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  Flying in a Turk last year. - that's Mt Tyndall in the background. This photo and the rest in the email are from Jerri Bassi, Richard O'Neil-Dean, Nick Cutfield and David Hamilton who did part of the traverse in early September 2020. They ran out of time and they picked up a back flight while we were moving Turks. Opening event with the Antarctic Heritage Trust I'm excited to announce a partnership with the Antarctic Heritage Trust's Inspiring Explorers Programme to have an opening expedition for young New Zealanders to complete the first official Mahu Whenua ski traverse. The AHT has two purposes - one is the restoration of the historic Antarctic huts such as those left by Scott, Shackleton, and Borschgrevink. The other goal is inspiring young people to get out and live an adventurous life. Over the years they’ve done some damn cool stuff, like a crossing of Greenland, sea kayaking around the Antarctic Peninsula, and they even did a repeat of...

Tyge Bradshaw on Mt Siberia with the Polnoon Valley to the right Walking the traverse Since the completion of the Turks in mid December there has been a steady flow of people visiting. Occupancy has been at about 10% which is about what I expected for something new that people haven't quite got their heads around yet. As well as the full traverse, day visits to the Vanguard and Crown Basin Turk have been popular. Just to remind you, the booking page is here https://mountainturk.nz/booking/ Here are some photos from Phil Green and Wendy Johnston doing the traverse North to South in perfect weather  https://philgreen.smugmug.com/Adventures/Hiking/Mountain-Turk-Traverse-Jan-2021/n-wvg7p8/ Below a video of my family doing the traverse in less than perfect weather.   Walking the Mahu Whenua traverse with my family including feedback from my 8 and 10 year old kids. I have been thinking through how best to organise trip bookings to facilitate the variability of the weather. This is especially critical over winter when there is a significant...

Toilet upright and deck positioned. Thanks again to Bill Day for flying us around for free. All systems go! Last Thursday Bill Day flew a small team of us around to complete final jobs on the Turks. This included installing the deck and toilet at Mt Hyde, dropping off deck chairs at Polnoon, Hyde, Saint Just and Vanguard and also completing water tank installation at Polnoon Saddle. I'm pleased to announce everything is go and fully usable so get your boots on, make a booking, grab some food and get out and enjoy yourself. I have updated the website with photo albums, route descriptions and location maps so please check out the following links to get inspired. Polnoon Saddle Turk Mt Hyde Turk Saint Just Turk Vanguard Peak Turk Deep Creek Turk Crown Basin Turk Helicopters and my family are a bit over represented in the photos. This is a product of the installation process and that most of the photos are mine. To...

  Morning view from the Vanguard Turk . The peak in the window is Mt Aurum, the mythical "motherlode" of the Shotover gold, now receiving the golden light of the morning sun. Wilding pine weekend (this weekend) I have decided to scale this back a bit since the weather looks bad for Saturday. Also when I I first suggested this date a few months ago I had forgotten how frantic December is, hence many willing people were not able to attend. My revised plan is to visit Deep Creek from Coronet Peak car park. Departing Sunday morning at 7:30am and returning at 3pm. If you are interested in coming along text me on 027 241 8571. Turks, info and bookings In the last email I mentioned how The Mt Hyde and Polnoon Saddle turks still had some things to complete. I am adamant this will be done by 14th December at the latest so if you are thinking of doing the Mahu Whenua Traverse be confident...

  Evening light at Mt Saint Just Turk with Mt Hyde to the north. Turk Status - and a small adventure Last Wednesday I left work at 5pm, drove up Skippers Rd to Maori Point Saddle and walked to Vanguard Peak Turk arriving just before dark. My pack was full of power tools to do some finishing jobs and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't workout how to plug the batteries into my legs to give me super assistance. My original plan was to drive to the upper Shotover and walk into Mt Hyde but road closure on the Skippers Rd meant some additional exercise was the call of the day. On Thursday morning I continued to Mt Saint Just Turk and completed the guttering downpipes so there should be water for the next visitors after the recent rains. I continued onto Mt Hyde with the intention of doing more work but instead decided numerous cups of tea and deciding what needed...

