This is going to be one of those weird post… reason is that it’s been almost 4 months since I was in Bonaire and lots has happened since then so my memory isn’t too fresh but I’ll try to give you some information on it…
Trip started when I flew from Miami to Curacao. The lady at the desk “forgot” to mention that my connection to Bonaire was cancelled and that I would have to spend a night there before catching the next day flight…Arrggg!!!
Anyway, I made it there, so did my luggage (thank god because my suitcases were filled with dive gear and underwater camera equipment). Reservations were made for a room at the Black Durgon. The place was fantastic, the staff somewhat friendly but location was incredible. The rooms themselves are ok but the cooking area is an open-air kitchen by the water and on the other side of the garden you have an area to put your dive gear and rinse everything off. The place also supply tanks for the divers as well as weights. There is a dock where you can dive from if you like.
Now to the good part; the diving! Probably some of the best dives I’ve done are over there. The entire island is surrounded by a reef that starts a 100’ from the beach, it goes from 30’ of water at the beginning of the reef and quickly drop like a wall to 250’. The coral itself is in incredible condition and lots of species can be found if you have a good eye. I recommend diving the West side of the island as the East is open ocean and current/waves can be pretty treacherous at times. All dives starts from shore so all you need is a truck, a map, your gear and you’re set to go… no schedule! The beach ain’t sandy, its rocky so bring your booties and strap fins! Oh and by the way, there is nothing to do on the island itself so if you’re not a diver, I wouldn’t recommend to go unless all you want to do is bbq and drink…
I can’t recall every dive I did (about 4 a day so…) but from places I remember, on the North East of the Island, places like Karpata, Dania’s Leap (drift dive) and 1000 steps are great spots to start with and great dives. Beware that this area is usually busier with divers than the South because the water is calmer. On the South end, I’d say to go to Red Beryl, Vista Blue, Sweet Dreams and my favorite, Willemstoren Lighthouse. Now beware that the latter is a bit of a tricky dive. Being on the Southern point of the island you can get some crazy currents that will drag you to Eastward to deep open waters so always use caution and check on conditions before venturing on that dive. The South isn’t normally busy and offer some of the best diving in Bonaire. If you’re into night diving, the Town’s Pier and Something Special are good place to go but for the pier you’ll need to hire a guide.
Overall, great great trip, amazing diving, spectacular reefs… Now remember to use caution. Shore diving can be tricky if you underestimate currents so make sure you know what you’re doing and if you don’t feel confortable about a location, move on! There are plenty of place to go!
If you get a chance to travel to Florida, stopping at one of their many water springs is a unique experience. With plenty of locations to choose from and an average 72 ̊ Fwater temperature year round, all you need is to pack up lunch and mask/snorkel for a very refreshing swim in crystal clear water. Having spent quite a bit of time in Ocala National Forest, we were already familiar with Alexander, Juniper and Silver Glen springs. This time, however, we were looking at something a bit deeper and bigger where SCUBA would be possible and photography a bit more interesting…
The first place that got our attention was Ginnie Springs Outdoor in High Springs. The park offers two area to choose from: Ginnie Spring, a 100′ wide 15′ deep basin where lays the entrance of Ginnie Cavern, divers can continue down to 50′ depth where further access to the spring caves has been closed down to prevent untrained divers to wander in the maze-like cave system. The second area is called the Devil Springs and has 30 000ft of charted caves open to cave-certified divers. For open-water divers like us, you can wander down Little Devil, Devil’s Ear and Devil’s Eye springs. All of those will lead to the cave entrances where a very obvious signs will advise you not to proceed further. This is not to be taken lightly as those very caves claim their fair share of lives every year. Caves are a hostile environment and should only be entered by specially trained divers.
We spend most of our first day diving the Ginnie Spring taking advantage of the unlimited visibility and calm waters to try some half-half photos (half underwater half above). A good tip if you ever try would be to setup in shallow water where you can either sit or stand up and carry a dry towel to wipe the water spots on the lens port that is out of the water. The day went by fast and we decided to do a quick dive on the Devil Spring to scope my main interest, Little Devil, for good angles to shoot the next day when light would be optimal. The spring is a 4′ wide 50′ long crack running down to 40′ of depth. The walls are covered with silt so be careful when descending not to lift it up or you’ll have to wait 20-30 minutes at the bottom before it settles so you can take a decent photo. Once at the bottom, lay on your back and shoot skywards. If you manage to hold your breath long enough for the water to settle from your bubbles disruption you’ll clearly see the trees as if on land. The other two springs (Devil’s Eye and Ear) weren’t too exciting unless you’re a caver so most time was spent at Little Devil. After the dive we left to our hotel, the Country Inn, 20min away. At 55$ a night for a king size bed, the place was nice and clean plus had a big table for us to work on the housings. If you go ask for room 14, that’s the best. There is a Winn Dixie minutes away for grocery and a couple restaurants in town. At that point we were pretty burned out so didn’t bother going out.
