Nellie’s Rest – with big hikes and lots of Midges, Mosquito’s and the attack of small UFO’s

The view from the hill at Nellie’s Rest

28^th June 2016

The weather cleared up a bit, still cloudy but it looked promising. As we entered Nellie’s Rest the sun broke through and as if a light was switched on, the intensity of the opaque turquoise waters hit you between the eyes. We just knew it will be filed for future references as one of our more spectacular anchorages. A well protected bay with good holding in sticky mud. Not a huge bay at all, but surrounded with high cliffs on the one side with thick forests which makes for hard core hiking, but we did it. On the other side was a much lower hillside with a river rushing through a lovely gorge that we later on visited too and took some amazing pictures of Scolamanzi. Thankfully or sadly no bear sightings.

The bigger mountain hike/ climb / scramble was a tough one! The assent up slippery rocks caused a few slips, slides and wet bums (exactly the reason we do these climbs in wet weather gear – Reyno needed it a few times) and a lot of bush bashing to get to the meadows. We were armed with mosquito nets, hats, water boots and way too many layers of clothes. It did not take long to overheat from the huge effort to hike up the steep hillside. The flying enemies were thick furious and relentless in their attack! It became at times even impossible to take a picture without one sitting on my lens. Needless to say, I thought the hike was a bit of a waste of time as we could not see the bay at all from any corner due to the dense trees. We did have good views of the bay though.

The smaller hill on the other side of the bay was much nicer. It was an easier hike to a lovely salmon lake, a great view of the rushing stream into the bay and a fabulous panoramic view of the bay where Scolamanzi was anchored.

: Fabulous water colour

: What a lovely symphony of colours

: A lovely windstill day

: Hiking around with midges on the lense all the time

: The river in the bay

: Scolamanzi in Nellie’s Rest on turquois waters

: The big climb

: Drone view of Nellie’s Rest

: The Salmon lake nearby

: Getting up the rocks to start the slippery slide and bush bashing hike

As if we have not done enough for one day, we took the tender around to Nellie Juan Glacier to see the small icebergs and bergy bits stranded on dry land during low tide. We wanted to show Reyno and Laura the icebergs from up close, so it took a bit of slippery rock climbing and a good workout for the water boots through the large mudflats of the old moraine, to get up close to the ice. In the end it was all worth it. We had a fabulous time and what amazing anchorage it was.