It's the middle of summer and there's 25cm of new snow on the ground at the Remarkables and about 60cm of new snow in parts of Mt Cook National Park!
It's a tad crazy – right now it's about 8 degrees in Wanaka and it's snowing in the hills. I just finished up a trip with Toshi and Yoko Matsubara of Japan. We had intended to do our final day on Single Cone in the Remarkables but after walking up in deepish new snow and not getting the forcast clearance in the morning we packed up and went down for a coffee!
Basically the wind never let up and I woke to find 5 more cm of new snow on the ground. A few times during the evening my tent came down and slapped me in the face!
Here are a few images from the last day of the trip.
Prior to the 5th Mt Cook took a good NW storm in the face. The Storm was strong with a Freezing Level sitting about 3000m.
Jake Childs says "The Storm came through on the 3rd with a high freezing level – it rained hard … The freezing level dropped on the 4th and we had a window to climb on the evening of the 4th and 5th"
The Summit Rocks and Summit slopes had been plastered by ice and rimming. Good polystyrene snow and ice screws gave protection but all the Summit Rock cables had to be dug out. – Cheers Marty!
A number of guided parties were also going to make an attempt as well. Jake Childs and Aaron Whitehead reached the False Summit, as the cloud above Aoraki and wind started to increase they backed off at this point. A guided party also turned back here with the rest of the climbers on the mountain turning back lower on the climb. The False summit is about 150m lower than the true summit.
Jake and Aaron walked out on the morning of the 6th – the next front caught them on the moraine wall below the Boyse Glacier – the violent winds gave them a good bashing – they also walked in on New Years Day via the Haast Ridge.
A big Congratulations to Toshsi and Yoko Matsuroba of Japan for summiting on the Nun's Veil (2700m) on Tuesday. We had a perfect little weather window and a perfect little camp site up high on the snow.
Conditions on the Nun were fairly firm with a large Shrund across the lower face forcing us to move into the rock gully on the right of the upper mountain and onto the rocky ridge above.
Nun's Veil is a pretty awesome little mountain to summit – the upper mountain has about 200m of steepish climbing leading to either a short rock face, a rock glley and ridge or exposed face depending on your final choice of route. The summit is broad with easy shallow slopes leading up to it.
Snow exists most of the way down to the Bottom of Gorrilla Stream and travel down the lower gulley should be fast – however watchout for rock fall!
Here are some images of one of the peaks I am investigating for an expedition in April 2010. Just under 7000m and as far as I can tell – it hasn't been climbed. More info to follow soon but if you're keen to come or simply want to find out a bit more about the trip ….
email me
malrock@verticalresources.org
Looking at the West face – the intended route is on the skyline ridge.
Whilst most of the mountain is in pretty good condition, the Linda Glacier is becoming incrasingly cut up. Traveling up the Linda in the early moring is moderatley safe with good bridging over the worst of the holes but it's highly advisable to be down the mountain as fast as you can!
I was up on Mt Cook with Ceaser DIez (Venezula), Alex, Vaughan, Alejandro and Dave on Monday the 28th Of December. In total 6 parties of 2 left Plateau Hut at 1 am with 1 party turning back at the Linda Shelf and two others only getting to the summit rocks. With 6 of us moving through the summit rocks it turned out to be a pretty slow day – about 17 hours all up!
The Linda Shelf was pretty firm and th Gun Barrells had released at some point making a fair amount of debris to be covered before reaching the shelf – quite sobering.
Summit rocks is basically an ice climb at present and the summit ice cap is only covered Sastrugi til the Fasle Summit.
All in all a great day out – Congrats to Ceaser for being able to jag such a sought after climb in such a tight time frame – he had only 5 days from the time he arrived in Christchurch!
Mt Dixon is also in very good condition – Pat Deavoll and her friend Chris made a traverse of the South – East ridge on the same day.
