Lake Guyon 4-5th October 2014

Uncle Roddus Tramping Diary: Tramp No. 146

Lake Guyon 4-5th October 2014

Plan A, Head over Lewis Pass to head up the klondyke Track on the Rahu Saddle and camp at the Tarns on Saturday. Lots of snow falls on Friday and Saturday morning and with the forecast for cold southerlies and possible heavy rain on Sunday, somewhere more sheltered looks inviting. Plan B, head up to the Hope Bridge and head into Carlyle Hut, a cool looking hut and looks like a cool place to enjoy the snow. Can't get hold of Glenhope Station to get access permission but Plan C could be to head into Saint Jacobs Hut or Top Hope Hut. Get to just pass the Hanmer turn off on State highway 7 and find the road closed to All Traffic and even though we don't want to go all the way through, they won't let any vehicles through until after 11am.

Plan D, head to Hanmer and see whats happening over the back blocks. Heading north along Tophouse Road we see the fresh snow on the distant mountains and the black clouds to the west and north and with Sundays forecast in mind, decide Paske Hut probably won't be an option and so settle for a far less energetic womble into Lake Guyon,(although the Cow Stream hot pools were considered.

 With and inch of fresh snow on the ground at Fowlers hut, we wrapped up warm and set off around 10:30am on a partly cloudy and slightly windy morning to wind our way up the easy but snow covered track to Fowlers Pass. It was a wonderful winterland that greeted us as we plowed our way through the deepening snow and fought against the gusty winds that blew clouds of light snow into our faces. A photo stop at the saddle as things calmed down a bit before plunging down the zig zag into Smyths Stream and some deeper snow drifts to keep things interesting.The scenery is stunning and very white and the weather stays friendly allowing us to enjoy this winter wonderland as we tramp down the Stanley River to the old Stanley vale hut where we find a very friendly horse guarding the hut while it's master was away.

 We made lake Guyon around 3pm and were relieved to find the hut empty.  Looking to Mt Moki to the North West we could see it was still snowing with the snow occasionally coming close enough to fall on the hut while we lounge about inside. Looking south didn't look too good either as we appeared to be in a little oasis of calmer weather. The afternoon and evening went quite quickly with good company and good conversation(although the rest of the group were probably board to hell with Brian and myself bleating on about Hifi and music all night). We all hit the sack on dark and hopped that we were far enough east to miss the forecast rain on Sunday.
Sunday was clear enough with even more new snow visible on the northern Mountains but considerably less around the hut and lake. The object of today was to head back out the same way we came in. It was a considerably faster trip with only one brief stop for nibbles and much less snow to slow us down. We got back to Fowler Hut in under 4 hours, had lunch and headed home.

Edwards Hut/Mt Bowers - 20-21st September 2014

Uncle Roddus Tramping Diary: Tramp No 145

Edwards Hut/Mt Bowers - 20-21st September 2014

With all the warm spring weather we have been having and the veges seeds all planted and sprouting in the Greenhouse, it was time for Uncle Roddus to get back into the mountains. I had tried to go on a trip the previous weekend but I wimped out when I woke up to a miserable morning weather wise.

Our original plan was, if the weather forecast was good, to head up to the club hut on Friday night and then head into Edwards hut early on Saturday with the ultimate goal being to ascend Mt Scott the same day and head back out on Sunday. It had been a mild build up earlier in the week but the mid week long range forecast was for snow all weekend in the park. The mountains had had little snow over the winter but had a fresh dump over Thursday and Friday and more was forecast over Saturday night.

That being said, it was a fine start to the day as eight of us left the cars near Gurneys Shelter and split into two groups, the ones who wanted to keep their feet dry by crossing at the rail bridge, and the rest who had spare shoes and crossed straight away. This scribe was in the first mentioned group but as soon as we got to the other side we had to cross a side stream flowing into the Bealey river and so the rest of them went through the exercise of removing their boots and crossing. I just got wet boots. So we lost about an hour doing all this and we caught the others about half way up the first stretch of The Edwards River. It was a fairly leisurely walk up to the hut taking us almost 6 hours and with a full weekend pack, this scribe, who hadn't been out for quite some time, was feeling it by the time I got to the hut. There was plenty of fresh snow around the hut and it started snowing some more as the afternoon wore on. We had the hut to ourselves and so got the fire going and settled down to dinner and snowman building.

 Sunday dawned fine again with the additional snow fall being fairly light. It was decided that if it was fine, we would make an early start and instead of Mt Scott, we would do Mt Bowers. We got away from the hut about 8:30am  and headed back down the Edwards for several minutes before  starting our ascent up a clear slope all the way to the ridge just below Mt Bowers. It took about 3 hours to climb this slope in deepening snow, with the more fitter members snow plugging the way for us softer folk. Crampons were donned a couple of hundred meters from the top and although it wasn't too frozen, they were needed in patches. Most of the group stopped at the ridge but Tomyu and myself had to do the summit. The trip back down followed pretty much the same route with some partially successful attempts at bumsliding speeding things up. We popped back to the hut for lunch and to pick up the rest of our gear before heading back to the cars.

