After feeling a rather large earth quake at 4:38am, I decided to bust a move up to Swampy Summit, about 9 km from my home in Dunedin. I’ve had a theory for a while now that some of the small ponds up there would freeze in the winter months. We didn’t have any major frosts this winter so I didn’t bother inspecting, but last night there was at least a chill in the air so I figured I’d go check it out to at least confirm if there was any ice whatsoever and if so, how much there was. There was absolutely no sign of frosts anywhere in the suburbs, even up on the hills, so signs were looking highly unpromising for any ice. After dodging a few trees which had presumably been knocked over during the quake, I made my way to the bottom of the access road to Swampy Summit. Unfortunately it is not possible to drive all the way there, so I had to walk up the hill. The walk should have been 4 km in and 4 km out, but I stupidly took a few wrong turns and it ended up being about 13 kms instead! If you make the trip yourself, ensure you take plenty of water as although it’s not a steep climb, you will gain about 650 m in altitude, so it can be a little tiring.

The view from the top was terrific. It was still very early when I arrived (~7:00am) and my cheapo Canon camera struggled with the low light conditions. The temperature was zero degrees Celsius, but there must have been a heck of a wind chill factor as it was blowing a gale up there.

View towards Mosgiel from on top of Swampy Summit

The largest ponds at the summit had no ice on them unfortunately. This was entirely expected though as the temperatures hadn’t been all that cold lately.

The largest pond on Swampy Summit.

However some of the smaller ponds did have sections of ice on them. Not a lot of ice, but enough to at least prove that there is serious potential for skating to be done on the summit (when the conditions are right). The maximum thickness of the ice was about 5 mm, but even the best frozen ponds had only 30% of their surface frozen.

Edge of one of the smaller ponds on Swampy Summit

Ice, but too thin to be useful.

So … there was no chance of skating today, but I’ve at least shown that there is promise of potentially skating up there some time in the future.

Rhyan McMillan and our uber awesome coach Jenel Bode

For her goodbye bash, she organised a goodbye party in a cave at Longbeach. It sounded boring, getting stuck in a cave all evening on a cold, wet, rainy day Luckilly Sarah was heading out to take Jane so I hitched a ride along so I could make an appearance and bail home early with Sarah. Darn glad I went though, coz it was totally awesome. The cave was wicked, the fire kept us all cosy warm, everyone had fun and there was loads of entertainment provided by my teammates who provided firebreathing, guitar and flame throwing demonstrations for us all. There were even baby blue penguins in the back of the cave hanging out with us!

Neil Dudley and Rob Owens demonstrating how much effort it takes to burn human skin

Neil Dudley pretending to be a dragon

Sarah MacDonald stumming on the guitar, Jane Soper sipping on her vodka and chocolate thingy

Neil Dudley trying to set himself on fire

The bonfire, Chris Laing in the background providing some music on his guitar

Bajeeze, two scary looking women! Thankfully they’re normally quite beautiful. The Beasts arch nemesis is on the left (she keeps scoring goals on us) Sheree Haslemore and ex Dunedinite Susan Green is baring her teeth on the right

Neil Dudley and Rob Owens lighting up the cave

Ryan sandwich? From left: Ryan Hellyer (moi), Rhyan McMillan and Ryan Wick.

Stupidly I didn’t think to take a camera, so thanks to Jenel Bode, Susan Green and Rhyan McMillan for the photos