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. 

Out & About at Lake Benmore

Real-time

Well nearly. We left Ohau C campground on the shores of Lake Benmore a week ago! We're back with the family in Winton where we needed to help them with an urgent job....but wait, I'm getting ahead of myself.

We had a lovely time at the lake and could have easily stayed another week if there hadn't been pressing matters to see to down south.

Sunrise at Lake Benmore

The fishing was fantastic, after being given a lovely Rainbow trout by a passing camp resident the day we arrived, David's first fish was this lovely Brown which he was under strict instructions to bring home, I had a couple of new recipes I wanted to try out.

After that he took photos of his 'catch & release' fish; these two Rainbows...

...and another Brown, all good sized fish. He hooked a few more too but you'll notice that the elusive salmon is still missing from the haul. 

The lake salmon are quite small though- they don't get a top-up feed from the salmon farms along the canal, and we didn't return to the canals to fish once the Takacat was inflated, David enjoys lake fishing a lot more than the canals. We also met another Takacat owner who lives in his 5th-wheeler at the camp.

Talking Takacat tactics

David wasn't the only one catching trout, the resident grebe was also getting his fair share.

David took a break from fishing one morning so we took the dinghy over to the far side of Lake Benmore to explore. We left our new neighbours discussing their early morning catches.

Like me, I'm sure regular visitors to the MacKenzie Country (and quite probably residents too) never tire of, or fail to be impressed with the view of Aoraki/Mt Cook from all locations around the area. Here, from the middle of the lake, is the tallest mountain in NZ not quite living up to her Maori name- cloud piercer.

Across the far side of the lake we cruised into Boat Harbour checking for waterfowl along the sides and under the willows. The Haldon Campground is also tucked in here amongst the trees, it's accessed from north of Tekapo via a 60km mostly gravel road. You'll remember my 'Road to Somewhere' blog post from June last year, followed by the 'Road to Nowhere' post? This is the campground we visited before driving that torturous Pukaki River road home. It looked a lot more inviting this time, even though there was still no one camping there.

Not only did we find several pairs of courting grebes as we entered the harbour but we also spotted a nori eating Australian Coot and a shy NZ Scaup family heading for cover as fast as they could paddle.

Afterwards we headed back across the lake to the Ohau River outlet which has several shallow channels surrounded by gravel islands entering the lake. David had made it up one of the channels the day before and he thought we could have had lunch on one of the islands. With the extra weight in the boat (I blamed it on the picnic bag), it wasn't long before we were scraping our bum along the gravel. Well actually the prop hit the stones before us, so we backed out and stopped at one of the entrances where there just happened to be some lupins!  That's the Ohau C Power Station in the background.

It must be lunch time, the neighbours have returned after their mid-morning fish.

It looked like the rain was heading our way one afternoon but luckily it skirted right around the edge of the lake and headed off up into the mountains.

While David was fishing I did my mini tiki-tours looking for lupins; one north to Lake Tekapo and one south to Omarama. I had one more road that I wanted to explore before we left the lake. The gravel road that carried on past the camp for another 8kms up the side of the lake.

I had been putting it off, hoping we might have had a little rain (that's ironic, now I'm hoping for rain!) which would have dampened down the very dusty road. But no, every day the clouds of dust billowing into the air as vehicles passed along the top of ridge above the camp, got thicker & thicker.

In the end I decided I'd drive it very slowly so as not to give David too much work in cleaning the ute *wink, wink*. Well that didn't work because every bugger coming towards me was driving like a bat out of hell! Someone with a sense of humour has added a 'rest home residents' sign to the cattle stop sign at the entrance to Totara Peak Station. 

The road runs along a plateau above the lake dipping around the edge of a number of beautiful little coves along the way. 

There are two camping areas along this road, the privately owned Totara Station's 'Benmore Views Family Camp' which has a number of areas for self contained vans along the top overlooking the lake (above) or down in the dips around the coves and then a more traditional camp on one of the small points jutting out into the lake, which included a boat ramp.

The campground itself was well looked after and is obviously very popular, with quite a number of campers already set up and in residence.

The second campground, Falstone Creek Campground is at the end of the road and is run by Waitaki District Council.

With the two camps being visited by campers and boaties, I can now see why there has been so many ribbons of dust snaking down the road past our camp.

Falstone Camp is set mostly under a plantation of pine trees and there are pine cones for Africa scattered over the forest floor. I'm not so sure I'd like to stay here, for a start we wouldn't get TV reception and then we'd be ducking pinecones every time the wind blew. It was also very dry and dusty although it would be shady during the heat of the summer.

I should have visited Falstone on one of our previous visits to the area, to take photos. This was where the set was built for the failed movie 'Kingdom Come'. The large movie set sat in the middle of the camp unused and taking up valuable space for the last 8 years. It was only removed last August.

Back in 2014 we saw another movie set for 'Kingdom Come' near the Elephant Rocks in Duntroon. This set too, was waiting for demolition.

I was excited to find a grebe family in the little cove beside the campground. They were initially a little too far out for me to get clear views of them and I'm sure most people looking at the ducks swimming around the little bay would have missed them.

I managed to spot them when I saw one of the adults disappear under the water leaving three striped bumblebee sized specks huddled together on the surface. I crossed the creek that entered the bay and fought my way through the undergrowth to the lake edge, sat down out of sight and waited.

They didn't move that much closer but I managed to get a few clear shots of them at the outer limits of my lens. One of the chicks was much smaller than it's siblings and I thought it mustn't be getting fed but it moved in quick each time a parent returned with food. 

The smaller chick was also quick to climb on Mum's back when it tired although she was just as quick to dislodge him by standing up on her legs and doing a shake. The chick would slip off the bottom and back into the water where he'd give it another go- his very own water slide! He managed  to stay on board a few times while Mum waited for Dad to return.

I could have sat watching them for a few hours but after they disappeared around a corner, it was time for me to head home too.

We had a very fruitful and relaxing time and Lake Benmore and we will be back. We still have that salmon to catch! 

We packed up and headed off towards Winton, stopping at our favourite 'passing through' camp at Lowburn near Cromwell for a night on the way. Yet another friendly duck family came to say hello

I fell in love with this pale cutie who I wanted to catch and cuddle. He wasn't having any of that.

And the reason we changed our travel plans to include Winton? We have a flash new personal POP (park over property), the family have bought a new house and we've come to help them shift houses. 

The drive is very long and the sides covered with beautiful roses but after a couple of slight maneuvering adjustments, David managed to back 'Out There' all the way down there...

...and now we have this new awesome hard stand to park on. I think I need a periscope to see what happening 'Out There' though...