A photo blast from the past

Out of an archeological dig into my memoirs here are a few from the sixties and seventies in the Southern Alps.

A tough fly camp in Canyon Creek Ahuriri valley...


That's me on the left, in the sadly deteriorated photo below: 1967 on my first really serious trip at Easter in the Hopkins valley [Lake Ohau]. We crossed a high pass to prove it linked with the south branch of the Elcho valley. In short a mapping exercise into the very much "unknown". My mentors looked after me well though on the steep ice/snow with crampons, rock and nasty bluffs with steep snowgrass... we got stormed on... thunder/lightning...wet sleeping bags, living under boulders, lots of laughing. It was the perfect introduction to NZ's middle sized mountains and weather!


A brave driver getting his "now classic" Land Rover to Elcho Hut. Upper Hopkins valley in the background...


A year or two later at a hut working "bee' at Elcho hut we burnt the old mattresses. Dasler Pinnacles in the background...


By the cattle yards in the Ahuriri valley. Yes, eagle eye motoring enthusiasts that is a Skoda based NZ Trekka there. Now that was quite a vehicle... totally weird, but I wish I'd kept it! That's my mum beside it. Loving mountains as I did I'd occasionally talk them into coming for a wee drive. My mum loved it, but my dad sort of suffered it. He'd been in them all his life and for some reason his sense of adventure had eroded - probably the war. Anyway...