Babylon Cave, Paparoa NP

Day Two of the Cave meet dawned very chilly, but very clear and I was glad to be away early with our keen bunch of cavers to Babylon Cave.

The trip began with a wee walk up the Fox River Gorge, which was rather spectacular.

Dan approaching up the Fox River Gorge

At the appropriate spot, we speared off the track and climbed up a very faint trail for 15 mins to the cave entrance, perched at the base of Fox's sheer gorge walls.

The entrance of Babylon Cave

The entrance wasn't huge, but as we scrambled down the steep slippery rock fall I began to appreciate the enourmous cavern that was the main passage of Babylon. Perhaps 40-60m wide and up to 80m tall in places, it was a huge underground canyon!

In the huge entrance passage

We did our 'underground tramping' for about an hour, climbing the 'Ziggurat' which was a giant rockfall boulder pile middway through the cave. Not far from the otherside of the pile was the gated entrance to the 'pretty' part of the cave.

We had NZSS members, the appropriate permits and most importantly the gate Key. On the other side of the gate, we actually did some caving with a little bit of smaller passage and a couple of very mellow chokes to negotiate.

Dan going through the first choke

"Don't tell anyone, but that was fun.."

Once on the other side, we had to navigate ourway around the place through various rooms and passage ways to find 'Ray's reach' which was a sketchy, exposed traverse to get us to 'The naked lady series' which was to be the highlight of the trip.

I set up a psychological belay to 'protect' the traverse, but Nic decided that he wasn't willing to try the crux moves. I didn't blame him. Any fall would be a long pendulum swing down into a nasty boulder field. At the crux he was facing a 15m ground fall.. Not nice. Sadly he couldn't find any intermediate pro, which would have made things much more likely to go.

We were a little dissapointed, but as a consolation we found another chamber with some neat 'pretties' in them.

Still a very neat adventure :)

Chucky admires the pretties

Paparoa Coastline

Golf Course Cave, Paparoa NP

Went to Charleston for the Queensbirthday weekend caving meet. Teamed up with my mates Grant and Nic plus a few new friends to go visit Golf course Cave.

Golf course has a notorious reputation as a very difficult cave to find, with lots of teams getting lost on the way in. Despite several GPS' and a leader who had been before, we ended up a little lost ourselves..

Getting lost somewhere in the Paparoas

We figured out sorta where we were then descended into the highly convoluted terrain to search for the entrance. I was impressed at the small canyons (grykes) and crazy formations to be found.

Wandering through a Green Gryke

We found several small cave entrances, even descending part way down one of them. It was rather squeezy and i was kinda delighted when I heard the call to retreat.

The false cave entrance

Nic in the false cave

Soon we found the correct entrance and we were on our way. Golf course was a stream way cave that was basically a Limestone slot canyon with a roof on. Lots of fun stemming, climbing and avoiding the 'holes' of that give the cave its name.

The correct entrance (exit) of Golf course

Enjoying a bit of crawling

There was one crawly section that wasn't that fun, followed by a couple of ladders that were. At the exit we got to make a grotty up climb to exit, that was lead with style by another crazy caver.

Great times!

Rotorua Visit

Went up to Rotorua for a bit of Kayaking, Hot pooling, Climbing and Tramping. Great times.

Ready for Kayaking at Lake Okatina

Tramping up Rainbow Mountain

Mt Richardson, Nth Canterbury

Made the most of a hideous forecast to get out and about on sunday. The main range was enduring thunderstorms, heavy rain and gale to severe gales. But the eastern foothills got the a light splattering of sleet driven to stinging velocity by winds that were still 60+ kmh!

We aimed to find 3 different geocaches during the day, the first not very far at all from another potential Canyon!

The track was of very high quality for the majority of the circuit, with just a few bogs and a slip or two to deal with.

Near the modest summit of Mt Richardson Geoff found the second cache and we snuck into the shelter of the bush to munch on lunch. The sleet began to sting a little, so we hurried east along the semi open ridge line towards the third cache that was also easily located.

Descending south off the ridge, the conditions seemed warmer as we became more sheltered. Back near the car it was balmy! The trip was topped off with a delicious hot chocolate at Jo Seagars cafe :)

Signing the 'Fall'n Glentui' Geocache log book

Not far from the top now!

Geoff examines the '1048' Geocache

Mt Richardson Trig

Finding the 'Bean there Richardson' Geocache

Geoff, Jodie and Chucky

Traversing the ridge east

Broken River

Well, I was supposed to be going canyoing today, but after my two canyon buddies had to pull out at the last minute I had to find plan B.

Thankfully, managed to find out that James was off for some mid week skiing with some other buddies, just the chance to break in my new Touring Set..

