After a long winter working on the house, we decided to take advantage of the Canterbury Show long weekend and planned our first tramping trip of the season. The week before we were set to depart, our trip to the West Coast look in doubt after a huge rain storm dropped almost 400 mm of rain in some areas and the main highway over the mountains was closed when parts of the road got washed away.
Luckily the weather had started to clear and when the road was reopened just before we were due to leave, we were able to head out over Arthur’s Pass to the West Coast town of Franz Josef after work. We had chosen to stay in Franz Josef as it was close to Lake Matheson, somewhere I had always wanted to visit.
We stopped by the little cafe near the lake and enjoyed a delicious pre-hike breakfast whilst watching the clouds over Aoraki / Mount Cook and Mount Tasman in the distance (first photo above). Knowing that we were unlikely to get the beautiful mountain reflections the lake is famous for we still decided it would be worth a quick hike around the lake.
The tannin rich soils mean that the lake often has almost perfect reflections of the Alps and the image has long been used to promote tourism in the area. Despite the overcast skies, we were still able to enjoy the views from the track around the lake.
Despite the reflections not being perfectly clear, the views of the surrounding mountains and valleys were still striking. It was also strange for us to see Aoraki / Mount Cook from this side as we are used to the more distinctive east face from our hikes in the Hooker Valley (here & here).
We finished our loop around the lake and headed back to the car to drive a little further south to the Karangarua River, the start of our hike up to Welcome Flat.