The Matterhorn of the South

I made my way to Wanaka after the Nuns Veil trip. With a large pack, small pack, banana box full of food as well as a cooler bag full, hitching just wasn't an option, so I caught a bus. I was the only passenger from Cromwell onwards, so I sat up front with the driver. We had an excellent debate/discussion on mostly climate change but also tangents. We both genuinely enjoyed it, told each other as much on parting, and I was again reminded of how open and warm some of these Kiwi's can be.

I met up with Skye and Luke in Wanaka, friends from the Rockies back home. The weather was average, but I hardly needed that reason to justify a few rest days. I was starting to feel worn out from the amount I'd been doing with minimal rest days, so decided on doing as little as possible for the few days until Jimmy arrived. In contrast to Unwin, which is a relatively isolated place, I now felt like I was on holiday. For three days the BBQ saw an extraordinary amount of food get cooked on it, and I of course caught up on some NZ craft beer and coffee cake and paper time. Veritably, this was all in the name of carb-loading for our respective upcoming trips.

Jimmy arrived in Wanaka via Christchurch around 14:30 on Tuesday and hit the ground running - we had a short weather window to get in and climb Mt Aspiring. We'd both had this beautiful mountain, often referred to as the 'Matterhorn of the South', on our minds for some time. After quickly arranging his stuff, we were on our way within half an hour of his arrival, in the car of some lovely Swiss girls with whom I'd arranged a lift. After 7 odd hours of walking, we got to French Ridge hut some time after 23:00 and crashed out.

We were back out the door the next morning, continuing up French Ridge to gain the Bonar Glacier via the Quarterdeck. We met Luke and Skye over morning tea; they were coming down off Mt French. We had a good laugh about Jimmy being dressed as only a mountaineer from Orange would - in ruggers, fluoro plastic hand-me-down boots and old thermal cut down to short sleeves - and parted ways. As we crossed the Bonar we noticed an abnormal amount of helicopter activity around, and soon observed that it was concentrated around the SW ridge of Aspiring. We knew that two guys from Melbourne had set out to climb the route this day, and we hoped nothing untoward had happened. Our hopes, however, were not helped when we saw one helicopter leaving the bottom of the route with an object dangling from a cable below it. As we later found out, one of them had fallen off the route to his death. I cannot begin to imagine the pain his family and friends would have been feeling at his loss this Christmas. It was an admirable effort made by his partner, who climbed the rest of the route to the summit, around 200m, by himself, sought out a guided group who had come up he NW ridge in order to call in the emergency services, then descended the mountain with them.

After an afternoon's rest at the busy Colin Todd Hut, with intermittent thoughts and discussions about a death so close by, we rose at 03:00 to climb as planned. Our chosen route was the NW ridge, which we gained via 'The Kangaroo Patch'. Don't tell any New Zealanders, but I think it actually looks like a Kiwi! It was all good snow until the ridge, which was mostly rock. Not too loose, and just gentle enough that we soloed up through the dawn.

As we progressed up and along the ridge, we noticed that the top of the mountain was being buffeted by winds coming in from the north. It was an incredible display as they arced over the ridge. As we ascended into them, they proved to be only lightly affronting, their worst effect being reducing the visibility to around 20m. Lucky then that we were climbing a ridge to a most prominent point - no vis needed!

We summited around 08:20, though naturally our summit photos could have been taken anywhere with a grey background. In the 5 minutes we were on top, the clouds parted twice, momentarily, to afford a stretching vista and assure us we actually were on top. We passed two guided groups on our descent - 'great view up there!' - and made our way down in a measured manner, performing 3 rappels down the steeper section of ridge immediately above 'The Kangaroo'. Safely back at the hut, some 10 hours after setting out that morning, we hoed into some lunch and had as short as rest as we'd allow ourselves.

It was around 16:00 when we walked back out the door for the 5 hour trudge back across the Bonar - just another lazy 500m of ascent! - and back down to French Ridge hut. It was a beautiful time of day to be out walking and we were both feeling surprisingly energetic after climbing through the morning. We even entertained the thought of continuing all the way down past French Ridge Hut to Aspiring Hut, down in the valley. But no, this would mean about 3000m of descent in one day, which would be torture to our knees. By the time we got to French Ridge Hut we were well fatigued, but for myself it was a very pleasant form of tiredness, a feeling of utter contentment at having had such a great day and being able to finally sleep.

The morning greeted us as forecast - with rain. We were glad we'd pushed on to where we were, as the Bonar would likely be in whiteout conditions in such weather. It was down to the last push - back down and out of the valley. It was tempting to laze around the comfort of the hut indefinitely, but we steeled our wills and walked out the door into the wet. It certainly wasn't pleasant but, as always with Jimmy, we made good conversation and the metres passed us by. The last stretch back to the car park was pretty awful at the time, but who remembers the bad parts?

Back in Wanaka we very quickly became engaged in discussions with Luke and Skye on what to climb next. It took a little effort to put it out of my mind and concentrate on relaxing properly after our Aspiring trip. Overnight, I made the decision to cut my trip short by a week and go home early, a decision which fit in well with the others, and one which I was glad to make. It spelled the end to a nearly two month long trip, a trip in which I'd been far more active than I'd anticipated. I'd enjoyed the company of all the characters I'd been in the hills with over the length of the trip, but being out and about with Jimmy again was fantastic, we are on such similar wavelengths, and being in such company makes a trip a completely different experience. The Aspiring trip was the icing on the cake, a culmination of all the climbing I had been doing providing me with the fitness and confidence required to climb the NW Ridge in both good time and good style, walk in walk out. A fitting note to end on.

