Diamond Lake, Wanaka 2018
20th July 2018https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/2864744213
https://www.wildthings.club/trails/otago/wanaka/rocky-diamond/
We had a great holiday in Queenstown and Wanaka with my brother and his family. After 3 days of skiing, we had a non-skiing day, so I took the chance to scoot off at 6:30am for a quickie before the families were awake!
Up early, I drove along the Wanaka lakefront nearly to the Treble Cone access road. (20 minutes).
Apparently there was a 7km run around Diamond Lake up there somewhere, at least according to https://www.wildthings.club/trails/otago/wanaka/rocky-diamond/
I found the trail carpark without any problem, but as I sat in Steve's car, this was the view outside:
This was not good! It was completely, utterly dark. No moon. No street lights. Nothing. I could see the stars and a slight outline of the Treble Cone mountains and that was all.!
I didn't have a torch, but rather than giving up, I decided to try out my LED torch function on my phone, which actually wasn't bad. I started tentatively along the track, and by holding my phone out in front of me, I could actually see enough to jog :)
The track was a pleasant gravel trail, which wound its way up from the already elevated 400m height to the shores of Diamond Lake (which I couldn't actually see due to the pitch black conditions). From here the trail rose megasteeply (c) up and up before levelling off on a saddle and then rising again up to Rocky Hill.
I wasn't prepared for the trail becoming completely frozen as I ascended. Eek!@
I was quite worried about falling over on the ice and hurting myself. Although Nikki knew my plans (and I was wearing a hat and gloves), I didn't want to be stuck up there for hours in the event of an accident. Fortunately the weather was clear (and not excessively cold for this time of year). Still, it was quite an adventure.
A total of 400m up, which was pretty brutal. I jogged most of it, with a few walking stages, and the sky started to lighten up by the time I got to the summit.
The views were spectacular!
As normal, I didn't really have any idea about the correct route or where I was going. The uphill was straightforward, but once I got to the top and started descending there were a few different descending paths and options.... Fortunately, I seemed to end up in the correct place 😀
Once I had descended the icy path, then there was a quick detour over to a look out point over Lake Wanaka
It was only as I came back around Diamond Lake did I realise that the lake was completely frozen!
That was so cool that our families came back later in the day to check it out and throw stones on the lake!
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