Mt Thomas - 17th August 2014

Uncle Roddus tramping diary: Tramp No.144

Mt Thomas - 17th August 2014

Well, It has been 6 months since my last tramp, what with back problems, boot problems and the usual work commitmrnts, but as we approach spring, I feel the urge to get back out into our beautiful back country and with a perfect weather forecast for Sunday, when I saw a trip up Mt Thomas come through via email from the Tramping Club, I thought this is a good trip to ease myself and my boots back into it. I met the crew from town at the Mt Thomas camping area and we headed off up the direct eastern route through the sludgy snow left over from earlier in the week. It's a straight forward 700m climb up to the summit which we did in just under two hours. We had lunch in brilliant sunshine with a slight northerly breeze. We cam back down the Wooded Gulley track which is through native beech forest as opposed to the pine forest on the track up. We arrived back at the cars by 2:30pm after 4 1/2 hours walking. An easy day and my legs won't suffer too much for it tomorrow.

Yarland FV-34C Tube Amp

Our New Baby.

Mrs Roddus still has a small collection of vinyl records that she listens to on occasion when I am at work. Over the years I have brought her a couple of cheap record players to keep her happy but the quality wasn't all that great, not that she minded much, as long as she could listen to her records. Some time ago I said I would one day get her something a bit better that would last a lot longer and sound much much better, I had priced up a basic turntable, amp, speakers set up from my favourite HI-fi emporium some time ago and knew I could get her something above average for under two grand. Recently I knew I was about to have the spare funds to indulge in this luxury but I had lost the names and prices of the system I had investigated some time ago. While looking on the web site of the aforementioned hi-fi emporium I came across the above model and it stuck in my mind that a small valve amp might be a sweet choice to use for vinyl records. On a day when we were on a mission in the city, we popped into the aforementioned hi-fi emporium and I told the salesman what we were after and what turntable and speakers he could recommend to go with the above amp that would fit my budget. After parting with only $1800, we came away with the above Yarland amp, a pair of Castle, Knight series book shelf speakers and a Musichall USB1 turntable.

 We had to wait a couple of weeks for the amp to arrive but we finally got the system home and within about a hour, I had the thing set up and ready to roll. This little amp is only about 12W per channel, peaking at 15W, so it is only a baby and I knew I wasn't really going to bother the neighbours with it but for the ridiculous low price it was, it is actually a Class A Push/Pull amp.

 Fortunately Mrs Roddus does have several records in her collection that I have on CD and like alot, so after listening to some Police, Pink Floyd and Grace Jones I was starting to get a feeling of just how good this amp really is. I noticed how easy it is to listen to and the warmth and depth of the music, as well as the separation and detail were really making am impression on me. I was beginning to realise what a quality piece of equipment this really was and surpassed my expectations.

 A few days later, Mrs Roddus was doing a late shift at work and after bi-wiring the Castle speakers, I decided it was time to try out the Yarland with My Cyrus 7 CD player. The first obvious thing I noticed of course was the big step up in volume from vinyl to CD as expected and although the reproduction from the modest Musichall turntable was very good, the big step up in source to the Cyrus was quite breathtaking and although I didn't get a whole lot of time to explore this setup, I now knew for sure that I had a very good amp on my hands.

 I was quite excited about this and rang another small time hi-fi buff mate, who lives locally and told him about my score, he was enthusiastic and said he would be keen to come round for a session. He was running a solid state system not all that much advanced than my Cyrus system.

The next time Mrs Roddus was working a night shift I duly called Mr.Ed, and he hot footed it round for a coffee and a blast.

 He was right off impressed with the look of the amp and the lovely finish of the Castle speakers as we put on my new 180g vinyl copy of Buddy Miller's Cruel Moon LP while we chatted and made the coffee. Next I impressed him some with another new piece of vinyl I purchased, a compilation of T-Bone Walker, which is great Valve music and T-Bone's awesome finger pickin blues sounded just superb. He was mightily impressed the way it handled Grace Jone's "Use Me" as we cranked the volume and noticed how clean it sounded. Moving on to CDs, as the vinyl collection is quite small, we threw at the Yarland, a plethora of different types of music and were both so mightily impressed with the detail and clarity of what we were hearing and also how well the little Castle speakers were reproducing every thing we through at it. The highlights of the nights listening were when I would select an exceptionally well recorded piece that would just stop us dead in out tracks and blow our minds with the sounds the Yarland was presenting us, Koko Taylor's Chess recording of "Wang Dang Doodle" being one stand out and the final track of the evening leaving us speechless, Jeff Buckley's version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah".

  The Yarland FV-34C had impressed my so much that I am now rethinking my whole approach to my next upgrade of my main hi-fi system, and Mr Ed was coming to the same conclusion when he left. A stunning little amp at a stunning price, you cant go wrong.