This is a peak I have been building up to for some time and finally it all came together on Easter Monday - good weather, Dave back from holiday and me nicely warmed up with a steady run of activations under my belt.
We arrived at the start point - the top of Porters Pass on SH73 at 7:45am to find 10 cars there already... Briefly considered changing to Hamilton Peak but decided to stick with our plan and hope that the others were only going as far as Foggy Peak. As it turned out, that was a good decision.
Packs on and we were off with Dave warning me to pace myself (I have a bad habit of starting out too fast) as we headed up Foggy Peak to the first waypoint. The first part of the route is now poled - presumably to guide walkers down the correct spur when Foggy Peak lives up to it's name. Soon the poles gave way to a well trodden but unmarked route up the hill. Over a ripper of a false summit and then up onto Foggy Peak itself - 1 hour to the top and we have overtaken the first pair of climbers. So far so good. A quick stop to admire the always-inspiring sight of Mt Cook in the distance and off we go again, dropping down 80 vertical metres into a saddle with a large rock arrow that has been turned into a sculpture of a man - very clever.
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| Heading down the saddle "Rocky" at the bottom and our destination top right... |
From here it's a steady climb along the main ridge towards our destination, the highest peak in the Torlesse Range and Korowai Torlesse Tussockland Park. Along this stage we met two climbers on their way down already.
The razorback ridge across to the final climb is a little intimidating but just keep your head down Geoff, be sure of your footing and across we go. Dave wants to come back here and do it again in winter - madness!
Ridge negotiated and up the final steep climb to the top - motivation levels high and feeling pretty good. We met another bloke heading down the steep, slippery part here, looking good for having the summit to ourselves!
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| Looking across the top of Mt Lyndon, Red Hill and Peak Hill to Mt Cook (centre back) |
As usual, we were about 45 minutes early so got everything set up and ready to go. Antenna of the day was the 44' doublet (40-10m), a firm favourite and Mark ZL3AB had warned us there wasn't much room on the top. The pole was bungeed to a convenient waratah and we were in business.
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| Checking the doublet, view towards Christchurch |
Dave started on 40m SSB with a big pileup while I worked the locals on 2m FM. Switching to 20m CW everything sounded a bit flat but I worked a few VK regular Chasers plus a few who were clearly hunting us for the ZLFF-0027 WWFF park reference. I worked my way up the bands but no DX today - it turns out there had been an M4 Solar Flare just as we arrived on-summit! We made Summit-to-Summit contacts with Philip ZL1PSH (40m SSB+CW) and Richard ZL4FZ on Mt Iron. While Dave caught up with a few VKs on 20m SSB, I spotted more climbers heading across the ridge so we decided to pack up, have lunch and leave the summit to them. Timing was perfect, they arrived as we finished our lunch so after a brief chat about their intentions, Dave took photos for them and off we set.
The trip down was slippery but uneventful - walking poles are an absolute must-have for this one. As we descended the slopes of Foggy Peak, the cloud was rolling in and, once back at the car, the whole mountain was living up to it's name - covered in cloud.
A great trip - my highest mountain to date at 1998m and a real highlight of my SOTA journey.
Getting there: Park at the top of Porters Pass SH73, head straight up Foggy peak!
Permission: not needed, Korowai-Torlesse Tussocklands Park
Time to top: 2 Hours 37 minutes with stops to chat to others and take photos
Cell/4G: Solid coverage on Spark/Skinny at the summit
