Time: 3 hours (The Crescent to Mt. Vernon summit: 1.5 hours)
It's nice to stand on the geodesic dome on the big rock and feel on top of the world. Well, perhaps not the world, but at least Christchurch and Lyttelton. Our worlds have after all, gotten a little smaller of late.
Distance: ~9 km
Start: Corner of Hillsborough Ave and Heybridge Lane, Cashmere
Finish: Same place - it's a loop
Date: Friday 29th May 2020
Date: Friday 29th May 2020
Now that we are emerging from our Covid19 pandemic bubbles, like butterflies from a chrysalis, we find that the long balmy days of autumn are over and winter is upon us. Today I knew I would soon be standing on top of Mt. Vernon and it was looking pretty cold outside so I stuffed my woolly hat in my bag just in case.
It was a crispy 8 degrees centigrade when we met on the corner of Hillsborough Ave and Heybridge Lane at 9 am on the dot. We walked briskly up the steep hill to the end of The Crescent. At this point you feel like you are on someone's driveway but once through the gate there is an obvious farm track to follow. Almost immediately though we cut up to the ridge proper via a steep sheep track and then followed the Mt. Vernon Track all the way along the ridge, across summit road and then on to the top of Mt. Vernon.
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We decided to do a loop and so headed down the hill towards the top of the Rapaki Ridge Track. Oodles of walkers and cyclists were about, but we went off piste to try and pick up the Rapaki Valley Track which has an indistinct start somewhere near a memorial pole which sticks out of the tussock.
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The memorial pole is one of two, in remembrance of 10 year old William Mason and his friend Archie Lilly who perished while returning late from a fishing trip to Lyttleton in 1883. If you look back up the hill from the direction we came in you can just make out the other pole. Someone had placed an Easter egg at the base of the pole and an insect had bored two holes through the tin foil but left the chocolate intact.
We continued down the Rapaki Valley Track. As the valley narrows there are some rocky clamberings and scrub to weave through. The river was not even a trickle.
We were back at the car by midday and managed to get a fortuitous park at Fava Cafe where we enjoyed coffees and snacks and chats about kids and drugs and stuff like that.