The 4th of December saw Mt Cook being hammered from all sides by 6 different climbing parties.
northwest coloir
hooker face
north ridge-
the linda glacier
zubriggans ridge
east ridge
There were also 2 rescues carried out recently – one with a broken ankle on the Terminator Butress and another due to exhaustion and being overdue on the Footstool.
Snow Conditions It is generally good cramponing early in the am with good freezes occuring on most clear nights. Access onto routes seem generally good with shrunds still well bridged and strong. Routes them selves vary and nearly all steep ice routes are now probably well out of condition.
Mt Cook / Tasman
Access
The Hooker valley is in great shapr right now. Over the last week there have been trips up the north ridge / solo missions on Dampier and a rescue on Nazomi.
Mt Cook has some funky crevasses at the base of the Linda Glacier which makes you need to put yourself under the ice cliffs on Silberhorn etc.
Eli Debeaumont still looks accessable and Walter/Green both look amazing.
Avalanche
A relativley large amount of snow still exists on steep faces that are normally rock in summer. Be quite aware of large wet slides on North facing aspects over the next few weeks of the season
Sunrise – Murchison Headwall
The Upper Tasman glacier
Right now it seems like good overall conditions for general mountaineering – have fun
Spring has sprung here in New Zealand and it’s windy – very very very windy. I have to ask myself some times just why the hell I came back from Nepal to play in NZ when it is so windy?
Anyway – am heading into the hills from the 23rd to run a Technical Mountaineering Course (TMC) for Alpine Guides. AGL is based out of Mt Cook village – lovely place to come and hang out, sift and watch the weather for a window of opportunity to go play in the hills.
In general the conditions in the mountains is pretty good. We’ve had heaps of snow this spring which should set access up well into the summer.
I’ll put up some image of conditions when I get back out.
Matt standing in fron of advanced basecamp with the Glacier and headwall behind him.
The expedition is now over and we’re all down and back in kathmandu. I’ll write up a full trip report soon but suffice to say that we almost made the summit – however deep loose snow conditions made for very slow climbing with exceedingly poor anchors.
We made a 4 day push to get everything we needed to camp1 early on in the piece and then had one rest day before heading back up to the col for a summit push.
Camp 1 was situated at 5640m and we bivvied at 6100m – the next morning above the bivvy the snow
The crux of getting to the upper glacier.
got worse and the climbing slightly more tenuous over some narrow knifeblade ridge lines – and of course with faceted powder snow.
The bivvy was a chopped out ledge at the last place we got to before it became too dark and whilst we were pretty late the evening was quite comfortable with plenty of water and no wind. Winter wasa bit cold and he’d managed to puncture his thermarest – but we were able to share some gear around to stay warm on the snow.
Climbing solo through some rotten rock on the Eastern side of the ridge
The upper headwall at the low peak had about knee deep snow with 1500m fall lines and no pro. After much agonising we deceided to turn back – continuing would have meant a forced second bivvy with little food but with plenty of water .. However the main factor was the snow conditions.
The descent took us 8 hours with most of time spent trying to find acnhors. Downlimbing what we4 had soloed seemed stupid and scary as the steps we collapsing under our feet most of the time. We were able to find good ice after digging for 2-3 feet at each anchor point though.
Back at camp 1 we all felt pretty drained and exhausted
Bad snow and anchors meant that the rope was basically useless
- the descent back down the headwall and onto the glacier was punctuated with a massive slope settlement and the obligatory run under the ice cliffs – though the “bowling alley” as we came to affectionately call it.
The glacier itself was moderatley chopped up with some decent bridges that allowed us access – in the future it may simply be a stuggle to reach the headwall ..
Matt went back over the Cho La whilst Winter and I went down to Phortse and met him in Tengboche the day later.
So now 4 dayslater we are back in Kathmandu – skinnier and very very tired.
Enjoy the images – I’ll have more up soon and bit more info on the trip.
Mt Cook is still in condition! 
Mt Cook / Tasman
The Upper Tasman glacier
