Holidays rule. Last week we were lucky enough to venture into the mountains for a few days. After years of dreaming about it I finally got to walk into Aspiring Hut up the Matukituki Valley with my eldest daughter Taya. It was her first overnight hike and her first big walk into the hills.
This valley is the gateway to climb Mt Aspiring and the track starts only four hours' drive from Dunedin – just beyond Wanaka. The walk itself is a 9km gentle climb up the valley crossing dozens of rocky streams, which had been gouged out by excessive rainfall a few days before we arrived. That made it lots of fun – we never knew quite what to expect from swift rapids to fallen tree crossings.
The valley walk was made even better with dozens of waterfalls pouring out of the mountainsides and great views of some impressive glaciers. We stayed in the historic stone Aspiring Hut for the night – a luxury in such a wild place.
Upon our return to Dunedin we connected up with a weather map that showed a 944 hectopascal low crossing beneath the country. That means big, long-period south swell – the best kind of ground swell for surfing on our coast. It corresponded with some great reports and Saturday and Sunday were to be the days.
The anticipation was hard to contain – especially when the swell began to build on Friday night. Sadly, Saturday was dead flat – as in "go and collect some paua" flat. Luckily, the sets started to arrive in the darkness of Saturday night making Sunday a memorable day for most surfers in town especially artist Simon Kaan who scored wave of the day at St Clair Point (above).
Should still be waves right about the time you read this so take a long lunch break.
See you at the beach!
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