Chest Peak/Random Peak

A combination of my birthday, Laura finally finished her PhD AND bringing her tramping boots down to Christchurch meant we just had to go tramping. After a potluck dinner and drinks on the Friday night, non of us were feeling particularly creative to come up with a good day trip option. So when Ivor suggested Chest Peak we all agreed, even though no one really knew where it was, how long it would take, or had a map. A leaving time of 8am was set (by Ivor) and of course he was the last one to show up at 8:30am... Eventually the 9 of us were off. We'd agreed to meet at 'the turnoff' and then travel the last bit to the start of the track in convoy. Of course we mixed up 'the turnoff', resulting in Ivor's car waiting 40 minutes for us when we were already in front. By 11:30am we eventually put out boots on and began to walk.

It was a pretty windy day, and of course as we walked up the wind just got stronger. Tom picked the most windy spot for lunch, but Ivor and myself managed to take some sort of cover in a bush. We continued heading up after lunch, finding ourselves walking more and more in the bush rather than the 'farm track' as described in the guide book. Somehow I think we went wrong, because instead of a nice approach to the spur leading up to Chest Peak we ended up bush bashing up to some other random peak. At least we were sheltered from the wind in the bush!! And there were snowberries!! Volker, Brian and myself managed to stop every 10 minutes for a good feast. We realised there was no way we were going to make it up Chest Peak, so decided to just head up the random peak and down the spur the other side.

The wind was so strong that it nearly blew us over on the tops. But the combination of snowberries and bush bashing made an adventure to say the least. After 5 hours we were back at the car, and made our way to Oxford for a hot chocolate at Joe Seagars Cafe. Unfortunately it was closed, so we skipped the hot chocolate and headed back to Christchurch in time for dinner and a glass of wine. As for the lack of photos - Tom was in charge of those because he had a new toy. So when I get them from him, I may upload a few.