Ahuriri to Erewhon Cross Country Flight

Surviving Ahuriri to Erewhon

By Ben Kellett

ilove 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 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

Above; Mt Bath, northern Ahuriri on the right

Surviving Ahuriri to Erewhon

Above; Crossing the Godley River

above the handle as it passes through the ceramic ring that keeps the brakes, this glider doesn’t have pulleys. I still had the inner core of the line but was uncomfortable watching it rubbing on the ceramic ring that had just cut through the sheathing. I tried to reassure myself by thinking if the line did eventually break, I should still be able to comfortably use the rear riser to steer the glider to landing. I’d just have to hope that it didn’t snap during a violent 6m/s monster climb that were becoming more and more frequent the further into the flight I got. Trying not to look at the threads of Aramid that remained, I decided to continue.

It was a completely blue day, no cumulus whatsoever but that didn’t seem to make a difference as it was working so well. It certainly was simple flying; get over the pointy stuff and turn when it beeps. I crossed the Dobson and started working my way up the Ben Ohaus, fully stoked with Mt Cook Village easily within glide, the objective was in the bag! I had gotten there much faster than expected, it was only 2pm so easily 4 to 5 hours of flying left.

I decided to push further up the Ben Ohaus so I could attempt crossing the Tasman when all of a sudden, WHAM! I felt this heavy tug on one of my shoulders, my heart immediately sank, something bad just happened. My initial reaction was, “Oh no, it’s an accidental reserve deployment,” but after a couple more seconds of feeling and a turn of the head I realised it was actually my Camelbak with 2 litres of water hanging behind me from the tube that connects to my shoulder strap. Grabbing the brakes in one hand I reached back and swung it up onto my chest, then felt around to the back pocket and realised the zip had come undone and the pocket (that contains all of my vol biv gear) was now fully open and flapping in the wind.

Now don’t get me wrong I was pretty relieved that it wasn’t an accidental reserve deployment at 9500ft on the Ben Ohaus, who knows where I would’ve landed, but now I had an open pocket, and I was potentially dropping all of the kit that I may desperately need to make it out of the pretty remote terrain I was planning on flying over. I was over the road that leads to the Mt Cook Village so I could just glide down to the road and call it a day but how often am I at 9500ft on the Ben Ohaus at 2pm? The next road after this would be after 75km of barren mountains at Erewhon Station, I knew that under my seat in replacement of my back protection I had my sleeping bag, an inflatable mattress and the outer to my tent (the poles were in the back pocket) so I knew I could easily survive the night.

However, my food was in the back pocket and without that would certainly restrict how many days walking I would be able to endure. I decided to press on and made the long glide across the Tasman, whilst trying desperately to close the zip on the pocket behind me, which was impossible.

After five minutes of struggling, I gave in and had a desperate midflight toilet break, balancing the Camelbak on my chest just in time to start climbing up on Mt Burnett on the western flanks of the Jollie River.

Between 3 and 5pm for me is the most enjoyable part of the day for flying, the thermals feel bigger with softer edges, they seem to be more reliable and take you higher, usually I’m more into the flow and more relaxed as well. I was having a blast hopping over the Jollie and the Cass looking back at the views of Mt Cook, feeling elated as I crossed the Godley. I have wanted to fly the Godley for a long time after years of looking at it on the maps, I dared not fly to far up as I know how long the walk could be and I still was uncertain as to how much food and equipment I had lost out the back of my harness.

Still balancing my camel back on my lap, I crossed over to Mt Sibbald and spotted some chamois grouped up on one of the summits and asked them, “What are you guys even doing

up here?!” They were as confused to see me as I was of them. I kept flying in the direction of the Two Thumbs Range, it was unbelievable flying, every climb was right where it should be and was strong, no mucking around.

I left the Thumbs and was starting to get a bit disorientated but managed to spot what I assumed must’ve ben Erewhon Station. After soaring the sunny faces of the Cloudy Peak Range for 10 minutes I pressed on in the direction of the mouth of the Lawrence River. My theory was if I got a high on the other side I’d keep going in the direction of Mt Arrowsmith but if not I’d land near the station as I still didn’t know if I had any food, I didn’t want to push my luck and land at the head of the Lawrence River and walk for 2 days.

If I had all my kit and my brake line wasn’t attached by a couple threads I would’ve crossed to the northern

Above; Mt Cook from Burnett. Below; Cloudy PEak

side of the Lawrence and pressed on but I’d already had an epic day it was 5:30pm and I decided to glide south for the station. As I got below 3000ft I was greeted with a 30kmh southerly valley wind that meant I couldn’t make it to the road, I landed backwards in the riverbed and my naivety cost me an extra 3 hours walking and 5 river crossings.

After landing I quickly checked my back pocket to see what had fallen out; loads of stuff! My hiking poles, concertina bag, electronics (power banks, cables etc), bank cards, ID and some cash. Thankfully, I still

had my food and tent poles! Feeling elated, I packed up, folded my glider as best I could into my backpack and turned my phone on to confirm my route out. I checked the distance I’d flown and it was 136km! My longest ever flight! Now the mission of getting back to the car begins.

I walked for 4 hours and set up camp just before sunset on the banks of the Rangitata, I woke at 6am, packed up and started the walk down the road to the east. I thought at least if I made Mt Sunday (the Lord of The Rings film site) I should be able to hitch a ride with some sight-seers. It took me 2 hours and when I got there; not a car in sight. Ah the pandemic, that’s right.

I kept walking down the road and as I was 100m from the driveway to the Mt Potts Station I saw a 4x4 turning onto the road, I ran to the turn-off waving my arms in the air and they pulled over, turned around and picked me up. It was the station manager’s wife doing the school run! She told me I was lucky to catch her as there was not many cars that drive out here anymore. She drove me down the 40km road and dropped me in Mt Somers on the main road where I started hitching back towards Queenstown.

After a couple of hitches and a few messages from my phone with dwindling battery I managed to find out that the hang glider pilots were flying in Omarama. The plan was to link up with them and at least get a ride back to Cromwell. I arrived in Omarama at 4pm and quickly found John Smith on the air strip at the gliding club, I hadn’t been there 5 minutes and he threw me the keys to Matts Barlow’s truck and sent me on a retrieve out towards the east coast to collect Matt who had landed past Duntroon! I picked up Matt who was fizzing after having a spectacular flight from Magic Mountain over to the Buscot and down the St Marys Range.

We drove back to Omarama, stopped for a beer at Rod’s then Tom and John drove me all the way up the Ahuriri and back to my car! I jumped back in the Lantra and after nearly flooding it crossing a river, I drove all the way back to Queenstown. Climbing into bed at 2am on Friday morning.

I thought about the amount of country I had seen over the last 48 hours, and laughed at the thought of someone finding my bank cards, ID and hiking poles strewn across the side of the Ben Ohaus, what an adventure!

Now for 5 hours sleep before I have to get to work at 10am!

Right; Bens flight track