I’ve been lucky enough to get a whole month off work, so here I am in New Zealand! I’ve had a few days of running, mountain biking, rock climbing and hiking around Wanaka and getting over my jet lag, so today it was time to venture further afield.
So with a good weather forecast we decided to head over to Queenstown for the Remarkables traverse, a scrambly ridge adventure with beautiful views.
The traverse starts from the ski centre, so the walk in isn’t too hard or too long, but it gave me the chance to admire the views.
It didn’t take long at all to get to the start of the ridge, which I was excited to see looked like a lot of fun!
The traverse heads up over two small peaks called Double Cone and then onto a slightly larger peak called Single Cone. The scramble turned out to be just as good as expected, with lots of easy fun climbing moves and some breathtaking exposure. There were a couple of tricky moves on the way up to the first peak of double cone, but we soloed it all, taking care on the tricky sections.
Single Cone turned out to be slightly easier although it looks more sepctacular, and we arrived in good time on the summit to enjoy our lunch.
The descent turned out to be slightly tricky and as we hadn’t brought our harnesses, I learnt how to abseil using a rope without one!
Beautiful weather, amazing scenery, a really fun day out, think I might get to like New Zealand!
I was there in August ’99 and most of it was still covered in snow higher up. The rock looks almost volcanic. I have some fond memories of Queenstown in particular. Have fun!
Love the creative Kiwi names for things: “Remarkables”; “Double Cone”; and “Single Cone”. Was the view remarkable? Did the hills have two and one summit each? π I wonder why they didn’t call the “Wet”? π
New Zealand looks like an amazingly beautiful part of the world! We really should go sometime, but the problem being one has to pass by Australia to get there. π―
Yes the names are great, there are hills here called Mount Horrible and Mount Aweful!
Yes sadly I’m not going to get time to go to Australia on this trip, as Arapilles looks amazing!
I blame our Scottish early settlers for the creativity of our names, how many ‘big hill’s are there in Scotland? (Ben More) or Carn Deargs, Carn Liaths, and of course the odd small hill as well Beinn Bheag. π
We may not be too inventive with our names for mountains,but the UK has some wonderful town place names e.g. Cockermouth (!), Wetwang, Shitterton, Crapstone, Sodom, Bell End, Fannystown, and many more I could name!