A pair of veteran adventurers have completed probably the first mountainous circumnavigation of Lake Whakatipu.
Taking the ‘high road’, Queenstown’s James Harcombe, 58, and Wānaka’s Mal Law, 64, finished their eight-day, seven-night, 275km mission — mostly trekking and scrambling 11 to 12 hours a day — at Queenstown Bay’s Memorial Arch, where they’d started, last Saturday.
Harcombe says every year he does ‘‘something daft’’ to coincide with his birthday in late March.
Having had this feat in mind for about 20 years, he first obtained permission from all the lake-fronting stations they crossed — ‘‘we did a circuit around the lake as much in the mountains as we possibly could’’.
In order, they traversed Ben Lomond Station, the Whakaari Conservation Area, Mavora Walkway and Mt Nicholas Station, Cecil Peak, through the Lochy, Halfway Bay Station and Loch Linnhe.
Phew: James Harcombe, left, and Mal Law complete their 275km mission last Saturday
Harcombe says they copped an unseasonal snow storm, negotiating ‘‘knee-deep snow’’ around the back of Cecil Peak and Three Lagoons.
‘‘The wind was much more of a problem because on the ridges it was hard to stand up in places, so we had to do a couple of alterations in the terms of the way we went.’’
He says they were blown off the Hector Mountains, pulling out at James Peak then taking the road to the Frankton Track, ‘‘which was a bit of a bugger’’.
From the start of the track they ran the short distance to Altitude Brewing to each down a couple of pints.
This wasn’t Harcombe’s first circumnavigation.
In 2017, he ran 1742km around the perimeter of his native Wales in 25 days, shaving 14 days off the known record.