Crossing The Divide

It was on everybody's lips. The weather was unseasonably warm. The week of continuous sunshine we'd had whilst up the Tasman was all but unheard of. We were lucky in that there were some good freezes to start with, but they were soon to disappear with rising temperatures. People were saying that this season, in terms of snow melt and route condition, was a month advanced, that it is to be a la nina summer. This all meant that snow and ice climbs would be a grim prospect, if climbable at all, and that rock climbs were the far more sensible order of the day.

This was not really what I wanted to hear. As an Australian, with plenty of rock climbing back home and little snow and ice to speak of, I was here to climb the white stuff. But if you want to have a good time, you have to go with conditions, which I was of course fine with, because I do love rock climbing regardless of what else I may be missing out on.

I teamed up with James and Sleake to walk in and climb the classic West Ridge of Malte Brun, a route on reputedly good rock. We didn't make it very far - whilst descending the moraine wall on to the Tasman Glacier James slipped and twisted his ankle. It brought an end to his trip. We were lucky it had happened where it had, rather than somewhere amidst the Tasman moraine. I must admit a part of me was glad I didn't have to walk up the Tasman moraine with such a heavy pack.

Sleake and I set out soon afterward from MCV for a crossing of the main divide into the Copland Valley. I'd had this trip, a walk out to the West Coast via the Copland, on my mind for some time, and had decided to combine it with an ascent of Mt Sefton along the way. Mt Sefton is an incredibly prominent peak perched above MCV, and as such my eye had been drawn to in many a time from many a place over the preceding weeks. It's East Face is wild and difficult to access; our plan was to climb its West Ridge, accessed from the Copland Valley via Scott Creek.

Rather than cross via the Copland Shelter and Pass, we ascended an avalanche gut soon after hitting Hooker Lake, thereby avoiding what was meant to be one of the worse moraine walls around. A sidle under some bluffs to avoid some ice cliffs put us in a fine and dandy couloir which got us promptly onto the ridge coming down from Madonna Peak, which we soon traversed around from to cross the divide via Fitzgerald Pass, about a k south of the Copland Pass. It all worked a treat, and we got to Douglas Rock Hut, a beautiful old hut which is high on my list of favourite visited, a little under 12 hours after setting out.

The next morning we left the Copland track and started making our way up Scott Creek. It was far more involved than either of us had anticipated, and involved lots of rock hopping, scrambling, water crossing, crossing over deposited snow build ups as well as under them in channels worn by the passage of water, and a bit of jungle bashing/slab climbing to get past an initial waterfall. None of these obstacles stopped us, but as we came across another one, for which we would have to get the rope out to pass, we sat down and had a natter. It was midday, and we'd only ascended 400 vertical metres. We had another 1000m to get to the bivy site. Many factors influenced our ensuing decision to turn around, but the bottom line was that we did not want to get caught out in Scott Creek on the Sunday when they were forecasting rain - west coast rain. We did not rate our chances of climbing Sefton in a morning from the bivy (about 1300m of ascent) then descending 2700m back down through Scott Creek to Welcome Flat Hut all on the Saturday.

Once the decision was made, and we were back down past most of the obstacles encountered on Scott Creek, we noticeably lightened up. It happens frequently when climbing, when you realise that you are back down out of all (or most) of the dangers, and you switch your mind off from being so serious and focused on every thing going on, and you look to the future, what you'll be feasting on back at the hut, what you'll be doing next week back in civilization, what you'll be doing when you're back home.

I proceeded to walk out to the West Coast, via some welcome thermal hot pools at Welcome Flat. Despite not reaching Sefton, it had been an incredible trip, just the Copland in itself was an amazing walk through a landscape completely different to that on the east of the divide, the mountains being much more rocky and precipitous. My impressions of Scott Creek cannot be done justice by words, but the one word which I feel comes closest to describing it is 'wild'. It was one of the most wild places I have ever been.

At Fox Glacier I returned to the same cafe in which I had first seen a breakfast of pancakes with bacon, banana and maple syrup, when our guide had ordered it on my first trip to NZ a few years previous. They still had it on the menu, and it was great, such a good combination! I took it fairly easy, making my way up to Hokitika, and eventually hitched my way back around to MCV via Wanaka.

I unpacked upon returning to Unwin Lodge in the evening, and immediately repacked for another outing the next day. Steve, Chris, Andrew and I accessed our climb in style, by boat across Tasman Lake. We made our way up Gorilla Stream to a bivy site just before the route turned to snow.

The Nuns Veil was the peak on our agenda, a nice looking thing which stands out above its immediate neighbours on the eastern side of the Tasman. We were up at the earliest time yet this trip, 01:00, but we had a boat to catch in the arvo, after a reasonable climb and a 2000m descent back down Gorilla Stream. It was a good freeze, and the mornings ascent passed by quickly. It steepened up a little near a bergschrund below the summit, and it was a little windy and thus cold in the pre-dawn, but the sun rose just as we were approaching the top, and life was good! We took in the incredible views of the peaks along the main divide, dominated by the huge bulk that is Aoraki/Mt Cook, then descended back to the bivy for an early lunch. The descent wasn't too bad, but the 8kms or so back up the Tasman to the boat pick-up was verging on soul destroying. It was about a 14 hour day, and back at Unwin I reveled in complete exhaustion.