Having not yet visited the Lake Coleridge area, we decided to have a look around on our way south. We arrived at Harper Campsite after driving for a few hours in the dark with only the faint silhouette of big beautiful snow topped mountain ranges towering ahead of us not knowing what to expect. In the morning the sun slowly rose around the peaks and as it warmed up we set off on our bikes up the big wide Wilberforce River...

Despite the hut being so comfy and hard to leave, there's much to explore and soak in at the Mt Potts skifield area. The Rangitata river fans out below you to the south with the Two Thumb & Ben Mcleod Range - lit up beautifully at both dawn and dusk.
Further up the basin there is a tarn nestled...

In spring 2023 with icy howling winds blasting snow into every part of me and surrounded by bleak walls of dismal grey rock and not much else I stopped at 1300m near a swampy tarn and made the decision to turn around and leave the empty mountains. Thoughts in my head were along the lines of I'm not coming back here, and what an average place (in worse terms). 
Due to extreme nosiness and the seemingly only apparent easy access to the peaks in the area I had decided to go up the Mt Potts

A sneak peek at the very early stages of the Molesworth painting. After laying down a lot of the various layers of base colours, I've decided this scene needs a another layer of rich textured tones to capture both the warm last light reds and golds and also the contrasting cool blues...