A scenic flight around Mount Algidus Station

After two nights being rumbled and shaken awake in "Shakey Shakey Christchurch", Alex and me decided it was time for a trip into the mountains to visit the family. Cousin Ned would also be a guest at the station. Reunion with all the familiar faces here was again very nice, and as always Larry the dog was proudly waiting to be patted, chest out and face high in the air. Good dog! Tic, poor girl, is really getting old, and Teddy is just wandering around the place as always.

Ned wanted to get a better look of the station, and what is a better way than to do that in helicopter? ... Yes you here me coming; we got to join him :-). The trip was amazing! The weather was fine, so we had clear skies all along. The flight took us about an hour, and gave us the most wonderful sights of the land around the station, the closest alps and even a glimpse of Mount Cook. There hasn't been much snow yet - to Alex' great frustration - but some of the peaks were covered in a white layer and it was magical.
The heli dropped us off at some lakes in the mountains, still on Algidus domain, which was completely frozen over. Since the sun was shining so well and there was no wind, it was a lot of fun to walk around the place and take some pictures :). I just love it when you step in a fresh carpet of snow and your feet sink away completely. This is winter as it should be!
Tim the pilot then took us for some more sightseeing. When we flew over the Rakaia Gorge, we came upon a whole bunch of glaciers which made me think of the Franz Josef Glacier last year. Again the amazing wave formations, crevasses, blue ice ... wonderful. As it turned out later, we must have not been too far from the glaciers anyway :).
In the end we even got a glimpse of the West Coast ... Amazing how far an hour flying can get you.
It is safe to say that this was a flight well spent - the 3 of us were deeply impressed!

The day after - yesterday - Alex was going to take Ned out for a walk to the peak of Mount Algidus. It took me a while to decide if I would join them, since I didn't have the right foot gear, but in the end I just thought "Whatever, it can only hurt". Well, although now I can tell everyone it is not a good idea to walk mountains with Timberland boots (waaaay to heavy!), it was a good idea to climb the peak: at least now I have got my exercise in for a few days and the views were again - what else could it be - stunning. We made good time walking up (me proud :)) and had a little delicious lunch up the top. Afterwards, going down was easier than going up in the scale, haha, I felt like Gollum in the mountains!

Now it is time to venture our way back to Christchurch-hopefully-still-standing, as we plan to go to Queenstown in the next few days to see some apartments and try to find a place. Fingers crossed that the snow starts falling soon!

Photos of this event can be found in my new album on Facebook: A Trip Around Mount Algidus Station.