Cascade Saddle / Wanaka

Hello friends,

Photos at Picasa

It's Wednesday AM so I figured I might as well update you all to what I was up to this weekend.

On Friday, Cully, Rich and I left Dunedin around 8 pm and arrived in Wanaka at midnight. We camped overnight at a riverside spot, and then left early in the morning to drive to Mt. Aspiring National Park, 55km west of Wanaka. We planned the night before to hike and camp at the Cascade Saddle, part of a tramp from the Mt. Aspiring area West to the Rees-Dart track in the Glenorchy area.

The day started off a little cloudy, but quickly cleared to reveal a deep blue sky above the majestic scenery that surrounded us. We hiked for two hours along the floor of a river valley before arriving at Aspiring Hut, maintained and owned by the New Zealand Alpine Club. After lunch at the hut, we began our ascent up the side of Cascade Saddle towards the "Pylon" the high point of our hike at 1800 meters. From the hut, at an elevation of around 400 meters, to the pylon was a distance of only around four kilometers, incredibly steep. We struggled our way up the sheer side of the valley until we arrived at the pylon, far above treeline, to find 360 degree panoramic vistas of mountains, glaciers, alpine meadows, snowfields, and especially the glorious Mt. Aspiring, first climbed in 1909.

We then descended about three hundred meters to a river valley where we refilled out water bottles and then continued on a few km further to our campsite. We were intending to camp at the base of the Saddle, just above the glacial bench, but decided that staying up high would both save us time in the morning for the hike back, and provide finer views. Thus, we camped at the edge of the Cascade Saddle, which proved to be a kilometer-wide 180 degree cirque of thousand-foot sheer cliffs. We were camped about fifty feet from the precipice and as the sky grew dark, winds sprang up that felt as though they would hurl us to the abyss below at any moment. Luckily Mountain Hardwear and Nemo Equipment felt that stakes would be a good inclusion with their tents, so we were able to keep ourselves firmly grounded.

The hike back in the morning began at 5:45 am with the camp breakdown, followed by a relentless descent into the valley below, made more treacherous by both the extreme angle, but also exposure to winds and the added burden of heavy packs unbalancing our strides.

Arriving at the car around 1pm, we decided to search Wanaka for as much food as we possibly could, so we got some delicious Indian food and then walked the town observing the height of summer in this lakeside pseudo-resort town. We returned to Dunedin that night around 8pm.

More to follow about the next day and our trip to Long Beach, 30k up the coast from Dunedin.

Again, photos of that trip are up at http://picasaweb.google.com/samlibby/

Cheers!