Mount Adam

The next day we decided to climb a mountain. At 700m Mount Adam is only a few metres lower than Mount Usborne, the islands highest peak. We drove to a point where the road crosses a saddle in the hills just above Hill Cove. I find my hand swells and the plaster gets tight if I am walking for long so I improvised a support for it with a bandage.
The maps we have are very old and don't have the current roads marked on them. The clouds were low and it started to drizzle as we set out, planning to follow the ridge over the 2 French Peaks, ascend Mount Donald and then drop down to another saddle before climbing Mount Adam.

We were soon in the clouds and a steady rain set in as we plodded on and on upwards. John and I decided that if this was only the first of the 2 French Peaks there was no way we were going to make it up Donald and Adam. When we eventually reached a summit and studied the map we concluded that our starting point had not been where we thought and we had reached the first summit of Mount Donald.

By this time the cloud was really thick so Simon's compass and navigational skills were invaluable as John and I completely lost our sense of direction and would have wandered around in circles. The final climb up Mount Adam was a long hard slog and we were joking that it would be good if there was a cafe at the top selling cups of tea. Suddenly some vague shapes appeared in the cloud which turned out to be 3 large stone cairns, a helipad with a football goal on it, and a collection of buildings in front of which was this sign!
Our hopes were soon dashed though as we realised this was an old army camp with abandoned generators and other equipment, although there are still functional solar panels, batteries and lights for the helipad. The last occupants appear to have been the military police on a millenium tour who had left this commemorative table made from a cable reel next to a large barbeque.

Beyond the cairns a steep cliff dropped down to a lake which we momentarily glimpsed when the cloud parted slightly. As my knee was siezing up and I was getting cold John and I started heading back down but Simon stayed at the summit longer and was rewarded by some views.
On our return trip we contoured around the side of Mount Donald rather than going back over the top. After nearly 8 hours walking we were quite pleased to see our vehicle again, remove some of our wet clothing and make that elusive cup of tea.

The best bit of the day was returning to our rented cottage to find that the boiler was working so we had heating and could soak in a hot bath!