On day two, we went straight to Little Devil and took some photos before other groups of divers might ruined the perfect conditions of the spring. Afterwards, we decided to go for a drift dive on the Santa Fe river, where the springs unload their waters. Most people go from the Devil Springs and drift to Ginnie Spring. We decided to start a bit further upstream to get a longer dive. Big mistake. The current was going strong and the drift was pleasant but the river seemed to get shallower every feet that went by. Not to mention we were surrounded by tall grass (3-4ft long!) that would get all tangled up on the camera housing. We both ended up beached like whales in a foot of water with a few of pounds of grass on the cameras and our gear. We struggled to make it to deeper water and eventually ended up by Devil Springs where the rest of the drift to Ginnie was quite nice. It’s a good place to take photos of the crystal-clear spring water mixing with the yellow-ish river. After our second dive, we took a bit of a break and fired up some charcoal to grill some T-bones and veggies. Before the sun went down, we got in Ginnie Spring for a night dive before heading back to the hotel.
On day three, we drove to Williston, South of Gainesville, to Devil’s Den Spring. The spring is inside an underground cavern with an 8ft opening on the ceiling letting some light inside. The basin is 100ft wide and 40ft deep. There are a few caves along the sides open to cave divers, the ones at the bottom, connecting to the spring, have been fenced off. The basin is littered with big limestone boulders stacked up on one another with various openings making the dive quite interesting. As far as photography goes, the light beams are fun to shoot and open your creativity. The spring being quite dark it’s a good place to fine-tune your low-light skills. That day the temperature dropped to 30 ̊ F so after two dives we were pretty frozen and decided to head to Ocala and find a hotel for the night. We stayed at the Hampton Inn for 80$, the room was very nice and clean.
On day four, we had plan to go dive the Blue Grotto but due to the cold water/weather, Ximena had some issues with one of her ear and we decided not to push it and headed to Orlando’s Outlet Mall for an easy day.
Overall this was a great experience and I’m looking forward in going again to hit other springs we didn’t manage to cover. I’m also looking at making a short-film on freediving and the clear waters would be ideal for that… In the mean time, hope you enjoy the photos… C&C welcome as usual!
Hello Interwebs, it’s been a while hasn’t it. I’ve been quite busy with work and the weather hasn’t been very cooperative lately that’s why the posts have slowed down a bit. I’ve also had my sister flying from Montreal to come visit for 4 days which was really nice since we haven’t seen each other for over a year so it was great to catch up and also show her what my life is all about here in South Florida. I took her lobstering, introduced her to scuba diving and also brought her in Key Largo on snorkeling adventures on some of their shallow reefs. After her departure I had another friend flying from Rhode Island who came visiting for 10 days before heading to Puerto Rico some once again more diving, partying and big feasts were on the menu.
I’ve been slowly processing all of those photos over the last couple weeks here and there. I’ve posted some on Facebook already so it might not be new stuff for some of you but it’s always nice to see them in higher rez I guess. There a good chance that we’ll have a 3 day dive trip next week but I’m still keeping a close eye on the weather to see if its worth to go to the Keys or not. If surge is still strong and winds up, chances are we’ll be heading North around Ocala to dive some fresh water springs and maybe explore some underwater caves… It’s all up in the air right now but for sure I’m packing my camera along so hopefully some good shots to come.
As always, its been a pleasure to entertain y’all…
Once again, due to bad weather, our weekly routine of going to the Keys to dive had to be cancelled. Hurricane season being at its peak, storms sweep by frequently making boat diving in open water an unpleasant experience. Without any break in the weather a couple dives at the bridge were planned and here’s a few shots I took on both days. As you might have noticed the album is dated from mid-September which means I’m basically a month behind in my blogging… Right after the dives I had my boss coming to town so I got quite busy up until recently, why the late posting. I decided not to bomb you with too many photos and only posted the ones I think are up to my standards.
