Mt. Cargill and the Routeburn

Hello folks!

It would seem I have been remiss in my blogging duties and I have not posted in a while, so here is a post about the last two weekends.

Last Saturday I climbed Mt. Cargill which is the highest peak in the Dunedin area. I went with my flatmates Ella and Jaci.

Embracing the oncoming storm

Obligatory jumping photo

Dunedin in the palm of my hand

On the way to Mt. Cargill we stopped at a small rock formation known as the organ pipes. They are pillars of basalt that look like, well, organ pipes. We had to scramble up a rockfall and climb a few meters straight up to get to the plateau but it was totally worth it.

The rockfall

The plateau

The climb down

Now onto the Routeburn! The Routeburn track crosses a mountain range in between Milford Sound at The Divide and Glenarcky, which is 45 minutes northeast from Queenstown. Its 32 kilometers in total or about 19 miles and Celia and I hiked it in two days. The first day we hiked about four hours over the first ridge of mountains to the Lake Mackenzie hut.

This is Lake Mackenzie

We also saw some really cool forests and waterfalls on our first day.

We were in a temperate rainforest, so everything is covered in moss and lichen.

The water is so damn clear!

That night I went to sleep at 6pm when the sun went down... and slept till 7:30am. Only when you're camping can you sleep 13 hours and no one says anything. This morning we had 22 kilometers to hike to get out to the trail head. We did it in six hours and 15 minutes. Here's what we saw:

The little clearing on the lake is our camp

We cleared the saddle and this is what we saw

To get from the above picture to the picture below we had to walk down "The Tombstone Steps"

We stopped at the Routeburn Falls hut for some lunch, what more could you ask for?

Can you see the riders of Rohan coming to Gondors aid?

Finished the track!

It's been a good weekend.