Mt Arrowsmith
After a bout of heavy rain the weather finally let up and Alex and I decided to try and head up Mt Arrowsmith. We were pretty worried about the height of the river, which wasn't helped by a quick chat to one of the locals on Erewhon station.
We arrived late in the evening, our intention being to head off up the Clyde (and then Lawson the next morning). We planned to climb the walkers route, up from the Lawrence Valley, with a high bivvy that night, to make for a smaller second day.
After one brief crossing just out of the car, Alex made the mistake of leaving his sock where he'd taken his boots off and was forced to cross and recross, much to his disappointment. For the first few hours, we hugged the bank of the Clyde, making slow progress crawling through dense Madagari to avoid the raging river.
Reaching the branch of the Lawrence the river looked a bit less intimidating, and scratched and tired from crawling, we decided to cross the river. Progress was much faster and we made good time through the far easier terrain, constantly criss crossing the river.
Eventually we reached the scree slope we intended to climb, and started the hard work of climbing up the slope, and finding a place to bivvy. As dark started to descend we finally found a place to camp, just below Pt 1862 and happily set to work making camp.
Early the next morning we set off to climb Arrowsmith. Following the notes from ClimbNZ, we started up a valley, just after the plateau. Unfortunately, this turned out to be the wrong valley, we'd headed up one too early (a fact we didn't realise until reaching the top, when we saw Ashburton Peak)! Dejected, and not wanting to drop back down the whole valley, we decided to climb over the saddle West of Pt 2106, and drop down into the next valley.
Once in the valley, we could see the route we'd originally planned to head up, way off in the distant, which did nothing for our enthusiasm. After a quick chat, we decided to make our way up to the South West ridge of Arrowsmith, and up to the summit. How far could it be?
As it turned out, quite a way, the ridge never seemed to end, and there was constant exposure on both sides (though the Cameron side was significantly more impressive). After what seemed like forever, and navigating a number of big and chossy gendarmes we finally made it to the summit, and the views were well worth the effort.
We dropped quickly down the coloir we'd originally planned to come up and navigated down a series of bluffs to get back to the valley, anxious to get down before it started getting dark, getting through the last of them with a full half hour to spare.
From here, it was just a long trudge back around the steep scree slopes to where we'd stashed our gear. In the dark, it seemed to take longer, and we weren't sure we'd find the stash (carefully buried under a pile of scree to stop it getting investigated by Kea). Fortunately, after a bit of faffing around we eventually uncovered it and got to our well earned meal (the cooker finally starting with the very last one of our wet matches).
