Trip Photos

MTB climbing Fowlers Pass	Lake Guyon	Rat infested Stanley Vale hut.
	Fowlers Pass panorama

Trip Report

Ever since Helen bought the St James for like-minded outdoorsy types, I have been intending to go see Lake Guyon. And after two aborted attempts to get there, we were not going to be deterred by the weather warning keeping everyone else away from close-to-Main Divide rivers and locations.

As we parked we saw that we were not to be alone on the track. 3 mountain bikers were busy getting their gear together for the ride over to Lake Guyon, intending to do the round trip via Maling Pass all in the day.

Ron looked enviously at them, feeling that coming on this trip without his trusty Scott was probably a bit wimpy ….. The track up the valley was, with the exception of a few lumpy bits and a few steep bits, very kind to fit MTB’ers.

Once over the pass and down the initial zigzags though, the track requires a high level of technical skill and strong nerves. We imagine that the lack of weekend gear would make a big difference on this descent. The bikers were only just ahead of us in the pretty upper valley but then we stopped for scrogg and saw them no more.

Stanley Vale hut is an old cob cottage building with plenty of charm from the outside and situated in a lovely spot overlooking a green wide valley with cattle grazing. We decided to spend the night here, with the idea that when the weather turned nasty on Sunday we could hurry back over the pass before we had even noticed the rain.

So we emptied our packs of sleeping and cooking gear and took off to pretty Lake Guyon – an hour away. We wandered along by the lake to the hut to find it inhabited by the gear which we worked out must belong to a family of horse trekkers we had seen on their way to Fowlers Pass. They had left intentions that they would be returning that evening.

After wandering along to the lake outlet and looking down into the Waiau valley, Arno and I decided to return to Stanley Vale hut over Lake Hill. We got a bit tired of climbing so did not go all the way to the top but sidled around the top and dropped off down a ridge into the paddock before the hut.

The night was a restless one, the hut seemingly was home to many other inhabitants who had setup residence long before us. They left our food alone but kept us awake all night and I kept wondering if there would be any walls left in the morning. We can only hope that the DOC management plan includes a squatter eviction clause so other folk can have peaceful nights in this otherwise pleasant hut.

Morning brought the expected weather change, so we were up and off early with the wind and some drizzle on our backs pushing us up and over the Pass back to the car. By 12:00 we were lunching in Hanmer watching torrential horizontal rain and debris flying about outside the café.

It was a pleasant trip in a new area, with lots of possibilities for longer options. Trampers: Susan Pearson (scribe), Ron Keeble and Arno Grueber.

-- Uploaded by Susan Pearson on 17 February, 2010