This was one of those early morning start trips with us leaving Christchurch at six thirty in the morning so a coffee was on the cards like usual, our first destination for the day was Reefton on the west coast as the designated meeting spot at ten and the trip there was pretty uneventful.
After a quick meet up with some of the other members of the club it was time to head off, I didn’t know a lot about the details of the trip and it turned out we were heading over the top over one of the operating coal mines in area to get where we needed to be.
The coal mine looked rather interesting and I wish I had more time to explore the place and check out some of the cool looking machinery but it was not why we were there or probably something we wouldn’t have been aloud to do without a guide.
The open coal seems just hanging around, I’m not entirely sure how the ledges worked or if you would be able to go back up another ledge and get the coal up there as it seemed like more of a pit mine that went down and the operations were at the bottom.
A Jamie photo
The Hilux in all its glory, I had been playing around with the new 50mm prime lens, the bokeh really makes the subject snap when its set to a low aperture.
The smoke in the distance is apparently a mine that has been smouldering away for forty years or more, can’t remember the details of it sadly.
Another stop to take in the views near the top, the road/highway
Some of the older parts of the mine where mining had been previously done, it looked stupidly steep to be able to get around up there.
One of the club members checking out a track down, just for fun really and because it was steep.
The tracks, well roads over the coal mine are all very well maintained and even right over the top the track was much the same, it was a lot steeping coming down so only for small vehicles.
A Jamie photo
A Jamie photo
Looking back up to where we had been ten minutes earlier, the scrub just behind the truck must have been an old mine as it was a rehab area that had been replanted in an attempt to disguise what it had been. It had a look of it was just different to everything else.
Some of the local guys that had been checking out the track for us to make sure the mine part of it was clear.
The first river crossing for the day, like most rivers plenty of hidden boulders on the bottom to bounce over and to my surprise I got a good splash of a reminder that I had not yet put back the rubber boot over the gear stick back on properly yet.
The track begins on the other side of the river, it was pretty dry in terms of a West coast track.
One of the three trees blocking the track for the day, nothing a chainsaw and a bunch of supervisors standing around watching couldn’t fix.
A Jamie photo
The track that was supposed to lead to the hut, for a West coast track it was in really good condition and pretty easy to drive for the most part and not a huge amount of mud.
The river had washed out a bit of the track so the easy going ended here.
A Jamie photo
Another crossing over the river, there were plenty of boulders in this one and I wasn’t sure that I had missed any of them after getting through it.
After hitting as far as we could go, we couldn’t get back up onto the track and the creek wasn’t leading us where we needed to be so it turned into a lunch stop and after lunch we ended up turning around and seeing if we could make it back down the river as it would lead us to back to a road to get out.
Not long after going back down past where we had crossed the river the first time we came across another solid looking tree so this time it took a little less supervision and more workers to move all the parts of the tree.
The track wound along beside the river for a while till it came to crossing the river again, we managed to get a little wet again with the water spouting through the gear stick rubbers which was a depth reminder that it was getting a little deep so a little more throttle to power out of it was needed.
This was the end of our road, it was to deep and to fast to cross safely, one of the cruisers dipped it’s feet in and promptly tried to back out but got stuck so it was a quick winch out.
So the damage list for the trip wasn’t very much for a West coast trip, but for some reason my winch had flattened my battery the next day after getting home. Further testing showed it was pulling a large amount of amps when it was doing nothing and it was trying to melt the voltmeters leads so after disconnecting it and re charging the battery the truck was well again, as for the winch it’s well over due for a tear down and re-grease so I will see what the damage is when I get around to that.