From Blown Tires to Mountain Tops

It’s really neat in life when your original plans get botched due to some unforeseen circumstances, but your alternative plans turn around for the better - and even better in one’s mind that what you thought your original plans would have been. We had wanted to get out on a weekend camping/tramping/fishing trip with our friends Serge and Sharron prior to heading back to Canada and it wasn’t until this past weekend that the timing had worked out. Our first desire to hike a gorgeous west coast river with them had quickly dissolved due to rain fronts that have been passing through every day, causing the rivers to remain high and muddy. Instead, we decided to fish another area that didn’t have rain in the forecast, and hopefully hike a mountain. Both activities were of interest to all of us, but either way, we were to get out and enjoy camping and spending some time together.
To get to our destination involves a nasty gravel road, which tops sections of our Forestry trunk road back home after the usual 4 X4 traffic has pounded it. It is badly rutted out and has some large chunks of hard rock littered across it at the best of times. It is not easy on vehicle tires. So, after 30 mins of driving, we blew a tire. Not just your regular flat tire, but one that is never to see a repair. The picture says it all really.
We were feeling rather cursed by this particular road that we have now seen 5 flat tires on over the course of 2 years, on 3 different vehicles with the same friends. Not all our vehicles, but 2 of them were. We of course did what was needed and put on our spare tire, but the spare was one that we just recently had to have patched due to a flat from 2 weeks ago on the same road and it was hardly going to get us far. We were  thinking it was time to limp back, but instead we decided to stop for lunch at a lovely lake a few minutes up the road. We pulled in and within minutes we followed our friend Sharron’s idea and jumped in the lake for a swim to cool off. This time, I threw caution to the wind and I actually managed to block out the idea of eels swimming near or around me :)  It was refreshing on a hot day. By this point, we had abandoned any idea of fishing and were happy to just do something together. Looking around us, we found a mountain that looked like it needed to be climbed, so off we went. The exercise was great and the 360 views of the mountains around us were even better. The neat thing is that we found an amazing stretch of loose scree that we used to boot ski down half the mountain. I’ve never seen Dave move so fast down a mountain before, he left a pretty decent dust trail billowing behind him, with the biggest grin on his face. A ton of fun for sure.
We decided to camp the night at the lake and got to experience a fabulous Nor'wester sunset, where the cloud formations move so quickly, creating a dramatic painting in front of your eye. It was an extremely inspiring place to be behind the camera lens.
The next day, we started to limp back towards Hanmer and on our way back we stopped to climb Mount Maukuratawhai, or what we now call “My Little Tough Guy” - a similar sound to it when you can’t remember the Maori name. This particular mountain holds quite a lot of meaning to Serge and Sharron, as only a few weeks back their beloved dog, Bean, of 13 years passed away. He had spent many a day chasing bunnies and possums in and around this mountain. Serge and Sharron decided that this was the place they wished to spread Bean’s ashes, so we all made a ceremonial ascent for him. It was a real honor to do this with our friends. We have known Bean for the last 4 years and looked after him a few times during our stays here on the South Island and really appreciated his independent character, a Jack Russell unlike any other, and an amazing hunter. The top of this mountain gave us a view of the pacific ocean off in the distance and a spectacular 360 view of all the mountains and the rivers below that we have fished in the area over the years. Our 900m climb brought us to probably one of the highest perspectives of the South Island we will ever have. Many thanks to Serge and Sharron for inviting us on their journey to say goodbye to Bean and to commemorate his life. Here’s to Bean’s memory living on in those hills forever.