Waimakariri River from ridge to Mid Hill

With a fine forecast for a couple of days, we walked the Lagoon Saddle track in Craigieburn Forest Park, then headed up across the tussock to camp by a couple of tarns at about 1600 m.

This pic is taken from a knob at over 1800 m, and our tent is just to the left of the right-hand of the two lower tarns. It's a not unpopular spot, but we saw no one else on this trip. The ground was very wet and boggy in places after the heavy rain of the previous few days, but not hard to find a dry camp spot on the gravelly surface by the tarns. Unusually for us, we parked on a relatively well-used spot where someone had build a rudimentary wall shelter about 30 cm high. The wind blew fairly strongly for the first half of the night, so flapping nylon kept us awake for a few hours, but then it dropped away completely. We woke to a still, sunny, warm morning.