Thursday, February 7 - Climbing Treble Cone

      We like alternating a day of travel with a day of good, hard hiking.  Thursday I wanted to do a four hour hike up towards Mount Aspiring, which would take us through a forested valley, past hanging glaciers, and up towards the mountain peak with supposedly great views.  So we drove out from out campground to get a good start on the day.

Driving past this hillside we saw these sheep formed up into
distinctive lines and patterns.  Soon after I took this photo they
spelled out "EET MOR CHIKEN"

     The paved road ended around 30 km from the trailhead, and we were soon driving on horrible corrugated gravel.  I tried speeding up to around 60 kph to smooth it out, but while that technique worked with the LC and its big AT tires, the small wheels of the van just couldn't get skimming over the humps.  I tried for a few kilometers, but the vibrations threatened to shake the Townace apart.  I could have driven around 10 kph, but it would have taken all day.  So, I admitted defeat and turned around, heading back towards Wanaka.  I figured there were plenty of good hikes around that wouldn't destroy the van.
      Our map showed a road headed up to Treble Cone Skifield, but I thought it would be closed for the summer.  But as we passed, we noticed a dozen or so cars parked at the gate to the road, and saw that a couple passed through and headed up the hill.  That's when we saw bright paragliders soaring in the sky high up the mountain.

There were nearly 20 paragliders in all.  It was some kind of race, according
to a guy I talked to.  The gliders would fly for a couple hours and cover tens of
kilometers over a course connecting a couple mountain peaks.

     I decided to drive up the mountain and see how far we could go.  The launch site for the paragliders was about half way up the hill, and when we reached the parking lot of the ski hill they sailed by us at eye level.

I was reminded of sailboats racing.  The leader was Angus Tapper,
the NZ distance record holder, having once soared around 156 km with one flight.

     The parking lot is 800 meters, or around 2600 feet below the summit of the mountain, and since it was a fine day and fairly early, we decided to give it a go to the top.

Looking up, the top of the mountain didn't look that far away.  They never do.

      We walked up the Easy ski track, a fairly wide path switch-backing its way towards the top.  Kelly and Dan got ahead of us, we sixties taking a slightly slower pace.  Kristy escorted us, kindly watching out for the two oldsters.  Lucky for her, because in taking the slower pace she discovered over $7 in coins on the path.  Probably some poor snowboarder with baggy pants and open pockets.  Diana found over $3 and I cleared $1.70. Of course, when the country issues $2 coins it's a little easier to rack up the big finds.  (Take that David Br.)
      Near the top of the trail a couple guys drove by in work trucks, and the slightly irritated looks on their faces didn't bode well.  The head guy stopped to tell us that they would be locking the gate at 4:30 pm.  I told him that's OK, because we had parked outside the gate marking the edge of the parking lot near the ski chalet.  No, he said, there was a gate at the bottom of the hill.  He said it was possible that the paragliders might stay longer, but if they had left before we got to the bottom, we wouldn't be able to leave.  Since it was after 4 already and we'd already been walking since 2:30 we obviously weren't going to make it back to our van, so I said, "Oh well, then we'll just have to camp here".  He wasn't amused, and drove off down the hill.
     Even if he'd offered to drive us to our van I wouldn't have wanted to abandon the climb, and besides, Kelly and Dan were somewhere above us.  A few minutes later I heard a shout and looked up to see them at a rock outcropping near the summit.

Kelly and Dan near the top, waiting for us

      The trail had ended and we had to climb the rest of the way on tussock and loose rock.  Kristy was the first of our group of three to reach the ridgetop summit, and I could tell by her body language it might be a pretty good view.  When we joined her several minutes later and popped our heads over the ridge, my breath (or what was left of it) was nearly taken away by the view (and the precipitous drop down the other side).

That's Mount Aspiring in the center distance, the second highest peak in NZ.
If we had made it up the gravel road and hiked the trail I'd planned we would have
been a lot closer, but also a lot lower.  This view made the 2 1/2 hour hike up the mountain
worth it.

Kristy with a falcon's eye view of the Southern Alps

Take the photo already, and no, we won't back up a couple more steps.

     We ate a quick lunch at the top, then headed down, since I'd left a note in the van promising we'd be back by 6:30 pm, in case anyone was worried about us.

Walking back down the mountain to the van.

Part way down we scared up this Pronghorn Antelope.  Native to North
America it was very surprising to see him there.  Many different types
of deer have been introduced to NZ, including moose, elk, white-tailed,
fallow, and red. 

If you look closely you can see the van parked outside the gate of the ski area.
Unfortunately, that was the wrong gate.

     We arrived at the van by 6:15, weary and glad to be able to sit down.  Then we made the half hour drive down the gravel road carved precariously into the side of the mountain, hoping the some of the paraglider helpers would still be around, or that the gate would be unlocked.

No such luck.  The gate had two locks in series, one a keyed lock and the
the other a four digit combination lock.  We looked for a way to take the gate
or fence temporarily apart with the limited tools we have with us, but it was
well designed to keep bad guys out, (or in this case, the good guys in).

      If you read the sign carefully, which obviously I hadn't, you get the information that the road does indeed close at 4:30 pm.  We had followed another car through the gate on the way in, and the woman had kindly stayed by the gate to close it after we passed through, so I couldn't really see that writing on the sign.  At least that's the excuse I'm using for missing the critical bits about the road closing time.
     It was hardly an inconvenience.  After all, we carry all our camping stuff with us, and there was a port-a-john a hundred meters down the road set up for the paragliders.  We knew the workers would be back at 8 the next morning, so it was hardly like we were permanently trapped there. Still, it was a little embarrassing, and we resolved to figure out how to get through the gates before they arrived.

With four digits on the combination lock there are 10,000 different combinations
of numbers, with only one being the prize.  We each took 2000 numbers to get
through. Kelly went right to work on it, taking around 30 minutes to try
her first 1000 numbers.  Hey, worse case scenario, 5 hours of dial sliding and
lock pulling, tops.  It was the kids night for dinner, so I took the second batch,
confident that we'd get it open before we went to bed.  

The bus shelter offered a wind break and a nice place to sit while we ate.

     After dinner we each took a turn, and Kristy read some more of The Hobbit.  It's rather ironic that Bilbo joins the dwarves to find a way into the mountain where the gold is hidden, while we hobbits were trying to find a way out.  At about 10 pm, Diana and I went to bed, the kids planning to sleep under the stars near the lock as they took turns.  They promised to wake us up when the found out the correct combination.