Had a great day up at Broken River, perfect blue skies, not much wind and nearly 2 feet of powder!! I sucked at the skiing, but managed to get a few turns linked by the end of the day..

Time to ditch the car and start walking...

James enjoying the warm conditions

Time to earn the turns, skinning up the field

Castle Hill Peak, Korowai/Torless Park

There was the tiniest of weather windows passing by the Canterbury region on saturday, so weren't super confident that we'd be able to get all the way to Castle hill Peak before getting snowed and blown off the mountain.

Leaving Chch in steady rain at 5am did nothing to bolster our confidence, but somewhere near West Melton, the moon, then some stars began to appear. By the time we'd passed Sheffeild, we could see the snowy peaks of the Torlesse Range clearly in the bright moonlight.

Wonderfully clear and calm at dawn

The Ben More tops

Climbing from porters pass as quickly as we could, we were treated to a wonderful morning light show, which we were able to enjoy in the crisp, calm air.

Higher up we encountered some reasonably deep drifts of snow, which made for slow progress at times. We were up on Foggy Peak quite quickly, but Castle Hill was quite some way futher along the gentle ridge.

Just about to arrive at Foggy Peak

Mt Enys dominates the Craigieburn Range skyline

The views were rather spectacular; the Craigieburns to the west, Mt Rolleston dominating the Northerly views and Banks peninsula to the south.

The further we got along the ridge, the more the wind grew and the high cloud coalesced into a thick grey murk. Climbing the last little steeper section to the top, we were glad to have made it before the weather really opened up on us.

There was just enough time for a quick bit of Geocaching to find 'King of the Castle' not far from the summit.

Looking at the last little steeper bit to the summit

Murray ascends the final bit of ridge

Summit Shot, Castle Hill Peak 1998m

Looking North East to the Waimakarirri Valley

It was clearly time to get off the hill as the weather bore down on us. The wind steadily increased and began blowing snow off the ridge into our faces. by the time we were decending Foggy Peak, the gusts were reaching well over 100kmh ! It was a bit of a struggle to remain vertical, but in our storm gear with not far to the car, it was actually rather fun to be out in such conditions.

In the end we timed it just right, as the snow began to fall up the valley, we were driving back down to the Sheffield Pie shop for a well deserved big meaty fat pill.

Murray attempts the 'La Bouche Glissade' (mouth slide)

(Not) Stoney Canyon, Mt Tuhua

We were trying to figure out what to do for our sunday on the coast, so decided to go for a bit of a recce to check out a few of the rivers that had 'the nod' from some of grant's local kayaker connections.

However on the way to go check out Wainihinihi Creek our gaze was captured by a pair of biggish looking waterfalls in the middle of a stream of the North East flank of Mt Tuhuna. We took a closer look, consulted the map then went and got permission to cross the farmland from the farmer and psyched ourselves up for a West Coast Granite first descent.. There should at least be a coupla extra falls up there right??

Though it was a little warmer than saturday morning, it was very hard indeed to get motivated to put on wet canyon gear in the morning..

The climb up the true left of the stream was generally pretty easy, save for the occaisonal wasp nest and 5 stings on various parts of me...

We entered where the gradient mellowed out and after donning the freezing cold wet canyoning gears, encountered our first drop almost straight away.

Grant enters the slot on the first drop

Rounding the corner to an impressive horizon line, we had arrived at the drops seen from the road. It looked like a rather long way down; the 3x 60m ropes that we had began to look a touch insufficient..

Toine downclimbs a delicate chute above the big drop

However, we were able to scout around and find a precariously located anchor that was right on the edge of the drop. We had to set up a hand line to get down to the anchor and enjoyed a bit of rope shuffling and management to ensure there was enough cord to reach the bottom whilst still giving Toine the saftey of a releaseable system.

Pip leaves the exposed anchor station for the big drop

Looks were decieving;
the middle tier of the 3 leap drop was only about 45m, easily within our grasp.

Downstream of the big drop, the stream was bouldery and required a bit of scrambling, but the drops came at a pretty regular pace. Toine had us scout quite a few jumpable looking pools, but only a few had the right geometry to make it work out. The granite formed some short sections of deep slot between high walled, but wider gorge sections. However, there were only a couple of places that would have been escapable.

Slippery log Slide or Jump (with a big push)

Anchors were generally not too hard to find, either trees, slung boulders or pinches. Though with a few bolts in the right places, we would have been able to descend right through the flow had we wished to for a bit more fun.



The waterlevels were really nice for the trip, with just enough water to make the falls a little interesting if you chose the wettest way down.

Grant and Toine consider the next drop

Pip makes the most of the last drop in the canyon

After total of 10 drops to 45 or so meters, we arrived back at the car a little sore but satisfied at our 6h30m round trip.