Hunting for a Hoar Frost- Mackenzie Country; Part 2

Real-time

Continued on from Part 1  where we were parked up at the Ohau B canal NZMCA Park near Twizel.

- But sadly there's still no hoar frost or even remnants of one so it's time to head home and see what tomorrow brings...

Tomorrow brings a fabulous sunrise.

Beautiful colours over Ohau B Canal

I'm up well before the sparrows, it is bitterly cold outside and a heavy frost is fast settling on the rig but when I look out and see the cloud formations overhead I know it's going to be a spectacular sunrise. Now I have to hurry to get to the top of the small hill behind our camp site before it's too late.

I throw on layer after layer of warm clothes, finger-less gloves and woolly hat, grab my gumboots, and camera and rush as fast as I can up through the long grass on the side of the hill, dodging deep rabbit holes and large rocks as best as I can in the dark gloom. There are a couple of tracks but I haven't time to find them as I can see shafts of brilliant orange streaking through the sky above already.

The wispy fog looks like cobwebs draped over the power pylons.

I knew before I reached the top of the hill I was in for a tough photo shoot, I'd left my tripod and head torch behind! I can't see the camera settings easily and it's so dark I'll not be able to shoot any long exposure shots (which are all of them until the sun comes up) without my tripod. 

1) The sun rises over the fog in the Mackenzie Basin
2) Pink tinted lenticular clouds above Lake Ruataniwha Spillway
3) Looking south over the salmon farm

I don't have the energy to race back down to the van and then get back up the hill in time. Luckily there's a concrete column on the top of the hill (it's used to measure movement in dam walls), and with the help of a flattish rock I manage to balance my camera on the top of them to shoot. I find out later that only one in about 4 shots has no blur. I bet the camera was slowly slipping on the icy surface.

1) Aoraki/Mt Cook  peeps over the top to greet the morning sun
2) With Ben Ohau Range as the backdrop, fog settles over Lake Ruataniwha.
3) As the sun climbs higher the colours turn from reds & orange to a brilliant yellow

After a suitable time and enough photos for me to think I have at least got a few of the early sunrise, I decide I will have to high-tail it back down the bank and back to the van to get my tripod. And put on another pair of socks, I'm already wearing two pair but gumboots and an icy frost do not go well together. This time I walk along the canal and head back up the unofficial 4WD track to the top, it's a steeper climb and now very slippery because the frost has settled.  And the temperature has dropped even further due the wind chill factor as a stiff breeze blows in.

Looking south over the salmon farm- just two vans in for the night

The colours are now soft oranges & mellow yellows. Now that I have my tripod set up, I attempt to do some light trails using the red tail lights of a few dozen vehicles that pass by below me. They're on their way to catch those elusive salmon further down the canal.  And then would you believe it, my battery runs flat and I've left my spare in the van! So off I head back to the van once again and then I traipse all the way back up to the top for the third time, just in case there are a few more photos left out there. Because I know if I don't I'll wish I did (if that makes sense!).

Needless to say, I now make sure I have my tripod ready to go along with my backpack packed with headlamp, spare battery, extra socks & gloves, snack & water,  no matter what the weather forecast is for the next morning. 

When I finally stagger back to the rig the frost has well and truly settled over the ute & 5th-wheeler and long grass on the hillside is dripping with icicles. The makings of a mini hoar frost. 

Later in the morning I decide to head down to Lake Benmore again, just in case.  It's cold enough and if there's fog down there, the ice crystals could be building up. You never know...

I stop above Ohau B power station and climb up the fence line...

...so I can check out the Ohau River that runs parallel with the canal all the way down to the lake. There's fog off in the distance...

...and it's hanging about over the canal and the fishermen & women still trying their luck with the escaped salmon. 

While I watched, the fog rolled back in and that got me a little excited.

If there was fog up here, there was sure to be fog down at the lake. I carried on down the canal and was excited to see more fog over Ohau C Power Station which probably meant it reached all the way down to the lake too. 

There are two ways around each power station, one road crosses over the top of the dam and the other runs behind the station and in front of the penstocks. The lower road at Ohau C does a large sweeping curve down to the lower level and it's this one I take, it'll get me to the lake quicker.

Except that half way down and I pull to a quick halt when I see through the departing fog some matagouri and briar bushes covered in ice crystals in a nearby paddock.

A hoar frost has formed for sure but there are only a few bushes. I take a few shots as quick as I can because already the sun is reaching through and water is dripping off the bushes.

