Deep Creek Hut - 28 December 2019

Uncle Roddus Tramping Diary: Tramp No. 170

Deep Creek Hut - 29th December 2019

A trip up onto the tops of the Pisa Range above Lake Dunstan and Cromwell had been on my to do list for many years. I had done a walk into Meg Hut a few years back but that trip stayed down in the valleys and never made it onto the tops. Friday I had to stay in Cromwell to let my legs recover a bit from the Carrick Range trip on Thursday and My Wife was keen to stay on another day in Cromwell with her mum on Saturday and this was the day with the best forecast for good views on the tops. I was still pretty stiff on Saturday Morning as I left the car near the end of Swann Rd on a nice mild and sunny day. Over the style onto the farmland that granted me access to the track that would take me to the tops and within minutes I was astounded by the number of rabbits I saw as I walked through the thorny bushes towards a small hill I had to climb over to get to the main route up.

 A farm track left from an old derelict stone hut beside Tongue Spur Creek and zigzagged up the ridge amongst the prolific Matagouri and sheep. I followed the track up and would you believe it, meet the same runner I had met on the Carrick Range track two days earlier. She recognized me, we chatted for a couple of minutes before I headed up and she continued down. I got to the end of the farm track in just under two hours about, with a refuel break not too far from the end. The route then becomes a singe track which sidles the side of the range in a southerly direction for quite a way before the final slog up through the tussock and spaniards and rock tors to the tops. The top was pretty windy but actually not as cold as I was expecting. I followed the poles and connected with the four wheeled drive track that traverses the range along this edge. I spotted a hut of some sort in the near distance and followed the poled route in its direction until I discovered it was actually an old sheep sorting shed. Was this Deep Creek Hut, I was not sure but then I looked around the area and spotted another hut down the hill a bit, about a kilometer away and headed in that direction. I passed over a fence, leaving the farm land and officially entering the Pisa Conservation area and soon made Deep Creek Hut in the 3.5 hours suggested on the sign at the start on Swann Rd. This surprised me as I didn't think I was moving all that fast with the soreness still in my legs from Thursday. The hut is a restored Musterers hut originally built in the 1890s and restored and added and subtracted from over that long time to the roomy six bunk DOC Hut it now is. Spent about a half hour lunching at the hut before donning my wind jacket for the trip back to the car.

 As I stated back on the downhill part of my journey, I realized that due to the soreness in my legs I was going to have to take things a lot slower than I usually do going down or I was in danger of really putting severe strain on already taxed muscles, so the trip down was much slower and gentler that it would have normally been and actually took me over three hours to get back down. The sign at the top suggested it was about 10KM back to Swann Rd, plus the distance to the hut itself, so overall I must have walked at least another 20 Km this day although looking on the map it seems less. It appears to be about 9KM from car to hut. My phone though seems to think I had walked 37500 steps at 29Km and although I felt like I had indeed walked that, it is way off for some reason. Time on tramp 7 hours 25 minutes.

  

Carrick Range - 26 December 2019

Uncle Roddus Tramping Diary: Tramp No. 169

Carrick Range - 26th December 2019

Christmas 2019 was spent with the inlaws down in Cromwell, Central Otago, and after the food overdose of Christmas day, much needed exercise was necessary the next day to burn off the two large bowls of dessert that found their way into my belly the previous day.

 There were a couple of close by areas I had been wanting to explore for some time but the brevity of visits or the weather had prevented the last couple of attempts. It was weather that dictated the choice of my first walk of the holiday. The day was warm but mostly overcast with rogue showers appearing sporadically around Lake Dunstan. My foray up the CarrickTown track was a wise choice for the day as the showers stayed well away from that area.

 The track is pretty much a four wheel drive track all the way to the tops of the Carrick Range, used by walkers, runners, mountain bikers, motor bikers and off road vehicles to access the many tracks in this hilly area, so it was a reasonably easy trek with a steady climb that first took me the 3.5km to old Carrick Town, a small group of tumbling down stone huts that were built and occupied during the gold rush in the area from the 1860s to the late 1890s.

 My next target was the water wheel about another 5 or so kilometers up near the summit of the range. I stopped for lunch about half way at a group of rocks and saw the Carrick Range water race that was hand dug back in the 1870s to bring water to various mine sites in the area, the race is 34KM long and still has a strong water flow, now used for irrigation purposes down at Bannockburn where my track started. Met a runner on the track just past Carrick Town who has just been up to the waterwheel and back. After lunch, continued on to the waterwheel. Had to drop off the main track a bit to visit the wheel which was used to run the crushing battery to crushed the quartz they mined to get at the gold within. The Battery had been relocated to another site in the area so just the restored wheel was at this site. The day was still young so I decided to head up onto the tops and so after I rejoined the four wheel drive track I finished the climb onto the Carrick Range. up on the tops at just over 1200m I found another DOC sign with various destinations I could wander onto but time and legs weren't going to allow too much more so I went for a short womble in a northerly direction towards Slapjack Saddle, had another rest at some rocks to refuel before the long downwards grind back along the same route back to my car. Walked about 20KM with a height gain of 900 to 1000M in just under 6 hours.

