I never promised you a Garden Rose

Looking north-east to Mt Glasgow (?)

 Ok, so the title doesn’t really work, I’m sure someone will come up with a suitably witty twist on it for me...

 After a long and frustrating saga with a certain Gear Shop who shall remain nameless, I finally had in my hot sweaty little hands both my new DD Hammocks Superlight Pyramid tent and my pair of Leki Corklite Speedlock trekking poles, one half of which one requires in order to pitch the tent. Yes, I do live in an age where I expect to be able to order products online from within New Zealand and receive them within a handful of days… To have waited two weeks with precious all communication was taxing to the highest degree. Actually, as it transpired the two different 3-4 days trips I had in the planning stages and which I would have utilised the gear in were both dashed by Wx concerns anyway and are still awaiting activation.

 

Just got tent set up when the light came good

However, now the gear was here and it must of course be used immediately or if not then as absolutely as quickly as possible. Given that I needed to work on the Saturday morning and then be back out in time to go sailing on the Sunday, there weren’t a great many options remaining. Mt William is a handy go-to in these instances. At 1062m asl it’s nice spot with a reasonable view and at an hour or so trekking time in from the carpark (at 570m) can be tackled at short notice and/or late in the day. Out goes the open invite to my tramping/camping network and in comes the usual flood of ‘I’m busy/tired/away/dead’ type replies. But for one, Rose, who says she wants to go for a walk but will leave the camping to me.

 

And still on the phone

So to packing. I do believe that I enjoy packing for trips just about more than any other single component of an adventure. Recently, as part of a broader binge on weight reduction, I’ve been focussing on how few clothes I can conscionably get away with taking or not taking as the case may be. Here I thought, one thermal top and a polar fleece would do, on top of my trek-in top (cotton T, *gasp*). And I did have another very light weight jacket – I wouldn’t even call it a wind breaker. Actually I originally bought it for keeping the bitey bugs at bay in hot weather. Now that I have a set of luggage scales, these choices can also be accurately quantified.

 

Looking in the eye of the howling breeze

Having packed and being quite pleased with results – 12kg from memory, I swung by the local for tipple supplies and then set a northerly bearing for Rose’s encampment. Arriving, Rose determined that camping out would in fact be a conceivable option after all, whereupon I forewarned her that my tent was on probation, untested and marketed only as a one person-plus-gear installation. I offered a larger tent and indeed a two-tent configuration, but she seemed impervious to my concerns and willing to test the hypothesis that the DD Hammocks Superlight Pyramid tent would be up to the challenge.

 

Looking west south west to Mt Rochfort

The day had worn on a little as is apt to happen, and it was after 5pm before we left the carpark. The weather was as pleasant as one could wish for as we panted and sweated our way up the hill. Rose’s pack was a little heavier than mine and so I’d offered to carry some of her water. I’d offered to take 3 litres but she would only part with 1.5, which in hindsight worked well as she had slurped the other 1.5 by the time we struck camp. My new Leki poles worked well on the uphill and I enjoyed the challenge of thinking about how to best utilise them. A word of caution to people accompanying trekking pole users – don’t follow too closely behind!

 

Puffed out like a little balloon

The weather on the tops was markedly different. Up here a fair old wind was howling out of the East. After discussing the idea of pitching the tent in a sheltered spot out of the wind, we finally agreed that the tent was there to shelter us anyway. (Read between the lines there if you feel so inclined). So while I set up the tent on a flat spot (spot being the operative word, as it really was only two sleeping mats wide with the perimeter of the tent sitting up on surrounding tussocks) in my T-shirt, Rose piled on an extraordinary number of thermal layers and continued to cast doubt over the likely success of Mr DD’s tent. Pitching a tent in a strong gust is an art I’m sure, and one that I have yet to master. I ran round in circles for quite some time before I began to lick the flapping nylon into some semblance of structure.

 

Absorbing the ambience

Once more than a couple of the pegs stayed put and contributed to the general war effort, progress was quickly added to. Diving inside the still incomplete cocoon was blissful indeed. A good and timely reminder of the impact of wind chill factors. After catching my breath I hoofed back out, tied out the guy lines and checked the pegs before grabbing my back pack and hauling it to the door way. Now is the fun part. Eviscerating the supplies and plonking them about in piles, slowly improving on things. A ground sheet to keep the bottom dry, a sleeping mat to promote comfortable sitting, a hat to keep the noggin warm and the components of a coffee to hand with a wee dram to breathe some life into it. Added to this satisfaction, Rose got inside the tent and conceded that it wasn’t as cold as it was outside…

 

Cuppa and stretch of the legs

Tea was an exercise in our collective juggling prowess. Both of us had only brought a mug and no billy – although my mug is 750ml to be fair. Boiling water for a cuppa, then for the dehy and then for the mashed spud whilst also allowing for the dehy to be cooked after its re-hydration time (an unfortunate necessity for certain un-named brands that we take into the Back Country) and all to be done a time-conscious manner that didn’t leave us with some nasty cold portion somewhere along the line. All in all we did well and made a jolly passable meal when supplemented with the broccoli and chickpea salad I’d cheatingly picked up from the supermarket, and even better after a spirited coffee.

 

Sheltering against the onslaught

The sun shone in and out of the clouds and so occasionally demanded my photographic attention where upon I'd run about in my socks and T-shirt snapping away til I started shivering. I felt sure the wind would die down after a while but in hindsight I was thinking of a southwester and not the nasty easterly which this one was. So it blew all night and still hadn’t let up when we left the mountain the following morning.

 

Wind howling in from the right hand side

As the evening gathered in we shuffled the gear around and set up sleeping bags etc. Given that it was as windy as it was and therefore no chance of condensation we were able to push our gear right to the edge of the tent and so had ample room remaining for ourselves in the centre. Rose nattered for an hour or so and then I suppose I slept, but with wind pummelling the tent raucously all night it certainly wasn’t a restful kip.

 

Rose catches her jacket in the breeze

  To say that I was woken at 6am the following morning by the howling, gusting wind would be to inaccurately imply that I had been sleeping in the first instance. I feel this can neither be satisfactorily ascertained nor collaborated. None-the-less there was coffee to brew and sailing to look forward to later in the day. Actually from memory I simply had an Up-n-Go and a tin of creamed rice and we fore-went the brewing of anything. De-pitching a tent in a bluster is not much more interesting than trying to set one up. In the end I abandoned all hope of folding it away into its nice little silnylon stuff sack and simply crammed it directly into my backpack whilst simultaneously trying to ensure that the nice little silnylon stuff sack didn’t set sail all by itself and disappear over the horizon.

 

Tent still holding up the following morning, waiting to be packed away

In the final analysis I think the trip was a success. Rose sent and received an inordinate number of emails, texts and snapchats, the tent held up without a glitch, I didn’t freeze to death with my minimalistic clothing choices and while none of my photographs will win any awards I remain adamant that they show some signs of progress…