Traversing past a unmarked tarn on the Red Hills tops that looked suitable for camping in good weather (marked on map)
The ridgeline south of Ben Nevis has beckoned on numerous trips to that summit but no club trip has travelled along it in some time (if ever?). Andrea hatched a plan and I was more than happy to lead a crossover party to meet at Hunters Hut. Our party started from Inwood Lookout and had thoughts of including Gordon's Knob in the day's mix but persistent cloud cover deterred us. But no more than 10 minutes later the cloud cleared but too late for us. Day one was now a cruisy 4.5 hour walk into Hunters Hut over the Gordon Range tops. Not satisfied with that Astrid & yours truly checked out the stunning mineral belt in the upper reaches of the Motueka River to kill some time.
We had already discussed a Red Hills variant to the route if we had suitable weather on day two and the forecast delivered a blue bird morning. So day two commenced with a 800m grunt up the spur behind the hut onto the northern end of Porter Ridge.. The sparse vegetation provided easy travel and it wasn't long before we were enjoying great views west over to the Gordon Range. As we climbed higher Red Hill (1791m) became visible on the other side of the imposing Motueka Right Branch River valley. This splits the Red Hills in two with the Porter Ridge on the west side and the Red Hills Ridge to the east. We all agreed that this area was the highlight of our trip, the colours and stunning terrain was well worth the effort of getting up here. The descent down to the saddle that provides access to Top Wairoa Hut was reached after 4 hours and we had lunch on the saddle below Mt Ellis. Cloud cover regularly obscured the ridgeline we needed to traverse, generally only banking up on the western side of the ridge so we still had views east. The ridgeline was mostly rolling tops with one narrow section that required a bit of scrambling. We reached the summit of Ben Nevis after 8 hours travel and then had a two hour slog down to the car. A total for the day of 21km in 10 hours with 1650m of ascent and 1900m of descent.
I have been experimenting with a new toy, a very small Insta360 Go 2 which has enabled me to get some good HD video with minimal additional weight added to my kit. Check out the video below.......
Party members were Astrid, Paul and Pete (Leader and scribe)
