A short trip to the moon

Photo Friday—Mt Fyffe

Here’s another one from not too far from home. The mountains in New Zealand might not be exceptionally tall, but they are very conveniently located and without fail will offer up some spectacular views. Mt Fyffe ticks all these boxes and—as an added bonus—is easy to walk up.

We probably shouldn’t have slept in, it was the middle of winter, so the days were short and we had about 2 1/2 hours to drive to get to Kaikoura to start the walk. After much faffing we finally started the steep walk up Mt Fyffe in the afternoon, winding our way up the steep four wheel drive track. We reached the snow line just after passing the hut, here the track narrowed to a walking track. The sun was getting low in the sky as we made our way up the final stretch of the track. We watched the sun set as we trudged our way back down to Kaikoura for a well-earned dinner.

While the base of the mountain is nearly at sea level the peak reaches a very reasonable 1602m, all within a short distance of the ocean. What you can’t see in the photo above (Which looks west towards the Kaikoura range) is how very close the summit of Mt Fyffe is to the coast, so I’ve included this one, looking in the other direction once we finally reached the summit: