As Cold As It Looks...

Today's jaunt took me out up the gorge road once more, to see if there had been more snow further up country.

I didn't have to go very far. In fact, we knew how low the snow had come down overnight as the slope at the end of the road had a dusting, and Little Mount Peel's summit - the view to which which looms large from our sunroom - was glistening with the white stuff.

The snow was on the road just as it transitions from seal to gravel, on the hills just before Raules Gully. Rather than deciding to head too much further inland - not that I didn't want too, it was more a question of getting back for lunch - I carried on a little further to Raules Stream which goes through the gully.

This is the view just below the road bridge, looking upstream towards the hills at the start of the Blacksmith Spur, further along the Tara Haoa range from Mount Peel. I'm at 600m ASL here, temperature 2ºC at nearly midday. You could say wintry conditions? ;-)

For this blip my tripod is on the edge of the stream, with the centre column extended to clear the fence that crosses the stream (I presume to mitigate stock incursion). I'm glad I had my larger Manfrotto with me rather than my usual travel tripod, as I don't think the Sirui would have cleared the fenceline. I then shot 6 vertical images, stitching them together in Photoshop to produce a mini pano.