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even deeper water crossings that took some by surprise. All in a day’ s riding.
More high tracks, often nothing more than a rock-strewn sludge track took us over the Old Man Range and Piano Flats, great riding that challenged all yet didn’ t disappoint with views that can’ t be described with enough detail to do them justice. We were told that here was the inspiration for filming the Orc scenes in Peter Jackson’ s Lord of the Rings trilogy, it wasn’ t hard to see why, as the landscape presented an image that was not of our world.
A few days later we were back Kurow and ready to take on another of the fame New Zealand passes.
We crossed the Waitaki River to pass through the small settlement of Hakataramea to which the pass is named. Waitaki River is a drain for the nearby glaciers of the Southern Alps and through three dams now provides hydro-electricity to South Canterbury and further afield. The dams themselves, no doubt creating great environmental issues, yet have provided a commodity required for the modern world as well as recreational facilities for a number
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