Blue Hill - 23 November 2014

Uncle Roddus Tramping Diary: Tramp No.149

Blue Hill - 23 November 2014

Bryce's mission to complete all the peaks of the Cragiburn Range entered it's final chapter with this trip to Blue Hill on the southern end of the range overlooking Porter Heights Skifield. With Saturday being another wet and windy day in the hills, there was a considerable turnout for this excursion on Sunday, with a whopping 21 turning up for the gig. Leaving the cars at the skifield staff building by the Porter river, we headed up the access road for a while before the 1000m slog up to Blue hill, with two of the party returning to the cars as one of them was feeling a bit off. Bryce's job description for the day was to summit Blue Hill and then drop down to Coleridge Pass and bash our way back down river to the cars. Several of the fitter members voiced the option of an extended journey to actually tackle Mount Enys and after discussion with Bryce on the return route, six of them set off at a brisk pace to try and make Enys and back before Bryce's 5pm leaving time. The rest of us made Blue Hill in about 2 hours where we got to stop and view the fantastic vista of the snow encrusted Southern Alps to the North West, with views all the way to Mt cook. As it was such a great day and even our less fast and fit group was making very good time, it was decided to continue around the top of the Porters skifield in the footsteps of the Enys group and meet them on their return at point 2029 before heading down along the ridge via point 1842. The travel along the tops was one of the easiest ones ever encountered, with a bulldozer track along the ridge making travel rather quick. We Had lunch at point 1962 where we could see the Enys crowd lunching on point 1997. We got to point 2029 well before 3pm and had another longish stop watching the Enys group summit their target and start heading back before we headed off down our exit ridge as they caught us up. We made the cars before Bryce's appointed departure time after a 13.4km trip with 1360m in height gain and in 6 hours and 40 minutes, except of course the Enys group who traveled a bit further and climbed a bit more.