Now onto the second part, I’d like to thank Vincent who suggested Sony Vegas as an alternative to Magix and Movie Maker for video processing. I got the latest version but haven’t had a chance to shoot any videos so I’ll give feedback on it later. This blog’s questions are about photo galleries. I’m currently using NextGEN gallery for adding pictures in my posts. I was wondering if any of you know other similar types of galleries with a few more options as a title or text box so I can name the fish, flower or location of the photo. Also is it possible to enable comments on photos so people can comment on a specific pictures instead of the whole posts?
Thanks again for reading and for all of you who help me out making this blog better and more interactive I always appreciate (who knows maybe one day I’ll let you post an article here and there…).
Hello Internet! Due to bad weather this week’s dive over in Key Largo was cancelled. With strong winds and lots of rain going on a dive boat in 6-7 foot seas didn’t sounded good so we headed North to West Palm Beach where Blue Heron bridge crosses the Inter-coastal waterway.
The inland waterways offer a protected environment when the seas a rough. There are no coral reefs but a few wrecks as well as the pillars of the bridge are covered with sponges and booming with sea life. Many species of fish hatch in this area so you’re guaranteed to see juvenile fish hanging around, waiting to be mature enough to head to sea. Of course there are a few disadvantages of diving inland. At the bridge for instance, boat traffic needs to be considered and staying out of the channel is highly recommended. Also, current is always an issue and only at slack high tide (on hour before and after high tide) diving should be attempted if you don’t want to get caught in 3-4 knots of current. Visibility is not as good as the open seas due to sediments at the bottom so 10 foot is considered good, that’s why high tide is the best time because it brings in clean water from the ocean into the waterways.
As an addition to my current setup I got a port to fit my 100mm macro on my Ikelite housing. Macro photography is pretty much all you can do at the bridge because shooting wide angle in poor visibility doesn’t give good results. On the second day of diving I finally got to handle the lens properly underwater. As far as settings goes, I normally shoot in Tv mode so to set the shutter speed. For macro that didn’t work too good as I found out on my first day. The camera would set the aperture on 2.8, producing razor-sharp images but with super shallow depth-of-field, in fact too shallow. Also, the strobe would have to be put on 1/4 of the power output otherwise the light was too strong. On the second day, after seeing the results on the computer I tried a different approach. This time I switched to Manual, set the aperture to 8 (actually moving from 6.3 to 11 depending on the light), giving me a good depth-of-field and the shutter speed on 1/125, ISO 200. With those settings, the photos were underexposed 3+ stops. I used the strobe in full force to fill in the missing light, producing sharp photos with more depth and still keeping a nice bokeh. Of course I wouldn’t recommend those settings for a wide angle shot, where you need to capture details from corner to corner and deep into the frame, for that matter I’ll have to get back to you, since my experience with wide-angle is still limited. One thing I realized is that light (strobe or flash) and angle are king elements in a good photos. For instance, with same setting on camera and flash, taking 10 photos of the same subject but rotating 360 degree around it will give different results color-wise (angle wise too but that’s a given…). Pictures can look from grey-ish not so good-looking to incredible colors making the subject stand-out…
Enough with my blah-blah, here’s a question for those of you who are videographers of video enthusiasts. When I film with the 5D, a 1 minute video produce a 300mb 1920×1088 file. Now that file, if run on my pc (with VLC or Media Player or Quicktime) is a HD video of really good quality. I like to add a little fade-in and out, make a few cuts here and there and add a caption at the beginning and end…nothing crazy. So I use Magix Movie Pro. In order for me to get the same video quality once exported I have to export as an uncompressed file but the size goes from 300mb to 5-6gb…quite jump. Now try uploading that on Youtube. So I tried Window Movie Maker which I used in the past, but exporting in full quality produce an 100mb file of no-near the original quality…Any advice? And I don’t want to hear about getting a Mac!
