A weekend trip to Lake Barra at the head of MacPherson Creek, a raw and wild piece of country in South-Westland.
On Saturday we dove into the bush off the Haast Pass highway just west of the bridge over MacPherson Creek. It was our intention to follow the river up valley, but near the start we veered too far off the river, and started climbing a spur a couple of hundred meters further north. A ravine next to our spur made all attempts of sidling towards the river vain. At 600m of elevation we gave up on our original plan. Given that our spur had a strong deer trail on it, and given that sidling towards the river was not possible, we adjusted our course and climbed straight up to the open tops. We had lunch just east of Pt 1254m, then sidled under MacPherson Knob and Square Top to a spur just above Lake Barra, where we set up camp. Deep ravines forced us to climb to the main ridge just west of MacPherson Knob - in hindsight it would have been easiest to traverse over the latter.
On Sunday morning we had an early start and reached the West Peak of Mount Campbell before sunrise. From there, I took a short side-trip to the High Peak of Mount Campbell. From our camp above Lake Barra we retraced our steps until underneath Square Top, then descended to the riverbed of MacPherson Creek, which we followed back to the road. The descent to the valley floor was made easy by a strong animal trail through the scrub. Once below the main river flats, on the true left of MacPherson Creek, we found a route marked with pink tape, which led us down to near the Haast Pass highway. Not a particularly good route, which leads through some very thick vegetation and does not make good use of animal trails; it also unnecessarily crosses the river at a poor ford, 1km from the road - but it does avoid bluffs.
Party: Crystal Brindle and Danilo Hegg.