Mt Winterslow ZL3/CB-379 - March 2023

 Mount Winterslow is a 1700m mountain situated in Mid Canterbury. Neighboring peaks are Mt Somers to the South and Mt Alford to the North. It is private land, part of Mt Winterslow Station and access needs to be negotiated via the owners - please contact Dave ZL3DRN for info. Also, see his blog post here: SOTA activities David ZL3DRN

Thanks to Dave's hard work, we were able to get access and headed down early to take full advantage before the changeable autumn wind got up. Having left Christchurch at 5:30am, we arrived at the locked gate in the dark just before 7am (along with a party of local hunters). We established where each group was headed and then tackled the two steep (50%), wet, grassy stages to gain the ridgeline. Views were spectacular in the early morning light. It's a relatively straightforward climb (once you leave the grass behind) with great views of North, Central and South Canterbury. We did hear a few rifle shots so the lads were obviously successful on their hunt a couple of valleys away.

The second steep grassy section - afternoon shot

Near the top we came across the biggest flock of vegetable sheep I have seen!

Dave amongst the flock of vegetable sheep

Arriving an hour before our scheduled on-air time, it was a leisurely setup of the HF gear - KX2, 20m long EFHW antenna as an Inverted V on 6m telescoping pole. Lots of photos taken and then Dave started on 40m SSB with plenty of callers. 

I worked the VHF/UHF bands and had a ball with the CHC gang sending them SSTV pictures of our view of Mt Cook using the excellent Android Robot36 app (using Scottie2 mode) on 70cm. Superb quality images both ways - thanks guys!

I then jumped on the HF rig and worked visiting ham Jamie N6JFD as ZL/N6JFD/P on Te Aroha ZL1/WK-035 on 40m (and later on 20m), John ZL3MR on Quartz Knoll ZL3/OT-318 and then worked my way up the bands as usual. A real mixed bag of contacts resulted - NZ, Australia, Taiwan, Japan, USA (CA and MN). Dave had worked into California on 10m SSB - a good result for 10W and a bit of wire!

View of Mt Cook (left) and Mt Tasman (right) from Mt Winterslow summit

Around noon, the wind came up and we were reaching for warmer clothes - with all the advertised summit-to-summit contacts completed, we decided to pack up and head down the hill to a sheltered spot for lunch out of the wind. We were rewarded with a view of a NZ Falcon flying up the valley to the saddle we were just above and instantly reconfiguring into high speed mode as he crossed the saddle - absolutely amazing to watch.

An uneventful descent from there and we very carefully picked our way down the still-damp grassy lower slopes back to the car. A big day but very rewarding in all aspects - a nice walk (13km and 1142m vertical), nice summit with good radio conditions and a spectacular NZ wildlife display to boot.

Access: Private property, please contact Dave ZL3DRN for info. The road in is shingle but the last couple of km are 4WD track with a couple of creek crossings.

VHF/UHF coverage: all of North, Central and South Canterbury

Trig - no, just a wooden pole and cairn (with a very touching memorial plaque)