The hallowed ground of Mr Explorer Thomson

Another week into spring! The highlights:

On Wed. I had a half day trip cross country skiing with my old friend Vicky. She was just back from Alaska, and wanted a ski before the snow runs out. What took me 35 mins. in winter turned into over an hour - in fact I walked and jogged a lot of the trip to Bob Lee hut, as it was mostly rotten ice on a hard base. However I thoroughly enjoyed the outing, and luckily I had just the right day pack on to carry my skis.

Not satisfied with a normal week, to get a good photo or two 4 of us made an ascent of Mt Grand on Friday. That's to the nor east of Wanaka and is aptly named - explorer Surveyor Thomson named the range Grandview during his explorations in 1857, and was the first white man to see Lakes Wanaka and Hawea with Mt Aspiring in the background. He approached the area from the Waitaki Valley by horse crossing the Lindis Pass. He was also quite an artist and produced a memorable painting of the view with his horse and some rock outcrops in the foreground [I found the rock outcrop once, but the view from it does not line up with the painting, so I've always assumed he used artistic license]. For our exploration we set off at 5 am to catch the sunrise [see photo - Mt Maude on the left, and Aspiring hiding, and almost invisible, in the background to the right, and shrouded in a westerly fast approaching]. Thanks to my truck we were back by 10 am for work. It always amazes me just how much you can do around here if you set your mind to it and know the way.

After all the above, the weekend saw me catching up on some serious sleep. Anyway the weather was indifferent.

School holidays are now on and we're hoping to head north for a bit of a break.