Distance: 5.2 km (6.0 DOC hours) - Unmarked route, clear - Moderate-hard terrain
Altitude: 460m to 1393m. Gain: 938m. Loss: 8m . Gradient: 11 deg (Moderate-hard)
Skills: Alpine weather (2/7) - Prolonged rivers (4/6)

Unmarked route, clear (7/9)
Unmarked route, follows obvious geography (river, spur, trail, etc)

minor (5/5)
A viable route, not widely used

Moderate-hard (difficulty: 4/5)
Continuous moderate climbs

Moderate-hard (difficulty: 4/5)
Tall, walkable scrub / large rocks, occasional waterfalls or gorges in rivers

Alpine weather (difficulty: 2/7)
Tramp on open tops, exposed to alpine weather

Prolonged rivers (difficulty: 4/6)
Frequent river travel - impassible after rain, risk of getting trapped

Unknown (difficulty: 0/7)
Not specified

A somewhat slow going, but doable route onto the tops of the Ailsa Mountains.

From Slip Flat Hut follow the obvious trail to the west where a steep, unstable bank drops down into Slip Stream. From the stream, head upriver. Travel was down in the stream bed itself or on the true right side. There is much windfall in the forest, and the stream was often clogged with debrie, so travel was a mixture of stream and bush bashing to get around obstacles. After roughly 2 hours travel, the stream gorges just below the 800m contour. True to form, the gorge becomes unpassible by a log-jam of windfall and a waterfall. At roughly the 780m contour the true right river bank can be scrambled up for about 20 metres to the top of the western side of the gorge and the bush followed upstream until past the waterfall where it is ok to return to the stream bed.

Crrying on upstream, the northern most side stream shown on the map at the 820m contour provides most of the water for Slip Stream. Briefly scramble up a spur between the branches to avoid a bouldery waterfall before reconecting with the smaller, more northerly branch. Very mossy rocks here are slippery and there is much windfall.

About 1.5 hours from the gorge, a small scrubby clearing is reached at the 940m contour. There is limited camping here on the true right, room for 3 or 4 tents on not particularly flat ground. Re-enter the bush beyond the clearing and after a couple hundred metres reach the bush line where an alpine scrub belt takes over. Theres ok travel still on the true right through the scrub, but above the 1000m contour you want to cross to the true left where the scrub thins out. Soon large scree slopes provide decent travel to sidel across, keeping parallel to the true left side of the stream. Ascend easy slopes on a mixture of grass and scree to reach the head of the valley at about the 1320m contour. Easy rolling country leads up to the unnamed Slip Lake at the head of Slip Stream. The southern and southwestern shore of the lake is swampy but there is good camping dotted around further back beneath and ontop of the low hill of Pt1395.

Note: Described in the reverse direction to your journey

No description