Cameron Hut & Ashburton Glacier

Hakatere CA ● 31 Dec 2023 – 2 Jan 2024

A 3 day bonus trip while we waited for the Clyde river levels to go down, which made this our New Year trip. We made the most of that by going to bed before 10.

We started off up a fairly good track up the Cameron. I briefly attempted to cross the river to visit Highland Home, but the water levels were just a bit too high to feel safe. Other than getting lost in matagauri once, it was a fairly good route the whole way to Cameron Hut, although the track follows a slightly different route than that shown on the topo towards the end. The second half of the valley involved a lot of good views of peaks coming in and out of view through some very dramatic cloud. In the evening we made a side trip up to look at the Cameron glacier.

The next day we kicked off 2024 with a slog up to pt 2238 behind Cameron hut, initially following up a small stream, and eventually climbing 350m up a scree. The ridge below 2238 was very narrow, quite gnarly, and a lot of fun, and we were soon trated with views of the Ashburton glacier. It was easy enough to find a route down this side – in fact I found 3 while scoping it out. We dropped down a bit of snow, some very steep rocks, and soon were on the Glacier. There was a lot of moraine sitting on top of the glacier, but we opted to rope up and walk down the ice as far as we could. Which wasn’t really that far. In fact, the majority of the time we were on the glacier, it felt like we were on a scree slope, but you wuld occasioanlly get faces of ice sticking out. Once on the valley floor it was steady but tiresome going to get to Top Hut, which we shared with some hunters.

Day three began with a pleasant walk down the river valley, then climbing up and over a saddle to drop into the Cameron just below Highland Home. UP was hot work, and down involved a lot of avoiding sharp plants. With water levels a bit lower than a couple of days earlier, we crossed the Cameron and popped in to Highland Home before wandering out the way we came in.