Sunday 5 January 2014

Angelus Hut

Friday December 13th. I picked up Milos and Patrick, then drove to Nelson Lakes, about five hours from Christchurch. We camped on the shore of Lake Rotoiti. It was already dark when we set up tents, and after enjoying a quick meal we set up our cameras for some nice night photographs.


It was difficult to find a good place where you could see the reflection of the stars in the lake, but here I found one! Can you spot the (two) Southern Cross constellations?


Twenty seconds of wave ripples blurred the reflections out. The image above is actually a composition of two shots, to get a better balance of the scene brightness.


Next morning we drove to the start of the Robert Ridge route, at an elevation of 880m, and started our actual tramp. The first part is a very steep ascent, climbing to about 1400m. From there on, the route goes over a long ridge, bridging several mountain tops up to 1800m.


The nice thing about walking over a ridge is that you always have spectacular views in all directions! But it is also quite exposed, so it can be very, very cold and windy up there. Luckily we had about perfect weather, walking alternatingly in sun and shade (from the clouds).


Pretty easy to find the way. Just keep walking as high as you could get, and occasionally looking for orange track markers.


Finally we arrived at Lake Angelus (1650m), with the beautiful hut on its bank.


After a quick meal we decided to walk a little further, to Sunset Saddle. Patrick was hearing strange sounds and looked if someone might need help; Milos attempted to climb Angelus Peak itself but got stuck on a steep slope, and I myself managed to climb Sunset Saddle giving another beautiful view around.


In the night Milos and I went out again for some advanced night photography, mainly involving waterfalls and stars.


Next morning we took the Speargrass Track route back, which follows the Speargrass Creek almost all the way. It's the opposite of the Robert Ridge route in many aspects: well covered, little scenic views, lots of water and vegetation.


Sunday night we finally got home. Tired. Sleep. But again with loads of cool photos from the trip!


1 comment:

  1. Hi Vince, my breath stopped seeing this pictures.
    Beautifull!

    ReplyDelete