Mt. Buster – April 2012

Eight of us met at the car park on a fine morning, with a forecast for strong winds and late rain.  We got ourselves into two 4WDs and headed off though Danseys Pass. We stopped at the Danseys pub to wait for the other vehicle to catch up and then it was on to Little Kyeburn Rd and Mt Buster Rd to the D.O.C car park. It was lucky we took the 4WDs because there were two fords to go though on Mt Buster Rd that low 2wd cars would have had trouble with.

At the car park it was a wee bit windy but not too bad, so we picked the ridge we were going to go up and headed off on our climb. The climb was not too bad apart from the tussocks that we had to push though; they were quite big in places. The higher up we got the more the wind picked up and when we got to the top which took about two hours it was blowing a gale. We tried to find a place out of the wind to have lunch, but this was not easy. Robbie found a place, it was not the best but we had some shelter if we got down low.

After lunch we realised we were not quite on Mt Buster as it was about 500m to the south of us on a rocky knob, so we headed over to it and climbed up on top while trying not to get blown off. We had great views of the top of the surrounding   mountains, Maniototo Plains and the Buster diggings. The summit of Mt Buster is 1334m.

At this stage the clouds were starting to build up inland so it was off down the 4wd track to meet up with the main track that goes from the car park into the Oteake Conservation Park past the Buster Diggings.
At the main track we assessed the weather and decided it was going to hold for a while so it was off to have a look at the gold diggings.

The Buster digging is a huge area that is probably 10km long and half a km wide. They stand out because the tailings quartz gravels are white and they look out of place within the tussock countryside. The diggings were mined from 1860s to the 1930s and were the highest altitude gold workings in N Z at 1200m.

To see all the diggings you would need a couple of days, but as we did not have this it was off back down the track for 6km to the cars. Along the way we saw some of the old water pipe lines they had put in to get water from the many creeks and streams in the area, and many of these had to go a long way. We stopped on our way back in a claim spot, to have a second lunch out of the wind. All in all it was a good day out with about 5 hours tramping, and apart from the wind we had good weather.

Thanks to Tim, Betty, Robbie, Els, Laszio Sam, Jac and Neville for a good day out

PS  Thanks Jac for missing the turn off back onto the Danseys Rd and letting us get in front, so we didn’t have to get your dust all the way home.