Walking round Methven 28 February 2015

We decide to go away for the w/e and book ourselves a double room in a snow-boarding backpackers place in Methven. The fences around the garden were made of upright snow boards, quite effective really, and it was run by a young sporty guy. The place was pretty empty because of course, it being Summer, we're out of season. Methven has a really good but tiny Japanese restaurant where we eat both nights of our stay. It's next door to an equally tiny cinema where we see the Second Best Marigold Hotel.

Mt Sunday, known by Lord of the Rings fans as Edoras, is the central hill in front of the high mountains. Makes for a pleasant stroll, but to get to this spot we have to drive down a very long gravel road. As we're leaving 2 huge coach loads of tourists arrive doing the Lord of the Rings trip. You have to imagine the elven castle on top of the hill, there's certainly no sign it was ever there, except maybe for a small gold rock painting of a unicorn

Over the swing bridge towards Mt Sunday

Looking up the valley from the top of the hill, the highest mountains are still cloud covered . . .

. . . and looking back the other way down the valley



Our next stop is Lake Heron where we track down this kettle hole. Kettle holes are small depressions left as glacial ice retreated from the area. This one's quite large and is covered in white gentians

 

 



Weather's looking terrific again the next day as we head for Mt Somers. We choose to climb up the Rhyolite Ridge track which turns out to be a pretty steep climb up through bush and scrub to a ridge. Fantastic views all round



 

Standing at the top of the ridge we then have a bit of a scramble further on up eventually meeting the junction with the Mt Somers track

The walk is circular and across the valley we can just make out the return track but doing the whole thing would be too tough on my knee so we accept we'll return the way we came




This gives you an idea of the ridge, you can just make out an orange pole marker

 



Back down at the car park Mike just about manages a bit of river deep enough to swim in after a long hot descent