Mt. Aspiring

We went for a nice hike tramp today into Mt. Aspiring National Park.  We first drove up along Lake Wanaka (rhymes with Hanukkah) and through myriad sheep, cattle, farm-raised deer pastures.  This gave me an opportunity to lecture the family on various ranching topics drawing upon my 4-H days from 40 years ago.  Naturally, the children were thrilled to learn the reddish-brown white-faced cows were Polled Herefords and other such factoids.

In keeping with local custom, we now express all track (not trail) distances in kilometres.  Editorial note: we also now customarily look for opportunities to spell words with fancy British spelling thus giving the 61 Days of Togetherness blog a more sophisticated and worldly air.  Thus a 6 mile track like today’s becomes a 10 kilometre track.  Note how much more impressive a herculean 10 km tramp sounds than a paltry 6 mile tramp.

Our walk took us up Rob Roy Creek to a viewpoint of glaciers and waterfalls coming off Mount Aspiring.  You have to admit that Mt Aspiring is a pretty good name for a mountain.

Here are some views from the day.  The trail bridge across the Matukituki River...

Looking down into the Matukituki valley from a vantage point up Rob Roy Creek...

Looking up at Mt. Aspiring from the end of the trail from a couple of different vantage points.  Walter had a great day except for the last 50 metres which we insisted that he complete.  His disapproval of this mandate is reflected in the second image....

Lucas and Margaret once the sun was shining again....

Early cave dwelling sheep witnessed along the track....

Our favorite kiwi expression is “to rattle your dags”.  It means to hustle.  At the risk of too much information, the “dags” are the unsanitary bits hanging off the rear-end of a sheep.  When a sheep runs, its dags do in fact rattle.  Here is one action....

Here is Lucas rattling his metaphorical dags on the way back to the car.  He begged me to not use any reference to the term dags as it related to him, but I reserve my parental right to embarrass him this one time.