Judges / Coldwater Creeks - Leader: Nora Flight
A lively exchange of money occurred at 7am on a fine Saturday morning outside Nora’s Richmond home. The biggest hurdle of the day over, we now had to tackle the paper work at the manager’s residence of the Rainbow Station. Each driver having to fill in a form and hand over $20 – quite a haul.
Choc muffins at the grassy Coldwater\Wairau Rivers confluence; then off into the Matagouri following the true left of the Coldwater for starters. No cattle up here, or Judges; although evidence of autumn grazing. Not a lot of forest up here, but large scree slopes all around, and a surprising amount of snow above 4000 ft. Quite interesting following up this creek as it’s not as open and flat as Judges, with more fall. Penwipers were almost trodden on, but gloated over. Crossing over to the true right we passed a lovely waterfall and up a step into the upper reaches of the Coldwater. The most forest in this valley is here and beckons to be camped in. The scree slope that links up to the Lee had fresh snow on, but looked negotiable. It’s easy to pick the way up to our tarn on the true left. Various routes were taken up the steep grassy slope, with the ex deer hunters taking to the rocks.
Truly a magnificent location to camp amongst. The tarn a turquoise deep blue with snow beaches, and a sizeable chunk of grass area for our 11 tents to be respectfully spaced. Seagull tarn could be a name, as they were also present last year on Ruth’s trip. With lots of rests it had only taken us 5.5 hours to get here.
Frozen boots was a general hazard next morn. The last of us headed skyward at 8.30, while some were already waiting on top in the sun. The saddle and scree slope is seen from the tarn. Most followed up on the edge of a frozen snow slope, then followed that interesting zone between scree and rockface. Beautiful vege sheep had to be carefully tread around. Being one of the last up I could hear a party going on above. Then regretfully down the softening snow slopes into the magnificent headwaters of Judges. And a simple walk out. Although the snow melt meant a few preferred to link arms on river crossings lower down….
Participants were: Nora Flight, Bevan Walker, Lindsay Twiname, Ian Pavitt, Bev Rotherham, Alice Patterson, Jim Maxwell, Ruth Hesselyn, Arthur Jonas, Grahame Harris, Uta Purcell, Mark Graesser, Giselle Clements, and Bob Janssen. {Editor’s note: Nora’s chocolate muffins are yum – should be compulsory way to start a day’s tramp!]