Fonthill, Benjamin Lomond and a really big fire

The other day at work after one of my briefings I was standing around talking to people and answering questions as usual. One of the most asked and most annoying questions is "how cold is it going to be?". After being asked this for like the millionth time I started into a "my definition of cold is probably alot different than yours" speech with a couple aussies. Anyways, after asking where I was from in Canada and a few other questions we found out that a couple years ago while they were on a teaching exchange to our great land that they live like 20 houses down from the first house I lived in. I lived in number 28 and they lived down the street in number 65 or something. CRAZY!! None of us could believe it. We were instantly friends, although I forget their names already.

Yesterday it was that time of the week for a couple days off. I decided to rehike the Ben Lomond peak that I climbed a couple months ago.

The peak right in the middle.

I've been eating healthier and exercising (sort of) so this was a bit of a test to see if I could do it and not almost die like last time. Well, good news, I made it up WAY faster and didn't die. It was super windy on the way up, although the top wasn't which didn't make any sense.


But anyways, when I got up there I noticed someone was burning something on the other side of the lake, no biggie right? Well, by the time I left like 45 min later (after calling home on my cell phone from the top) the fire had grown by like 5x's and we could see flames. We were on the other side of the lake and like 7km? away. Whatever the exact distance, we were really far and if we could see the flames they had to be HUGE.

Turns out that a few days ago some old coal burning tractor or something went by and didn't have a spark filter or something and started a small fire. It kept flaring up for a few days and they had a helicopter in to try to douse it but to no avail.

Those winds must have just fanned the flame and by the time I went to bed last night the grass fire (there aren't really any trees that naturally grow around here) had reached the top of the mountain but was getting smaller. Today there is a MASSIVE black spot on the side of the Remarkables. Thanks lame, old tractor thing.

The view at night from my room.