I don't know why but I decide to head over to the  river on the other side of the power station instead of down to the lake and as I got near I could see the fog retreating out of sight over the lake.

I pulled over to check on the river and couldn't believe my eyes- the fog has gone and left behind a ribbon of  trees laden in ice crystals!

I have finally found myself a hoar frost!

It might not have been the blue sky, heavily laden white crystal shot I've been looking for but it would do me just fine......for now.

The term "hoar frost" comes from the Old English meaning of frost resembling an old man's beard. Frosts and hoar frosts form when the air and objects are at or below freezing and while normal frost forms when the air is relatively dry, the air must be quite moist for hoar frost to form (helped along by fog). The ice needles of hoar frost can become several inches long in extreme cases and form on the sides of and beneath objects, as well as on top.

The bright red rosehips on the briar bushes look like jaffa sweets from a distance...

...up close, they are soft and disintegrating as they defrost- perfect bird food during the harsh winters (although not so good that the birds then spread the seeds which is why the high country is covered in briar bushes).

These photos aren't the best because now that the fog has departed, I'm looking straight into a hazy sun.

A pond near the river is frozen solid and I decide to drive down to it and see if I can get some close up shots of the trees

By the time I twist & bump my way along the river track, smashing through large puddles of frozen water and avoiding others full of mud, I can see that the frost is fast melting...

...and when I finally reach the pond it has just about gone. That's it. For a brief 30 minutes I was in awe of Mother nature and in seventh heaven. I can go home now. Bucket list photo, done & dusted (although there's still a blue sky shot on there).

I find my way back up to the canal road, stopping briefly to take a photo of the canal bank covered in frost and now melting in the sun.

Back past the fisher people still trying their luck and now basking in the weak sun...

...and back to camp where the sun is only just reaching over the hill and onto the frosted grasses that I clambered up this morning.

Later in the afternoon I decide to take another drive around to Lake Ruataniwha 'just in case'. But when I stop at a gap in the trees I can see that there's nothing happening down there today and I turn around and head back home. 

A Fairlie Big Bang- Part 1

Real-time

We left Weedons, south of Christchurch, and headed west towards Darfield, we'd decided to take the scenic route to MacKenzie Country. SH77 runs along the foot of the mountains that form the backdrop to the vast Canterbury Plains. 

We've spent quite a bit of time exploring along this road previously, today we just enjoyed the open road with very little traffic. Mt Hutt, with very little snow for this time of the year, filled the view ahead of us for quite some distance as we passed through Glentunnel, Windwhistle and dropped down into the Rakaia Gorge before popping back up onto the straight roads past Methven, Staveley, Mt Somers & Mayfield.

Just past Staveley we stopped for lunch at a very wet Bowyers Stream rest area...

.... this is also a free camping area but it's often boggy or flooded during winter. 

Back on the road and there we were crusin' along at 90kph on a gloriously sunny day without a care in the world when there was an almighty huge boom followed by 'whack, whack, whack', the rig wobbled a bit and a large cloud of blue smoke poured out behind us. David quickly brought the rig to a halt, I jumped out to check and saw that we'd had a blow-out on the back left hand side of the 5th-wheeler. 

There was nowhere to pull off the road on our side of the road but luckily there was a wide grass berm on the other side. David carefully drove the rig over to it. 

Yes, that's definitely a blow out, there'll be no repairing that tyre! Our first (and hopefully last) blow-out to add to the two punctures on the ute & one on the van in over 88,000kms and 7 years on the road. The ground underneath was soft and it took several stages to jack it up, block, release, jack, add another block, release, jack.... Eventually there were enough blocks under the axle to get the wheel off and the spare back on. And in case you're wondering these aren't retreads, they were new tyres 3.5 years ago.

At least 100 vehicles passed us while we were changing the wheel,  many of them work vehicles and farm utes with burly young men in them, yet not one person stopped to offer help or check that we were ok. It didn't matter because David had it under control (with some help from yours truly) and if we had needed help I would have flagged someone down but it did surprise me that not one person stopped. I know any motorhomer passing would have checked on us but unusually not one of the vehicles passing was a motorhome. 

Ninety minutes and a few nasty scratches from the protruding wire later and David had it changed and we were back on the road. 