*|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|   Vanguard Peak Turk at 1680 metres receiving the morning sun. The Shotover Valley behind with Mt Larkins and Aurum on the skyline. Annual Meeting 28th October 2020 – 7pm Lakes Hayes Pavilion As I mentioned before this should be a fun and informative evening. The formal part of the meeting should not take longer than 15 minutes. I will provide a report of the perevious financial year and a summary of this year to date. It is anticipated we will normally have the annual meeting in May each year (the club's financial year ends on 31 March). This date will provide us enough time to tidy up the financials and also be a time of year that allows for winter organisation. Here are the important documents for the meeting:   Notice of Mountain Turk Club Annual Meeting 2020 Financial statements to year ending 31 March 2020 – acceptance required Interim Financial statement to 30 Sep 2020 – for discussion Change to constitution: Not-for-Profit status – approval required ...

View this email in your browser Annual Meeting: 28th October 2020 - 7pm Lakes Hayes Pavilion This could be called an AGM but I didn't want to scare you! It will be a fun an interesting evening where I will summarise what has been achieved and we can also discuss where to go in the future. This event is open to anybody interested in the Turk project. I'll be there from 6:30. Please bring something to drink and if somebody is really generous some snacks would be much appreciated. It would be good to make the evening social as well as having to do the formal club stuff. Turk progress and tasks to complete All six of the turks are fully installed and safe to use, however there are currently two limitations: The Toilet at Mt Hyde is not yet set up. The water tanks at Mototapu Saddle and Crown Basin are not set up. This is a problem at Motatapu since there is no running water for...

View this email in your browser The freshly installed Turk at Motatapu/Polnoon Saddle. Looking north with the Polnoon Burn reaching to the peaks of Craigroyston and Sharks Tooth Peak in the distance. The high peak to the left of the Turk is Centaur Peaks. Final 2 Turks installed This is a bit of a long story - but it was a long and significant day... Thursday the 3rd September was another important milestone in the Mahu Whenua traverse project. Two teams flew from Wanaka, collected some lifting gear from Motatapu/Polnoon saddle and continued down into the Polnoon with the plan of bagging the gravel required to anchor the saddle Turk. When I jumped out the helicopter I found the riverbed to be frozen like concrete. We continued up stream and found the next gravel beach to be no better so flew further to where the sun was shining. The gravel was still frozen but fortunately some hacking with a mattock revealed a situation more...

Installing the foundation frame and deck at the Motatapu Site. Looking north with the Polnoon Burn in the background. Motatapu/Polnoon saddle site prepared Sunday the 23rd August saw 9 of us fly to the Motatapu/Polnoon Saddle armed with shovels, timber and tools to prepare the site. My initial plans had been to build on the flat land at the saddle but when working through the resource consent last year it became apparent that the northen tip of Coronet Station was on the slope above the saddle. Hence we needed to cut into the slope to make a level surface and build a low retaining wall. The benefit of being on the slope is the amazing views looking up the Polnoon Burn. This view will be appreciated long after the digging effort is forgotten. A huge thank you to Bill Day for flying us up there. We were careful not to exhaust him with too much digging since we wanted him to get us home...

Looking north from Advance Peak with Mt Saint Just slightly left of centre and the upper Arrow River to the right. By Beni Martial (https://www.benimartial.com/archive). To be installed in the Vanguard Peak Turk. Three more Turks installed (but not yet commissioned) On Tuesday the 28th a small and focused team helicoptered from Coronet Peak's lower car park as soon as there was enough light. The team had been promised an easy day of adventure that might involve dusting the snow off the foundation frames and positioning the Turks. On arrival at the Vanguard Peak site it became apparent that the day probably wasn't going to be relaxing. We spend the first 20 minutes walking around with avalanche probes looking for the deck and frame the Turks sit on under 1.5 metres of snow. After a few false starts we got the right spot. After an hour of digging we sent the helicopter away to fetch the first Turk. Fortunately it returned with the...