We arrived at Quartz Hill Station on this frosty Sunday morning and placed vehicles at the point we planned to walk to. The start was up a muddy vehicle track on tussocky hills. Volcanic rocks projected in places as our dozen trampers climbed a foot track.

968m High Peak is marked with a big stone cairn and gave great views towards Mt Hutt with its peppering of snow. Lake Coleridge was just visible 15km away. We pushed on and had lunch in the lea of an impressive pinnacle out of the cool wind. The map shows a row of tors along the ridge and these lured us onward to the headwaters of Copper Stream which runs into the upper Selwyn River. Farm tracks took us past a herd of black beef-cattle to our cars, all in this case high-ground clearance vehicles. Regular cars would have been a bit stretched on these farm roads.