Downton and Nraiteskel area is one of my favorite are in Downton Creek, the way how easy of a hike is to get up Downton Peak from where you have stunning views of the surrounding area and Nraiteskel itself is a classic scramble for that area with its looks.
We met at the church with Michelle,Dave and Dean and there was Yuliana and her friend that where there for another trip that got canceled due to the weather so they decided to join us for the day.
The road again wasn't too bad, there was few spots near the parking area for our trip with a deeper waterbars that were too deep for the second car Kia Soul.
We parked at about 1640 where there is a large parking space from where the road keep going but it's rough and not worth driving.
Soon all of us started the hike on the Downton Creek road to the end of it from where we went into the clearcut and started to traverse towards the creek.
Once we crossed the creek we stayed on the left side of the creek all the way up to 1950 from where we followed some open meadows to the base of the East ridge of Downton Peak.
The ridge itself was pretty easy to follow and soon we all got on the summit of Downton Peak.
My plan was to try and follow the ridge from Downton towards Nraiteskel, I couldn't find a lot of information about it only few photos that Simon C sent me so I hoped it will go.
The ridge from Downton at first was pretty easy and soon we started to get some big steps where we had to use few slings to get down.
As we were getting lower at about 2420m there was a steep step that didn't look that it will go, me and Dean tried for few minutes to look for a route down but we couldn't find anything so we decided to drop down to about 2270 and just go around that small subsummit which worked fine but we had to go slow since there was a pretty loose gully.
Once we got at the col few people decided they would start going towards the car while me, Dean and Yuliana's friend decided to go for Nraiteskel despite that it was almost raining on us.
The scramble to the summit was nice but the rocks were getting slippery and we had to be pretty careful especially going down.
The rest of the group was waiting us at the small lake from where we regrouped and started our way back to the car all together.
Once we passed the bigger lake we started to cut across the NE face of Downton so we could re join ur track because going straight down form the lake looked pretty steep and bushy.
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