This is it for this week, I didn’t get to shoot videos but hope you’ll enjoy the photos. As usual, comments always welcome. I know I was supposed to post a review on the 5D Mark II but work has kept me busy plus I’m also studying for my Divemaster which is quite time-consuming. Hopefully I get to free some time and get to it…
Hello Traveller’s Nation! Unfortunately I didn’t get to go diving the Spiegel Grove so I won’t be reporting on that but the good news is that I did go diving so you’ll hear some stories…
First thing first let me talk about my underwater photo gear I recently purchased and I must say I’m pretty excited about it. I traded in my 5D classic for a 5D mark II mainly because the new model has Live View which allows me to look on the display instead of viewfinder to take photos (try that with a mask on..) and also the 1080 HD video option is a bonus. I purchased an Ikelite housing for the camera as well as an 8″ dome for my wide angle. I’m now looking at getting another port for my 100mm macro for close-ups. For lighting an Ikelite 161 and maybe I’ll get another one later on because one strobe isn’t ideal when you try to get rid of shadows but I need to get used to the setup before going banana’s on the spending… I’ll eventually post a review on the camera and all on the blog. I’m thinking maybe a video would be best but I’m not sure about my acting so we’ll see.
For the second part, the diving. Day 1 we drove North to Jupiter to go diving with Emerald Charter. Small boat small group, just how we like it. We were told goliath groupers were spawning and that since it was new moon they would be present in high numbers. Randy, our divemaster and also owner of the company was going to be our guide and gave us input on the dives. First of all diving there is no joke, big swell and lots of current. Goliath groupers like to hang out in deep water so we loaded Nitrox tanks on the boat and geared up for a deep dive. For the most part the other divers were regulars and knew the area pretty well. Before jumping in Randy told us to try to keep up with them and if we couldn’t we would be on our own and would have to launch our float, make our safety stop and wait to get picked-up…No problem. It was my first time getting my camera in the water and was a bit nervous. As soon as I jumped in I started the 130′ descend to the bottom, keeping an eye on the housing for leaks. Once at the bottom and no water inside the housing I felt confident and started shooting. The groupers, over 500 lbs, were all over the place but shy and would swim away when approached, making it impossible to photograph. Besides, visibility was bad, making it hard to stay with the group. Half way through the dive my instruments were going beeping crazy to notify me that I was getting close to my maximum bottom time.Our group decided to ascend to shallower water and we lost track of the rest of them so had to launch our float and wait for the boat. The other two dives were as amazing if not better but conditions were still bad and we lost the divemaster on every dive..tough to keep up with… On Day 2 we hit Key Largo, our usual dive grounds with Captain Slate’s Charter. As usual, great conditions, flat water and 50′ visibility. I managed to play with the camera a bit more and got used to the strobe and how to use it.
So this weekend I learned something: It’s pretty hard to shoot underwater because you can’t stay still.. The surge constantly rocks you back and forth, fish are very fast and there is nowhere to anchor yourself since you’re over a coral head. I figured, just shoot, something good might come out of it. I’ll post a few photos and also videos, make sure you check them out and comments are always welcome… See you next week!
Now that we’re back in good old Florida, we’ve been spending most of our time off diving and free-diving. One of our favorite spot to go is off Key Largo, where corals lays everywhere and stand in pristine conditions. Visibility varies from 100+ feet on good days but for the most part goes around 50′ which isn’t bad for photography. If you ever get to go, go see Captain Slate’s, they’re by far the best and nicest operators in the area and will take you places where others don’t. Most operators will take you to the closest reefs but they, on the other hand, drive up to 40min off the coast to get away from crowds.
Off the top of my head some of my fave spots are: Shark’s Reef, Mikes Wreck, North Dry Rock, Statue of Christ and Spiegel Grove. The first two offer good corals and amazing swim-through. I normally free-dive those in order to get into the swim-through because most of them are a bit tight to go in with a tank plus depth is around 30′ so not much of a problem on a breath-hold. The reefs 3 and 4 are great for photo-taking. Corals and all sorts of creatures are in abundance. The latter, Spiegel Grove, is a 450′ old navy ship, my favorite wreck dive. The dive is a bit more technical, since the boat is in 150′ of water, the average depth on the dive is around 90′ to 120′. For that reason I only dive the Spiegel on Nitrox to extend bottom time (my mix is 34% at 1.5 which give me a 38min dive if you can control your breathing). Lots of possibilities of exploration inside the wreck but carry a reel if you do so (or you’ll end up like the three guys who got lost in the wreck and never found).
