Walk 10 - Angelus Circuit |
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Day 1: St Arnaud to Lakehead Hut - a lakeside stroll It was late morning when we set out from the "Yellow House" backpackers and followed the local track down through beech forest to the shores of Lake Rotoiti. Soon we were following the easy track around the beech-lined eastern shore of this large glacial lake; the cold westerly wind was already blowing at 50-60 km an hour and, with the sound of wind rushing through the canopy above and the splashing of wind-whipped waves against the pebbly shoreline, all other sounds were suppressed. It made it easy for the body to switch on to auto-pilot, allowing the mind to wander freely in "surge and purge" mode; surges of creative thoughts mixed with the purging of unwanted garbage stored too long in the mind. The fair Nello calls it day-dreaming - I prefer to think of it as meditation - it sure beats sitting cross-legged on a hard floor! After a while I realised that I could hear bird-songs, running streams, the soft crunch of dry beech leaves underfoot, a soft ripple of water on the lake. Had I reached that quasi-zen state where the senses are heightened and the world around becomes intensely clear. Actually, we had just reached the narrower upper end of the lake and entered the lee of Mt Roberts on its opposite shore; the wind was now a gentle breeze and the lake waters a quiet rippling. |
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Lichen covered boulder field |
Just as well that I returned to the real world, as the track was also becoming rockier and muddier in sections and required the full attention of the walker. Soon the grassy flat at the head of the lake appeared and, a few hundred metres back, in a pleasant setting, Lakehead Hut. |
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Day 2: Lakehead Hut to Angelus Hut - cold night with
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Take a jumble of knobbly, moss-covered rocks and gnarled roots, add a scattering of dry beech leaves below, a sparkling of sun-lit leaves above and the rumbling sound of water flowing down a rocky stream bed. Put it all on a steep slope and you have the Cascade Trail, as it climbed up the Angelus Ridge alongside the Hukere Stream, always within earshot, and occasionally overlooking the crystal clear water rushing down the narrow glacial valley to join up with the Travers River. Often the orange triangular markers nailed to trees provided the only indication of the track through this superb forest. Suddenly we realised that the forest was silent - no sound of running water, just a dry stony stream bed beside us. The Hukere Stream had literally disappeared. Several hundred metres further on the mystery was solved - the soft sound of running water and small pools of water draining into the stony bed started to reappear - the Hukere was seeping down to flow underneath the gravel bed for several hundred metres before re-emerging. Soon the visible stream was back at full volume, rushing down its steep and stony course. |
Stairway Cascades |
After the first steep climb, we crossed a flattish area of more open forest, where ferns replaced mosses as the preferred groundcover. The next section of track then climbed up past and through a magnificent set of cascades, tumbling and foaming their way over moss-covered rocks. |
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By now, an icy wind was whipping over the ridge line and we zipped back the long legs onto our walking shorts, donned fleeces and pushed on - soon to be greeted by the curious spectacle of a waterfall disappearing into a snow cave at the top of a deep drift. The clouds were only just above our heads as we crested the final ridge, but Lake Angelus and its sturdy hut were only a few hundred metres further on and we soon had the coal stove fired up. |
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Day 3: Angelus Hut to St Arnaud - along
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Allowing one last long look down at this marvellous lake, we dropped off the spur, down a long snowdrift, and on to a saddle separating the Speargrass Creek Valley to the left and tarn-filled Fourth Basin to the right, before climbing once more across a rubbly scree slope to the Robert Ridge. From here, we commenced an undulating and meandering trek along the razorback rocky ridge, part in snow, part on scree, part edging away around rocky outcrops on narrow paths, the promise of a long sweeping slide down the snow drifts below to the basin floor encouraging us to make sure of each step. |
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One of many jewel-like alpine tarns |
After reaching our high point of 1794 m, the ridge line became broader and the walking easier. The tarns and green grassy slopes of Fourth Basin had now been replaced by the tarns and green grassy slopes of Third Basin. Eventually we dropped off the ridgeline to traverse the scree and boulder slopes on the western side of Julius Summit, before climbing up and over the ridge once more. At this saddle, we had one last lingering look behind at our pathway - the clouds had finally lifted, revealing the snow-capped profile of 2075m high Mt Angelus. |
The track now traversed the stony upper slopes of Second Basin in a long steady descent toward the abandoned infrastructure of Mt Robert skifield. The wind had by now begun to pick up strength again and we were glad to reach the shelter of a small wooden hut for a break. Our descent continued down the Pinchgut Track, named by the skiers who made the 600m climb up it to ski at Mt Robert each weekend - we admired their determination and understood why the field was abandoned in favour of a the newly created vehicle-accessible Rainbow Skifield nearby. |
As we descended, we passed through the beautiful alpine meadows of First Basin, dotted with clumps of flowering alpine herbs and cushion plants. The temperature increased as well and we gradually shed layers of clothing. A small grassy clearing on the edge of the Mt Robert provided an excellent place to have lunch and lie in the sun, taking in the glorious views eastward across Lake Rotoiti and down the Wairau Valley. Out to the north the Tasman Sea glistened in the sun beyond the Buller Valley and Nelson. |
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Eventually we forced ourselves to continue on a steep zig-zagging descent, first through a forest of zebra-striped beech and then on the grassy lip at the forest edge, until we reached the Mt Robert carpark. For many the walk ends here, but we had left our car at the Yellow House in St Arnaud. The remaining 6km of the trip were therefore somewhat anticlimactic, as we strolled down the gravel road from the carpark to the West Basin of Lake Rotoiti, before crossing the peninsula to Kerr Bay and St Arnaud, where a nice cold beer was waiting for us at the local bar. |
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