#8: [29-May-24]

#6: [29-Mar-11]

#5: [23-Aug-06]

#4: [05-Sep-05]

#3: [24-May-04]

#2: [08-Apr-02]

#1: [12-May-01]

31-Mar-2011 -- A pleasant afternoon stroll.

I had planned my route along forest tracks all the way to within 120m of the confluence. Everything was going as planned until I heard a series of rifle shots from up ahead - now this is certainly not any sort of hunting season - but I have been caught out before. Flagging down a passing car revealed that it was just "target practice in the back yard" - phew!

The next obstacle was some "keep out!forestry operations in progress" signs across the path - and unusually operations were very much in progress - very big and noisy machines indeed. I hovered about until I caught the gaze of the operators - and got the wave through. Fifteen minutes later and I was above the confluence preparing to dive off into the dense and steep forest. I can only guess that these some of these trees are naturally seeded - in 30 years of orienteering I have never seen trees planted as close - certainly some heavy thinning will be needed in the next few years if a commercial crop is to be had. The drop to the confluence was 50m in 120 horizontal - steep enough for me. Getting all the zeros took a while - due to the canopy and alpine nature of the terrain - eventually the zero point wandered out into a nice little clearing - from where all the photos were taken.

Although the crawl back up to slope was a bit of a challenge - that is all part of confluence hunting - and brought with it a sense of achievement!

I seems I only missed Mr Coombs' visit by a couple of days - one day it would be nice to bump into another confluence hunter mid expedition.