On another note, I also got to test Ximena’s new macro element on her camera setup (Canon G11 with Fix housing and Inon D-2000 strobe). The element attach at the front of the housing and consist of two magnifying glasses that you flip in front of the objective (depending on how much magnifying factor you want). The setup is fairly easy to operate under water but on the flip side, the macro glasses are smaller than the objective so you need to zoom-in with the camera in order not the see the edges of the glass. I never liked zooming-in because on digital point-and-shoot, you tend to lose details plus, focusing is a lot harder. I ended up leaving the camera all the way zoomed-out and taking photos that way, leaving me with some cropping work for later on the computer. Focusing was a lot easier that way too. Overall a good piece of equipment but I need to spend more time to practice. I’m currently looking at getting an underwater setup myself (Canon 5D mk2, Ikelite housing and strobes). With that I’ll get proper macro lenses but that’s in process so more to come…
Hope you enjoy the photos… Ah, yeah, I’m planning a deep dive on the Spiegel next week so I’ll try to document it a bit (vids and pics) so stay tuned!
Once again, sorry for the delay. Actually, wait a minute, I don’t feel sorry at all. The reason I didn’t posted this article a month ago isn’t due to a computer crash, bad internet or lack of time, I just didn’t feel like it. After 6 months of intensive picture processing I dreaded the task of running the 300+ photos of our California trip through LightRoom… Since the purpose of the blog is entertaining it’s subscribers I decided to push away the release date until inspiration came… And today it did…
So after an awesome trip in Hawaii we finally landed on the mainland, precisely in chaotic Los Angeles, at 0500 in the morning. Neither of us really wanted to tour L.A., blame it on the traffic or lack of interest of overpopulated cities… Bare with us here… After being in no man’s land NZ and deserted Hawaii, the sound of a tourist packed/ blood-thirsty paparazzi/crowded city didn’t sound appealing… So we got a car and got the hell out. Of course we got stuck in traffic for awhile (LA traffic-jams are 24/7) but inched our way forward to the skateboard capital of the world: San Diego.
Since the main purpose of the trip to CA was to check out the yachting scene we made hotel reservation not far from the marinas. Yacht-wise the town was pretty quiet since most boats come in around mid-June or July. Without any job opportunity we decided to switch to tourist mode and headed downtown. SD city center isn’t that big but has a good vibe. Specially 5th Ave (I think its 5th Ave) where there are more pubs than you can shake a stick at. The harbor is quite nice too, not to forget they have a US Navy Aircraft Carrier open to the public, as well as a couple old Tall Ship, a US submarine and also an old Russian submarine…if you go you got to have a look, pretty cool stuff…
With a few more days to spare I thought it would be pretty cool to take Ximena to San Francisco before heading back to Florida, specially that I haven’t been there in years and was eager to see if things had changed. We left SD and went across LA where we changed course West to meet the coastal route to Monterey; a 5 hours drive on the cliff side overseeing the Pacific Ocean..what a treat… After countless hours driving and a stop at a smoke house on the road for smoked ribs and salmon we pulled-in our hotel on Lombard street, downtown SF. We dropped the car and went for a stroll on Fisher’s Man Wharf and to get some dinner. The next day we drove to the Golden Gate Bridge Park for a walk around and on the bridge. We also drove up to Twin Peak for some panorama’s of the Bay Area. The day was ended by a trip to Chinatown for some drinks at a cocktail lounge on the top floor with scenic views of the downtown area followed by some food at a Chinese joint nearby. On our last day we went across the Bay Bridge to Berkeley see if the town had changed since my last visit, over 10 years ago. For the most part things were fairly similar except for the vibe that felt less “hippy” than back then. I took Ximena to Indian Rock, a park where I had my first rock-climbing experience 15+ years ago. We then had coffees at Strada Cafe just by the campus where we went for a walk afterwards. The day went by pretty quickly and we found ourselves back at the hotel before the sun went down to pack up our stuff in order to catch an early flight the next day…
I thought for sure (I swear!) that our flight was at 0800, so when we checked in at 0600 and the desk attendant to us we were too late to check-in I got puzzled… In fact, our flight was not at 8am, but 6. So we missed our flight…but, by chance they booked us on the next one and we somehow managed to arrive earlier in Fort Lauderdale…just in time for happy hour…
That’s it, the end of our long trip, long break from work… the end of an era… Don’t worry though, the adventure continue so stay tuned!
Sorry for the month delay before releasing the photos of the rest of the trip but since we left NZ things got a little hectic. So to put things in perspective, we sold the van in Blenheim and stayed local for a few days until our flight out of Auckland. We took the bus from Blenheim to Picton with all our crap (read luggage) then jumped on the ferry to Wellington where I rented a car for 15$ (south to north rentals are usually cheaper since people do the opposite route) to do the 12hrs drive to Auckland with a quick detour in Tauranga to pick up our suitcases that we left at the beginning of the trip.