We were very pleased to see Carters Tyre Service as we rolled into Fairlie township just before dusk on a Friday afternoon. David popped over to see them Saturday morning and they were able to order a replacement tyre and would have it for us on Tuesday morning which we were very pleased about. As it happened, we were intending to stop in Fairlie- the gateway to MacKenzie Country- for a night or two anyway, a couple more nights wasn't going to be a problem.

Fairlie Holiday Park is part of the NZMCA (NZ Motor Caravan Association) new CampSaver winter camping initiative where members can stay at participating campgrounds for $20 a night, this includes power. This has to be a win/win situation; members get cheaper camping sites and in return camping grounds get some winter turnover. Hopefully camping grounds will find that it's worth their while being involved, I know that during our week long stay at Fairlie there were two to four other members staying each night that usually wouldn't have come to a campground.

We thoroughly enjoyed our extended stay, we had a relatively sunny spot in an area that didn't see many other campers; most preferring to park on the hard on the otherside of the small stream that ran through the campground. 

With heavy frosts every day, temperatures at -5c to -8c overnight and hovering around zero for most of the day, with the occasional morning of fog, and bitterly cold temperatures all day, everyday, we began to wonder if we'd made the right decision to come south again for winter. 

We wondered if we were getting soft in our old age; 18 months has passed since we were last down here. Or maybe we'd acclimatized to the brilliant 6 months of warm sunshine we'd had up north over the long hot summer. All I can say is thank God for out diesel heaters, they certainly earnt their keep keeping us toasty warm inside, and also for the luxury of being plugged into the grid. The electric blanket kept the chill away overnight.

But we did have frozen water pipes three days running which didn't defrost until early afternoon. I think we've only had frozen pipes for 3 days in total over the whole of winter previously. We always turn the water off and open the taps at night so no damage is done but it's frustrating when you don't have water when you want it. And even colder when you've got to visit the campground showers instead of your own one in a warm van.

We were a bit perplexed about how cold is was until we read about a very unusual weather system at play. The severe cold temps were caused by very high air pressure which went as high as 1036hpa, this was well above the average for June and nearly a record. If it had been summer it would have been a very hot week. The highest air pressure ever recorded in New Zealand was 1045.9 in Wellington in 1889. Since then the closest near record was 1040hpa recorded in 2010. Little did I know it but this weather system was also hard at work mixing up a hoar frost in Twizel. A hoar frost that I am determined to photograph this winter and one of the main reasons we are in the South Island.

Over the weekend David decided that we really should replace all four tyres on the 5th-wheeler; the remaining three had a fair bit of tread on them but he wanted to keep the tyres uniform & consistent. So on Monday morning he called over to Carters again and ordered the other three tyres. Unfortunately two of them had to come down from the North Island and wouldn't be here until Wednesday morning (which actually wasn't too bad a service) That was ok by us, we were happy to wait. We had power. And we had pies to sample! 

Fairlie Bakehouse is well known for it's tasty pies, 'Bakers not Manufacturers' is their tag line. Ask on-line where the best pie is in New Zealand and you're not only bound to start a riot but everyone thinks they know who bakes the best. Fairlie Bakehouse is consistently up there at the top of the list with one or two others. And especially their signature pie (actually they have a few)- Pork Belly with Apple Sauce & Crackling. And yes, that is a piece of crunchy crackling on top of the pastry. 

In summary, let's just say the Pork Belly wasn't our favourite, it came a close third behind the Venison & Cranberry and the Salmon & Bacon Pie (an odd combination but it works). Although the traditional mince & cheese was pretty tasty too....then again, the butter chicken or creamy free range chicken.....

Suffice to say we were all 'pie-ed' out by the time we left Fairlie. And I don't even like pies!! 

While in Fairlie we spent most of our time in doors keeping warm, catching up on computer work (and sampling pies!) We did try to walk some of them off by taking the riverside track beside the camping ground but found it to be rather muddy and not too inspiring with bare willows, overgrown blackberry and old mans beard covering everything in sight. The walk was over 6kms long to the end and then you could walk back along the main road to the town. 

After a couple of kilometres we turned around and walked back the way we came although we did loop through the Domain on the other side of the campground and found a frozen ice skating rink which doesn't look like it's been very well loved in recent years.

In fact the last time the ice was thick enough to skate on was 2015 and that was three years after the previous time.  The rink needs a constant -10c to keep a solid base, which, with the temperatures we'd been having, explains why it was quite firm at the moment. The stuff you can see on the surface is  weeds of some sort that were growing in the base of the pond and are now stuck in the ice. 

To be continued... Part 2