Hi Nelson, been missing ya!

Kaikoura-Nelson, & Nelson Lakes NZ - 8-10 Dec, 2006

[Well, yes, sorry about the delay on updates again. After all my good intentions it seems I've slipped back to a month and a half behind schedule...the standard state of affairs it would seem for the BligBlagBlog. One day...maybe one day I'll get this thing up to date]

Any road up, the tramping wasn't over for NZ quite yet, oh no. Met up with Steve again in Nelson and there we plotted a high alpine adventure in the Nelson Lakes area: Roberts Ridge and (weather permitting) bagging Mt Angelus (2300m)...oooh.




An example of the 'clandestine' methods we used in planning our trip - taking pics of expensive glossy hiking books in the DoC Office bookshop to save having to buy them. Thank goodness I had been obsessed with The Big Book of Secrets as a child.




Naturally our route was on the junction of four different maps so we camped out in the DoC office carpetting the floor with cartography and generally getting on the tits of one particular member of staff, Eyebrow (named for obvious reasons). She was a bit of a know-it-all Canadian (hmmm) who seemed to think we were not taking the Roberts Ridge seriously enough.

Quote from Eyebrow: 'It's exposed up there and really windy. I was on the ridge the other week with a friend of mine who's 6ft 4in and he got blown.' Well, really, I think it might have been Eyebrow that wasn't taking the hiking that seriously.

Transport certainly wasn't as easy to fix as it had been in Queenstown. Certainly an opportunity for Teapot to move north and clean up with his logistics skills.

[By the way I'm doing this on a Mac and for some reason it's a lot harder (for me) - Blogger & Macs don't seem to shake hands very well hence I'm doing it in the bare html code with which I am very rusty so no additional colours, links, italics etc. Sorry. This has taken me hours and I have a flight to catch so I shall leave the snaps to speak for themselves.]