From Auckland we flew to Honolulu, HI. The flight was quite comfortable thanks to Air New Zealand’s excellent service. We had a short overnight in Honolulu (Oahu island) before our flight to Maui, the next morning. Once at the hotel we were both tired from the travelling and needed extensive showers but decided to hit the closest pub in order to celebrate our first time in Hawaii. The next morning we boarded the small plane for a 30min flight to Kahului, Maui, where our kick-ass condo awaited us. For 65$ a night, the place was very roomy; big screen tv, granite bathroom, full kitchen with stainless appliance, patio and the most important: a bar with all the tools required for cocktails production. Oh, did I mention it was also across the street from the beach? Yeah that’s right. The rest of the trip went very quickly. Every day was spent getting up at 0500, gearing up for multiple dives or freedives and usually back at the condo by 1600 completely burned out and ready for a margarita and a nap. We only took one day “off” the water to have a tour of the island given by our local guide that we met on Craigslist. We went to a bamboo forest, checked out some waterfalls and drove to the summit of one of Maui’s volcano sitting at 10 000 feet to check on the sunset.
As far as the day in the water went, we hooked up with BB Scuba for our dives. The company is owned by locals, provides amazing customer service and operates a small dive boat with a maximum of 8 guests. The group is split in duos which have their own guide. We dove Molokini Crater, an ancient volcano packed with sea life and coral, Turtle Town where huge sea turtles would stop to rest and get their shells cleaned by fish and other crustaceans, an old second world war plane, Five Caves where we did a night dive to check on the shark’s activities and swim through caves. We also went with Extended Horizon Diving for a couple since they cover Lanai; an island 30min away by boat from Maui where big underwater cathedrals are found. They are named Cathedral I and II and absolutely look like one with lots of tiny holes where light shoots through. Lanai offers lots of dive sites but the two cathedrals are the most popular dive. On the freediving (or snorkel) side of things, Maui offers loads of beach with easy access to reefs. Of the list we hit Black Rock, Ulua, Mokapu and Wailea Beach. Our personal favorite was Black Rock. The sea life was abundant, depth around 20-40′ and the reef was healthy for a shore access location.The trip was over faster than we expected and we soon back in crowded Honolulu for another night before heading back to the mainland…
On a conclusion note, if you plan on going to Hawaii, here’s my advice: if you are looking for quiet beaches, stay away from Oahu (unless you go to the North Shore). Maui, Kauai and the Big Island are very good alternatives and much cheaper than Oahu. Hawaiian Airlines provides cheap flights between islands. Rent a car. Travelling by bus is an option but remember their coverage is fairly small so you’ll be missing on a lot of good places.
After spending a few days in Hokitika, where we carved our own unique jade pendant, we drove across the Alps towards Christchurch. Being late at night we decided to stop half way through, in Arthur Pass, for the night. The next morning, the weather was clear and warm so we decided to go for a hike up Avalanche Peak that we had to cancel on our last trip due to bad weather. We made a quick stop at the ranger station to look on the satellite to make sure the weather would stay clear throughout the day and to fill tramping slips. The slips is just a form where you put your destination, numbers of hikers with details and return date. If you don’t show up at the ranger station on the scheduled time, they’ll send a search party for you.
Avalanche Peak summit sits at 1833m, over a 1100m above Arthur’s Pass Village. There are two “marked” trails reaching the summit; Avalanche Peak track and Scott’s track. The latter being a bit easier but either one shouldn’t be underestimated. Both trails climb up the steep mountain face at an average 45 ̊ on most of the hike, making it more a climb than a hike. I wouldn’t recommend to go up in poor visibility since the trail goes by sheer cliffs where a wrong step can be fatal. If you see bad weather blowing in, simply back track down…playing tough guy in the backcountry can cost dearly. Once at the summit you’ll be rewarded with amazing view of the Southern Alps and surrounding glaciers. On the way down, I suggest taking Scott’s Track as it’s not as steep as Avalanche Peak Track. The four hours climb to the summit will take a toll on your legs and climbing down tired, on a steep face can end with a thorn ankle or broken leg if not careful. Four hours after leaving the summit, you’ll reach Arthur Pass Village again for a rewarding pint of Speight’s at the local pub… Make sure to drop off you tramping slips at the ranger station so they don’t go looking for you…
We, on the other side, decided to skip the pub and hit the road, we have a van to sell… Christchurch, here we come!
