of all I really wanted to fly the line from there to Mt Cook and with the higher base forecast here with a light SW it all seemed possible. A few weeks before me and Nico had flown this route on a 2 day vol biv that took us from Coronet Peak to Mt Cook via Makarora and by far my favourite part of the flight was from the Huxleys up to Mount Cook, I really wanted to re-fly this section. There’s some draw back to starting here, it’s far from ideal... logistically. If I want to fly from there that’d mean I’d have to leave town immediately after work, drive as far up the Ahuriri in the middle of the night as my FWD Hyundai Lantra would take me and
sleep in my car. Then if by some miracle I managed to fly out of the Ahuriri into the Hopkins and beyond I’d then have the nightmare of trying to get back to my car which is now at the end of a 40km dirt road off the state highway. I said to myself, “The car retrieve conundrum can be a problem for future Ben, I’m sure he’ll figure something out. Sometimes, you just gotta try these things.” and with that I left work at 9pm on Tuesday, packed my bag and set off for the Ahuriri. I arrived at the bottom of the track at 1: 30am and had 5 or 6 hours sleep in the back of the car before starting the march up the hill to take off. It’s not a long hike and I was on takeoff by 10: 30, as soon as I put my bag down I had a sinking feeling in my stomach that I usually get when I have the sudden realisation that I have forgotten something. This
time it was the cable to charge my phone, not the end of the world but frustrating. I use my phone as an instrument that displays my ground speed, clime rate, glide ratio etc not to mention a pretty useful communications device. After giving myself a telling off I quickly turned it off to conserve battery. The wind was coming up lightly from the Dingle Burn to the SW but I really wanted to take off on to the sunny east face, every now and again there would be a light breeze from the east and by 11am I was seeing the odd dust devil, excellent! I quickly got ready, I had to forwards launch but was off the ground by 11: 20 and immediately took a 3m/s climb to 7800ft! What a start! Usually, the first part of the flight consists of me slowly scratching my way up to base whilst farting around with my instruments/gloves/ radio getting comfy, no time for this today as it was 11:45 and I was at 8 grand cruising past Mt Bath with a big grin on my face before crossing onto the Barrier range. I flew along the ridge between the South Huxley branch and Temple Stream soaking in the views before having a bit of a scratch on Rabbiters Peak to get as much height as possible before crossing the Hopkins. I arrived on the ridge that runs up to Glenmary on the Naumann Range and quickly found the climb that led me up to the top ridge, whilst climbing I noticed that my right brake line had become completely unsheathed! It had worn out just
Left; Looking North on the Naumann Range
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