Little Mt. Peel
Sunday 19 November 2023
Five of us left Oamaru on a partly cloudy day and headed up through Geraldine where we stopped for a coffee break before heading to the car park for Mt Peel at the end of Blandswood Rd.
We set off just before 9.30am on the Deer Spur Track with low cloud around the mountain tops, but we were optimistic it would clear. The first hour & and a half is a steep hike up through the Mt Peel Forest with some wooden steps build for giants and a bit of mud here and there to negotiate, which we got around not too badly.
After coming out of the bush the cloud had lifted a bit, so we got a view of the ridge to come and that there was still more up. The track was pretty good with some boardwalk sections and the last part before the top was steep and rocky.
We got to the top at 1311m about 12.15pm and we were all in agreement that Little Mt Peel was not as little as everyone thinks. Lunch was had, taking in the views but we couldn’t see Big Mt Peel because it was covered in cloud.
After lunch and taking photos, we decided to tackle the South Ridge Route down, which looked like it descended steeply over a narrow rocky ridge for a couple of hundred metres before levelling out a bit.
The track was a narrow track with plenty of scrub to hold on to – to stop us from slipping over in places, and even when it did level off a bit it was still a bit rocky with some ups and downs. After about an hour we were back in the bush descending steeply down to Emily Stream and a side visit to the Emily falls.
From here it was on the Emily falls track back out to the car park after 6 ½ hours of hiking and covering about 10.5 km. We all agreed that we had done enough hiking for the day and we would probably feel it the next day, so it was back to Geraldine for a refreshment stop before heading home.
I would like to thank Julian, Jonathan, Jenny and Mike for making the slog up more enjoyable.
Neville
