Mt Fred's backside

Climbing Mt Fred from the West

       I seem to have spent a lot of time underground (that is, caving) recently. The urge therefore to undertake an activity within the realm of penetrating UV rays had floated gently to the top of my mind. Mt George as a day walk, Croesus Track as a biking through-trip and a second attempt at Mt Glasgow-proper all milled about as options. Peering into the wrinkled crevices of the topo maps my eye then fell on Mt Frederick. Close to home, a modest 1,105 vertical metre ascent, a well-formed track for a least part of the way; Mt Fred boasted a healthy swag of alluring attributes.

I had to admit that from the early in the week the forecast was pretty lousy for the coming weekend. Irregardless I sent up the smoke signals that Mt Fred was on, seeking brave (foolhardy) companions. The mirth of the invitees that anyone would want to be outside in the coming weather let alone clambering bushwise up the backside of scrawny scrubby hillock steeled my determination to do exactly that.

I quite enjoy the prep that goes into a tramp, some of the prep is gear and the like but a lot of it is mental. Visualising the salient changeover points, the imagined track cutting across contour lines and seeing myself at various stages and the things I’ll want to have at hand. In essence building a mental map.


 

Bright dawned the morn of departure although the forecast was vastly less optimistic, predicting 3” of rain within the next 24 clicks. And not that I would make a habit of second guessing the weather but I did rather suspect that the rain would be late in arriving and inconsequential in volume.

The drive to the Britannia Track carpark consumes hardly 15 minutes of my schedule, me taking longer to finalise my tramping-pack and relate to my GoPro all of the pre-trip briefing. It took me about 15 minutes to reach the first track signage and 70 minutes to reach the turn off to the stamping battery. After that the track quickly faltered and my progress now only kept pace with the snails.

I had thought of making for the ridge on the true right of Britannia Stream. Looking at it now gave me the heebie jeebies so I elected to scramble up the river bed. This at least was warm and friendly, and littered with goats. Live ones mostly, who were on the whole disdainfully tolerant of my presence, like snooty relatives. The river bed demanded periods of ‘pack off’ climbing, scree dodging and inexplicably frequent pauses for GoPro updates. I guess I was feeling a little intimidated by it all. 

Mt Fred to right

 Britannia catchment

Scree slopes. My track was up the centre

Two hours from the end of the track I finally punctured back inside the bush line. Below me stood a giddy slope rattling with jittery rock slides. What is it with that urge to jump at places like this? I wondered if I could make the coastal plain from here if I had had a parapont on my back. The sun still beamed out at me, although by now it was clear that rain was imminent.

The one thing that struck me on the climb from here on up through the bush was just how much loose rock there was underfoot. I had left the open scree slopes behind me but really in here it was just more scree slopes with a forest plonked on top of it. An hour of scrambling, stumbling and general clumsiness and I came to a small area of reduced steepness. This coincided with a sudden decline in energy and overall enthusiasm to push a lot more for the day. I wasn’t happy about the decision to camp in the bush but I was Evan less happy about the alternatives.

I scratched out a tenuous indentation in the forest litter squeezed in between the trees and large knobbly roots and rocks before realising that a) my tent was far larger than my scratchings and b) the area was clearly an overflow water course (remembering 3” of rain on the forecast). Clever huh. Undaunted, I perched my tent like some great green Emu on a bantams nest and slung myself inside with my pack to avoid the rain that had finally materialised. Once inside I slid gracefully to the foot of the tent following the contour of the mountain and had great difficulty for the next 18 hours in reaching the doorway again.

          In deciding to not make for the tops today it now became apparent that I had not factored in a contingency with regard to water. That is I hadn’t re-filled my water bottle when I left the last stream. Duh and duh again as firstly I panicked about not having enough water and secondly then realised that it was watering generously from the sky, if only I had some means of collecting it… This being the first time I’d done this I was rather perturbed to find that my pure fresh mountain rain water was chokka full of foresty-type debris. The sheer tonnage of organic matter that accumulated on the fly of the tent before coming to congregate in my water was not less than staggering.

Having managed to collect a little water I now not only felt comfortable to use a some for my noodles (I don’t imagine they would’ve been too delicious crispy dry) but I also splashed out on a cup of coffee, with real milk. Yes, I took a flask of chilled milk with me… Crazy but oh so delicious. Dutifully finishing off the dishes – not, and still being early in the evening, I made use of that strangest of modern conveniences in the mountain environment, cell phone coverage. Chatting with friends and family, and sharing photos of the trip so far.

Thinking ahead to sleeping arrangements I was mortified at the prospect of having to sleep curled up in a ball at the foot of the tent, as that was about all I could manage while sitting up, I feared for getting any sleep at all. In a bold attempt to thrash out a more equitable solution I piled my pack, dry bag, wet weather gear etc. under the middle of my sleeping mat. In normal circumstances this would have resulted in my having a medium-sized mountain digging into the small of my back. But given the slope I had cast myself against what I actually ended up with was less of slope on the top half of my sleeping mat and a short cliff on the lower half. Well, I thought it would be more comfortable than not sleeping at all. At least I kinda hoped against hope that it might be. To my gaping surprise the following morning, I found it had worked unconscionably well and that I had had a more than tolerable kip.

 Breakfast; Coffee and cereal with more real fresh milk, more of a jolly good thing I say. The rain began to relent about 11am and I was once again sufficiently enthused to attempt the trek to the top. I decided to leave my tent behind to lighten the load, taking only the bare essentials and the van keys just in case I didn’t make it back the same way. The fact that there is a 26m wide road to the top of Mt Frederick (from the other side) does nothing to help with trying to make sufficient headway up on my side of the hill. After about an hour I did finally reach the plateau. This was of little consolation to me as a) I could only see more scrubby bush for several miles in every direction and b) I lost my water bottle (yes the one full of freshly strained pure mountain rain water) so I turned round and headed back down.

I had had great plans to take hundreds of Nature Watch observations during those two days and to collect some snail/litter samples for DoC. But in the end the mental strain of route finding, weather watching etc., just getting up to the plateau and back were all I found time and energy to deal with. I just don’t have the experience/background for off-track tramping as yet. Losing my only water bottle also added a weighty dampener to proceedings.

On the way down I was cheerfully surprised to find my tent in an area I wasn’t expecting it to be in. The scree slopes caused me great consternation in their turn but in hindsight I rather suspect I was being naively nervous. I think it took me about 4 hours from the tent site back to the carpark happy and exhausted. A short vid of the trip can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnR79MXD_1I