>>2604712Oh nice, for some reason I've never quite made it up around Mt Owen.
The time we got in shit was after walking about 5 days from the Pearce over the hill and down the Karamea. Then followed a (wrong) ridge up to 1000 acre plateau to walk out to the upper carpark. Didn't seem to be too much snow, so decided to take the upper track to Bushline hut.
Turned into a bit of an epic. Both of us fell down a hole at some point. Luckily we were both kayakers and had each had a throwbag in case we had to cross the river in marginal conditions.
That was fine, but ended up using them both to help each other out of holes we'd fallen into. My mate was bloody lucky, he tumbled down a way into one, and from where he landed he got his light out and said from where he was standing he could see over the drop proper, and his light couldn't reach the bottom. Reasonably tense few hours. We both had quite a bit of alpine experience and could see we didn't need any alpine equipment - didn't know about the bloody sinkholes though. They somehow had a thin layer of snow covering them but nothing underneath, had no idea that could happen.
Live and learn eh? Next winter trip we just followed the entire ridge from the carpark, along Arthur, down to the Pearce. That was quite a trip in itself. Full alpine equipment, ropes, crampons, axes etc. was surprisingly genuinely very difficult trip on the 2nd half, don't think I'd go back.
Have you done the Alpine Route, around Starveall, Slaty, Rintoul etc to come out Ben Nevis I think it was? That was pretty exhausting but a great walk. Did that in winter too. Weather gets wild quickly up there, even by NZ standards.
Type 2 fun ha ha
