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At a very early stage is Birdcage Hut, with the first heavy base layers laid down and the initial details emerging.
Situated towards the head of the Cass River near Lake Tekapo Birdcage Hut is nestled against the Haszard Ridge on the valley floor at just under 1100 metres above sea level.
This hut is a derelict one...

After this latest snow dump we feel so lucky to have spent time just before it immersing ourselves in the Molesworth. Access in winter can be a challenge, snow and ice on the passes and we just heard that the rivers in Rainbow got blown out after the last rain/snow storm I imagine these are impassable now as they get gauged out very quickly.
It's very cool to see others just as passionate about the area as us - when we turned up it made me laugh to see another ute had skis in the back (although they had biked in) nothing was going to stop them going in! It would have been a very long...

I'm getting into the finer detail now on the Poolburn Dam painting. The morning mist rising off the cool water as the sun warmed it was a challenge. It adds a great mood and is only visible for such a short time early in the morning so I really wanted to include this...

The Bowscale Tarn in winter is not a comfortable place to be at night. I've stayed near there when a light snow storm blew through and it got down to -11, everything froze in and outside of the tent - even the insides of my boots.
Situated below the Alma Heights at just over 1000m in the Travellers Valley it is an odd shaped Tarn, a beautiful spot for a fish and is lovely when it's not freezing...

I have been working on the finer detail in the Poolburn painting recently and it seems like every time I pick up the brush there seems to be a tiny hut popping out from behind a rock. There's not quite that many, but there are a few nestled around the reservoir and each has a lot of character. This particular one caught my eye, how close...

A little more showing the work gone into the Molesworth painting so far. In this part of the painting you can see how the snow dots get very tiny as they are further into the distance. There's a lot more work that needs to be done on the foreground tussocks - these are currently past base colours and are a little darker than they will be as I layer up the brights and lights.
The fence line tells a story...

A lot of time has been spent on the Molesworth painting so far. It's one of ones that has so many different aspects that you work one part then get distracted and work another and just can't seem to put the brush down. Each different aspect of this painting complements the other and there are some nice contrasts in texture and detail not to mention the beautiful colour palette...

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...