Cross Creek, Aspiring NP

I just love this little canyon!! (four descents and counting..) Today I had another chance to take 3 new friends and one old mate down my favourite creek.

The weather was a lot warmer than yesterday in Jubilee, but we still moved through at a reasonable pace as Cross has a lot of pools, jumps and swims that sap your body heat.

Everyone seemed to have a great time in this great little canyon.

Nathalie Frost enters the Cross Canyon

Julie Burton

Mike Frost


Nathalie on rappel..

Julie leaps the first big jump (8m)

Nic takes the plunge on the second big jump

No one chose to jump the 13m leap today..

Nic (being a caver) found a cool little new

crevice to squeeze through in the lower canyon

Jubilee Canyon, Aspiring NP

This weekend I was hosting another Julie from Australia, though this one was a canyon enthusiast. Along with our new friend Nic from Dunedin, we traipsed into Haast Pass after the heavy rains to see what canyons could be done.

Surprisingly, some canyons looked very full and others rather empty, so choosing one of the latter we began the climb into Jubilee Canyon.

We got a little lost on the ascent, finding it a bit tricky to find the right spot to enter the water course. Eventually we arrived, suited up and began downstream.

First drop in Jubilee

Nic and Julie

One of the amazing pools

Although Jubilee wasn’t a continuous canyon, there were some beautiful pools and lovely waterfalls between the ‘stream walking’ The description I’d had from Alain wasn’t quite matching what we found and when a low angled series of cascades that stretched nearly 100m appeared, I thought it was possible we were actually in a new canyon.

Lots of beautiful downclimbing and scrambling

A little logjam in a horizontal bit of the streamway

Near the bottom we went around a couple of drops that looked a little nasty with logs and things jammed in rather sketchy spots.




A drop in the bottom half of the stream

Nic on the best rap that we did today

Trying hard to avoid the pothole...

It wasn’t warm that day, so we were pleased to reach the end after nearly 7hrs on the go. That evening we camped at Camerons flat and welcomed Nathalie and Mike who were to join us the next day.

Julie Burton, Nic Barth, Dan Clearwater