The Old Man... (and, coincidentally, Kev's visit)

Just kidding Kev, just kidding...

For those who know him, a friend of ours, Kev Moore, was over visiting us recently. The plan was to take off and go skiing, but before visiting us Kev was skiing at Craigieburn Valley and hurt his ribs quite badly, so resort skiing was out, and he came down to hang out in Dunedin instead.

Naturally, Dunedin turned on some good South Island weather and we had rain, sun, wind and cloud while Kev was here, with the emphasis on rain and wind. We did take off for a day (4 September) to Central Otago in an attempt to go ski touring on the Old Man Range, near Alexandra. By the time we drove out there, found some topo maps of the area and got the car up the muddy dirt road, however, it was nearly midday. The car lost the traction battle at about the 1100m point, still several hundred metres below the snowline. Given we could see that the snow cover above was pretty patchy we decided not to haul our skis up to the ridgeline and instead we went for a short hike up to a rock outcrop for lunch and flew our kite a bit, before heading home via Ranfurly and Middlemarch, which is an excrutiatingly dull drive.


Rochelle and Kev just below the ridgeline of the Old Man Range. No skiing here...


Postholing...


Rochelle and Kev twisting on a very solidly frozen puddle.






Kite flying high above the Clutha valley.


The weather packed it in again the next day, so amongst other things, we went and played Putt-Putt Golf...


Rochelle tees off on the 6th.

Hopefully there'll be more photos (of seals, sealions, penguins etc) to come (When Kev sends them to us. Kev?)