The last working day of the year, for me. And after an evening being force-fed whisky in celebration of a colleagues birthday (and the year-end), today found me a little ropey. I figured I could head home and feel miserable, or find a nice steep peak to climb and sweat it all out of my system.
I always say to myself when crossing the Haast Pass, heading home - I’ll activate Izthmus Peak this time. A four point summit: at 1386m, climbing from a 400m lakeshore, it’s one of the easiest peaks around - and has stupendous views. But, as always, I see the mass of green rental vans at the start of the track, the gravelled motorway heading up the barren hillside, and I put the foot down and drive on: ‘no way’.
So, pre-empting that I turn left at The Neck and head along the gravel road to Kidds Bush conservation campground for a more tranquil climb of the 1814m Sentinel Peak. Just 14m inside the 8-point band, and again accessed from the 400m shore of Lake Hawea, it should be a nice easy climb even for someone in my current state.
The Sawyer Burn Track is well maintained and climbs, zig-zagging excessively through beech forest to the 900m contour before sidling above the bushline to the basin housing Sawyer Burn Hut, where the track ends. A brief bush-bash across Sawyer Burn puts you on open grassy faces climbing to the 1500m untracked ridgeline beyond, which it follows towards the summit.
ZL3/OT-247 - Sentinel Peak
The bush section is cool and shaded, but the still, humid heat of the day soon has the sweat running. Once past Sawyer Burn Hut and into the north-facing basin we’re in an oven of broiling heat. Only one of the previous night’s whiskys, and a small one at that, was my colleagues favoured heavily smoked Islay malt (the remainder being a dangerously smooth slip-down-easy speyside) - but I spend most of the ascent reliving the smell and taste of that smokey peat as it drips from my pores.
Both the false-summit 1km short of the top, and the summit itself are bypassed to the south on tussock faces below steep crumbling bluffs, on a vague ground trail. A brief scree scramble between the summit and it’s western neighbour leads to a stony saddle and gives access to the northern tussock face which can be scrambled back east to the summit.
Northern ridge of Sentinel Peak. Camp Creek below with Teat Ridge - ZL3/OT-142 beyond
The summit itself consists of a couple of flat 1m x 1m platforms fit for activating from, and a pair of narrow crumbling knife-edge ridgelines running north and east, which are the only conceivable spots to string a wire antenna. I literally crawl on hands an knees along to eastern ridge to attach that end of the EFHW to a small pointy rocky outcrop - admiring the variety of options for certain death on either side, and wondering why it is that evolution has equipped us with knees that turn to jelly at the precise moment that good steady gait and balance are most called for. Safely back on my activation platform I jam the SOTApole into some rocks and run the other half of the antenna down the slightly broader northern ridge.
Lake Hawea and Lake Wanaka, with the izthmus at The Neck below. Izthmus Peak (ZL3/OT-348) mid-centre, and the dreaded eastern ridge to the left
The day is warm and luxuriously still after months of spring storms. The temperature at 1800m is presumably a good 18 degrees cooler than the sweltering lakeshore and I sit back for an enjoyable relaxed activation. I start with the antenna in it’s 60/30/20/12m configuration to work the ‘unusual bands’ - as from experience if I start on 40m I’ll run out of chasers and get no locals on 60m or 30m.
30m SSB if pretty poor, netting just 4 contacts in the first 10 minutes and none with good signal reports - all ZLs, and all 800-1200km away hinting at long-ish skip, but puzzlingly none of the usual VKs. Seeking the local ZL3 crowd I drop to 60m which seems absolutely dead. A sudden harsh wind-gust hits out of nowhere and has me clinging to the base of the SOTApole fearing losing it over the edge, before it fades away to absolute calm. I eventually manage a 52/32 contact with Wynne ZL2ATH in Wellington, before giving up after 10 minutes and re-configuring the antenna for 40/20/15/10m.
I’m half-way through the first CQ call on 40m when another strong gust comes out of nowhere. Probably no more than 65kph, but on this narrow exposed knife-edge that was enough to have me concerned. I manage to fit in a few more calls between the increasingly frequent gusts and work the first 5 calls of what seems like a small pileup, before the next gust lifts my pack and threatens to take it over the edge. With a brief ‘Stuff this’, translated to a slightly more polite ‘QRT QRT QRT’ for transmission, I rapidly pack the radio gear back into the pack. I’m tempted to leave the antenna or pull it till it breaks off the guy at the exposed eastern-ridge end, but eventually grow enough courage to crawl the 20m back along that knifedge and retrieve it properly. Crazily, once off the summit itself we were back to steady warm calm sunshine and not a breath of wind.
To complete the circuit I followed the ridgeline route all the way back to the Kidds Bush carpark, rejoining the hut track at the 900m contour and following it to the carpark below where some kind soul has adorned each dust-coated truck window with a phallus.
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I have no idea how many chasers were waiting politely for their turn to work me, but apologies to all - instincts were screaming that it was time for me to get out of there!