 As I had not been tramping for several weeks, I was pretty sore at the end of the day but my new boots held up very well with no blisters or hot spots.

Earth Tongue - The Darkroom - Christchurch - 13th December 2019

I had been waiting quite a while for Earth Tongue's debut album, after seeing them play live supporting the Mermaidens in Dunedin a couple of years back.

 Gussie Larkin, of Mermaidens, gets a lot heavier in Earth Tongue and gets to express her inner metal head with drummer Ezra Simons backing her up on vocals as well. The album itself is great but I was a little disappointed with it at first as I thought it was not quite as wild as I was expecting after that live set I saw. They had not long got back from touring the new album in Europe earlier in the year.

  They had two other bands in tow for this gig. First up was Enfire, a local Christchurch three piece who I had kinda seen play at the Doomfest a couple of years ago, but I was distracted during their set and didn't hear much of their music. They kicked things off with a very impressive and longish instrumental heavy post rock kinda thing that really made me take notice and they were really rocking out with hair flailing all over the place causing me to think they needed a bigger stage to accommodate all that flying hair. The rest of their set was great heavy metal type rock and I really enjoyed the bass player.

  Night Lunch were completely new to me. Turns out they were up from Dunedin. A duo of drums and a block of wood. The drummer, supporting a Jack Goodhue mullet, sounded fantastic and wild and he was supporting his mate who had a 4 foot long piece of four by two timber with one or two strings stretched across it with pickups and wired through a small console. He hit the string with a drumstick and produced an awesome and heavy sound. I was very impressed with the post industrial sound they produced and they reminded me a bit of Wellingtons Wax Chattels. A great alternative band.

 So Earth Tongue hit the stage and played a great set. I think I enjoyed their live versions even more than the record. It was heavy and bruising and Gussie plays her guitar in a lower register perhaps to make up for no bass and the drumming was great and hard and overall it was a wonderful sonic experience. The LP sounds even better now I have seen them play the songs live. The place was sold out and an encore was demanded but the crowd and so they did play one more song. A great night with three great band.

Miss Jume - Blue Smoke - Christchurch - 4th December 2019

Miss June are an Auckland four piece melodic punk band who have been in existence for around five years now and this year released their debut album " Bad Luck Party". After touring in the US, they return home for a short tour to support the new record.

  Their only South Island show at Cassels Blue Smoke was supported by Local artist Jed Parsons and Young Queenstown group, Haven.

  Haven were up first, a very young three piece playing poppy indie rock with some nice tunes, their 30 minute set was most enjoyable. The bass player did most of the singing but the guitarist sang one song which he said he composed as part of a composition course he had been studying, it was their best song of the night.

  Jed Parsons I had seen supporting The Beths last year at the same venue and my impressions that night were underwhelming but this time I did enjoy his set a lot more than the first time. I recognized their first single from one of the "Counting The Beat" Podcast I listen to and it is a great song. This set of Jed's indie pop was another push in tempting me to pick up his record, but money stopped me.

  The crowd for Miss June was much smaller than I expected for such an accomplished band, with the venue only being about half full of very young and very enthusiastic punters, there were only about three of us grey hairs in the audience this night which I find unusual for a lot of the rock gigs I attend nowadays. Miss June were as energetic and fired up as I was hoping, their music is a blend of Pixies, Verruca Salt and Sonic Youth, with the Sonic Youth coming through with some of the noisy bits with distortion and feedback howling at us through the PA. Annabel Liddell, the lead singer puts on a great show with her jumping all about the stage, jumping into the crowd of very energetic moshers and even ended one song hanging from the rafter above the stage. At one stage Jun Park, the guitarist was surfing the crowd on his back while thrashing out on his guitar. Annabel is a great front person and looks to get a sexual buzz from singing the songs as she often caresses her body and lifts her t-shirt or puts her hand almost into the front of her jeans but stops short of being obscene or exposing herself. They finished the set with Polio, the last song from the album and their best in my opinion, a dark almost industrial piece, after which they left the stage in a squall of feedback. They did not stay off the stage for long as the boisterous audience cheered them back for a couple more songs from their first EP including a longer version of Drool which only clocks in at about a minute on the record. A very good show that lived up to and maybe exceeded my expectations.