Mousey - Space Academy - Christchurch - 3 October 2020

 

This local lady is new to me and I was put onto her first album(which actually came out last year)by the staff at my local record emporium. I was quite impressed with her music and so took the opportunity to catch her live. She was even nominated for a Silver Scroll award for her first single off the album.

 Playing the small Space Academy, I arrived just past nine pm to catch the last part of the first act, a young lady playing solo on acoustic guitar, not sure her name. She was pleasant, but I was not really focused on her too much.

The next act was a 5 piece playing catchy indie pop. I can't for the life of me remember their name or find any reference to them on the gig websites but I did enjoy their energetic poppy music, their last song being their best.

 Mouse hit the stage just past 10pm to a 3/4 full venue and played a great set of new songs and stuff from the aforementioned album. She played mostly up tempo stuff to start with as she gauged the audience as wanting to dance and they played some great songs, the ones off her record were instantly recognizable even though I have only played it a few times and she has a great voice. One song finished with a stonking bass solo. The later part of her set was slower numbers and some ballad type stuff and she finished with a couple of solo acoustic numbers. Overall, like her record, it was even better than I expected.

Mt Lyndon - 3 October 2020

 Uncle Roddus Tramping Diary: Tramp No. 178

Mt Lyndon - 3 October 2020

 

Tramping time again, after not going out the previous weekend as I needed to get some gardening done. I thought I had been on Mt Lyndon before but couldn't quite remember when, but after a little research, I found that I had indeed been on top of this 1400M peak about 10 years ago when we approached it from the opposite direction than what we did on this day. 

Met the other 14 club members and prospective members at Springfield, as I usually do, and off we drove to the lodge at the southern end of Lake Lyndon. It was patchy overcast but pretty warm as we left the cars around 9:30 ish I think. We headed out behind the lodge and followed a partial track up the hill for a ways until we found the mountain bike track that winds its was down from the summit. That track zig zags from  the summit down the southern ridge but we ascended in a more straight direction following the track in places where it intersected out ascent.

 The weather forecast had predicted strong winds and we certainly were buffeted pretty well on the way up, but it was surprisingly calm on the top once we attained that altitude , although still breezy enough to shelter on the northern side of the summit where we enjoyed the magnificent vistas of the  Craigiburns and surrounding mountains.

The route back was pretty much a reverse of what we did on the way up until we deviated along the western ridge to a low saddle before heading back to the cars. A fairly short day with plenty of rest stops to regroup, we walked about 7 kilometres with a height gain of about 700M.    

Mt Harper/Mahaanui - 19 September 2020

 Uncle Roddus Tramping Dairy; Tramp No.177

Mt Harper/Mahaanui - 19 September 2020

So there are two Mt Harpers in the mountains of the South Island and they are not all that far apart, but the one I was interested in this weekend was the lower of the two, the one that overlooks Lake Camp and Lake Clearwater in the Hakatere area behind Mt Somers. I had not climbed this hill before and the views from this stand alone peak promised to be pretty stunning if visibility was good. A few days previously, a good front of weather had passed through and dumped a bit of fresh snow on the mountains, and although it was melting fast, it was anticipated that there might be a reasonable amount on top of our destination.

As this was a club trip, I meet the rest of the party at Mt Somers about 8:45am on a pleasantly mild Saturday morning, before driving on to Lake Camp.  The Hakatere area is a wonderful collection of hills and lakes with very little trees about and wide vista to enthrall our eyes as we  started out climb up the Northern face of Mahaanui, The scrub was very low so as not to impede our ascent as we slowly slogged up the the ridge. After two or three stops on the way up to regroup and refuel, we finally made the summit around 1pm in disappointing amounts of snow but with the fantastic views promised. We didn't stick around long as we still had a ways to go on our planned route, so continued on in a Southeasterly direction with out aim being Balmacaan Saddle, but when we got to just past point 1644 we decided to drop down an inviting bit of scree into the creek that flowed down to below the aforementioned saddle. The going got a little slower nearer the bottom with plenty of Spaniards and Matagouri to scratch our legs but we hit the track out down Balmacaan Stream without any mishaps and then slogged it out down the well formed track back to the cars by about 5:30PM.

Walked about 17km with around 1300+m height gain in around 8 hours.

Camp Saddle - 13 September 2020

 Uncle Roddus Tramping Diary: Tramp No.176

Camp Saddle - 14 September 2020

Club trip, as 20 people went for a bit of a womble about on the Cragieburn range. The weather stayed mostly fine, with light breezes lower down but stronger and cooler on the tops. We didn't get the gales forecast on Met Service. A lovely bush walk with some of us loping up to Helicopter hill for the views before catching the rest of the group for pre-lunch on the track below Camp saddle. Some members spent this time eradicating plenty of wilding pines on the way to the saddle. Proper lunch was had on Camp saddle where it was rather nice out of the wind but in the sun. From Camp saddle, we headed up over points 1550 and 1525 before the scree run that took us back down to the track back to the cars. Total distance a bit under 12Km and about 1100+m ascent. took just under 6 hours.