I wanted to see something else than the Port Hills which is just on our door step, I suggested a loop trip up to Mt Grey, which is 15km east of Amberley (north of Chch).
Canterbury had a southerly sweeping past on Friday and it gave the hills a good dump of snow. It certainly made our running more interesting and challenging.
Clare charging up towards the top of Mt Grey
To be fair we had to do lots of walking since it was so slippery on the snow. There were some amazing rime crust formations.
Pegasus Bay in the background.
Finally at the top (934 m)
Team picture. It looks cold with the snow but it was actually a very hot day. Any day is good for shorts :-) I must have been here too long.
We took the Red beech track on the way down and had to plough through snow along the ridge. It was quite painful when the bare legs hit the snow once you sank down. Gaiters would have been a plus. Our shoes were full of snow.
It was beautiful in the forest on the way down. It was often hard to see where the track went because so many trees had fallen over the track.
The sun melted the snow on the branches and we gradually got more soaked. My biggest mistake was to forget my rain jacket. I had never thought that it would be needed a sunny day like this. At the end I was very wet and when we had to cross the Grey river twice with water up to the thighs, I was longing for my down jacket in the van.
Since we are training for a multi-sport event with rafting, biking and running, we also wanted to do some mountain biking. The tracks around Mt Grey are either very technical (and no biking is allowed) or it is mind blowingly boring. It took 45 min to reach the snow line of Mt Grey and I was over it. After a quick 10 min downhill spurt, we went to Norwester Cafe in Amberly and re-fuelled with cake and coffee by the radiator they had.
It was awesome to get back into some training! I think we'll have lots of fun on the day of the event.
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