Mount Cheeseman

Sun 18th July 2021

On the Friday, the Metservice forecast hadn’t improved, so after a bit of dithering I put out a Communicator message cancelling the trip. I hate doing that when the situation isn’t black and white. And then Saturday’s forecast improved marginally. What to do? Better to try and then give up, rather than muse for days afterwards that maybe it would have been ok. So, I fired out another email. It’s all on again folks!

Cheeseman – Izard round trip in winter should be scheduled for a 7am meet. It had been in Footnotes in error for 8am and I only brought it forward to 7.30am. Either way, no one turned up at Church Corner. Probably serves me right for cancelling too early. So, off to Sheffield to meet Rich and Lisa, then on to Texas Flat.

We started with a fair amount of cloud around but not much wind, despite the forecast. What snow there was, was at a higher level, so the first leg up from Hogs Back and on to the 1552m spur, was straightforward. Rich and Lisa were familiar with the area, but not in snow season, so for them, we were about to expand their horizons. Once up to the snow, as expected, it was a single layer and soft. Rich plugged the steps all the way, yes ALL the way, in 40cm-plus deep snow. After the slow plug, we arrived on the top ridge at 1.05pm in mostly sunny, almost calm conditions, so could stop right there for lunch. Yes, this was definitely the place to be. Continuing down in the dip and around to Izard wasn’t an option, because of the soft snow and the time factor, but we were happy. At 1.45pm we set off to retrace our steps, pleased we had those steps to follow as the cloud closed in somewhat, eventually turning to light snow, then light rain, as we got to Hogs Back.

At the vehicle before 4.30pm and back to Sheffield at 5.10pm, we were happy with our day out despite the limited snow conditions, and pleased the weather cooperated.

We were: Rich & Lisa Ainley and Merv Meredith. (MM)