Last updated: 7th February 2004
For my Dad. A hill walker, sailor and inspiration.
Life has a habit of picking you up, shaking you about and throwing you down again, just to see what happens. I found myself in Dubai Airport at 4am in the morning, desperately trusting to a caffeine infusion. Like a collection of stereotypical Hollywood extras, the leathery ex-pats were propping up the only bar - a traditional Irish theme bar, of course - taking the obligatory Guinness and lager constitutional before spreading themselves across the globe. I was on my way back to England for my Dad's funeral.
A little over a week earlier, I had clung triumphantly to the summit of Hochstetter Dome, deep in the Southern Alps of New Zealand as part of my Technical Mountaineering Course with Alpine Guides.
 |
The mountains
of New Zealand have long been recognized as the training ground for
some of the world's finest mountaineers and it was here that I had chosen
as my first stumble in their shadows.
Mountains had crept under my skin and into my soul on a couple of trips to South America and I was determined to learn to climb properly or die in the process. Or, as one, not so encouraging guide, pointed out to me many years ago, in my case climb properly and die. |
| The author heading for a room with a view. |
On the course was a collection of Aussies, a Brit ex-pat from Hong Kong and myself. Most of my fellow would be mountaineers had virtually climbed out of the womb. I had discovered this the previous night in Mount Cook Village as they proceeded to boulder around chairs and tables as I cooked the meal for the evening. I knew where my strengths lie and I was sticking to them. And so it was with a little trepidation that I found myself on a thrilling plane ride to the head of the Tasman Glacier. Our home for the week, Kelman Hut, was a short gear haul (uphill!) from the plane landing site.
The group was in the capable hands of our guides, Richard and Alan, an Aussie and Welshman respectively. Their wealth of knowledge, experience and never ending supply of songs proved to be the making of the trip. They were always there to help and encourage us, from inching along a knife edge ridge to dropping into a crevasse deep enough to hide a Ute or three.
The course is designed to teach the basics of moving through and up moderate mountains in a real alpine environment. All aspects from weather and avalanche awareness, route finding and glacier travel though to crevasse rescue and ice climbing were taught over the course of eight days in the most beautiful playground.
|
Every night we were treated to a spectacular view of the southern night sky, complete with a full moon on one particularly memorable night. You would be hard pushed to beat the experience of staring out over a moonlit alpine landscape, with only the sound of the wind and a cup of Milo for company. If that wasn't enough, every morning the mountains would spectacular awake with the rising sun, turning from crimson, through orange before becoming the purest blinding white. Without exception, the weather was glorious throughout the trip. Sometimes, you feel like you must have done something right. The first few days were spent learning the basics of self arrest, building and testing anchors and crevasse rescue. When we weren't pulling ourselves out of a crevasse, we were busy throwing someone else in. |
 |
| Getting high on Alymer. |
After a few days of skills training, we were now ready to attempt our first peak, Mount Alymer, via the notorious (to us) south face. We left the warmth of the hut by torch light as a biting wind threatened to slice through us. It was cold in these mountains at 4.30 in the morning. Suddenly, after the first days of a dazzling sun that threatened to quickly toast any unprotected area of skin, we were delving into our rucksacks to pull out balaclavas, thermal tops and anything else that would protect us from the cold.
The ascent itself required multiple pitches up a steep ice face. Working in teams we swapped leads up the face, the belayer having to endure a freezing wait on a tiny ice platform as his partner cut a new anchor point a rope's length further up the face. Soon, we successfully reached the summit to much group jubilation. Our first alpine peak bagged and we all felt like we had "knocked the bastard off" in style. It may not have been the highest or most technical peak, but we certainly felt like we were on the roof of the world. The sense of achievement from working together to reach the summit was truly memorable. It doesn't take long to realise that in this environment the most important skill you can learn is faith in your partner.
The descent was an easy abseil where we experimented with different anchors before sitting down for a well earned lunch and more fun glissading, falling over and self arresting.
 |
A hard day's introduction to ice climbing allowed us to further our skills. Inching your way up an icy wall is hard work. Compared to rock, you expect that the option to cut your own holds would be an advantage but a few hours of slicing through ice and kicking steps soon takes its toll. On the way back, most of us had a go at falling into crevasses unintentionally. There is something very scary about hanging over a very deep slice through a glacier. You know the bottom is down there somewhere but you just can't quite make it out at this precise moment. The calls of "Hold!" and "Are you alright?" rang out across the snow field as we slowly threaded our way around the obvious holes. Still, it was good practice in not dropping your partner and further reinforced the lessons we had learnt earlier in a controlled environment on the course. |
| One lump or two? Collecting the ice for an afternoon cocktail. |
|
During our time in the mountains, Kelman Hut proved to be an excellent home. There is nothing like the bonding experience of twenty unclean mountaineers sleeping with their faces inches from someone else's hanging sweaty socks, drifting into sleep to the nightly chorus of coughing, snoring and farting. Fortunately, most days were long, starting early and ending in the afternoon when the snow had turned to porridge, so sleep came remarkably easy.
Any spare time back at the hut was occupied with sleep, theory or building (possibly) New Zealand's largest snow cave out the back. Three afternoons of back breaking work completed the monster. Expect to see huge plastic replicas at a highway near you in the future. Our guides were impressed with the quality of our abode, if not the speed of construction. An emergency shelter may well require more modest ambitions!
| The climax of our time was the ascent of Hochstetter Dome. Again, an early start was called for to get the best of the conditions, although a warm night had meant that the snow was pretty soft even as we left the hut. Soon we were on the summit ridge. It proved not to be a route for the faint hearted. A skinny ridge line, barely wide enough to place both feet was flanked by a 50 metre tumble into a crevasse field in one direction and a 500m freefall to the Fox Glacier in the other. If your partner fell, the technique was to throw yourself down the other side and counter balance each other. What happened at that point beside a whole bag of swearing we never did find out, but the guides were quick to point out that no-one had ever fallen off this ridge under their tuition. Somehow this failed to relax me in my current predicament as I wasn't sure if this made the odds better or worse! |  |
|
|
The summit ridge of Hochstetter |
Working as a team we placed anchors and convinced our somewhat sceptical legs to slowly sidle up the treacherous ridge and onto easier ground. After a long ascent we reached the high point physically and metaphorically of the entire course at 2829m, only 900m below the summit of Mount Cook! The view back along the ridge to Alymer were our deserved reward. The softening conditions prevented us from climbing the south summit so we headed down the opposite side and found a spot to enjoy lunch and bask in our achievement.
One piece of advice when moving through the mountains:
always listen to your guide. When he pleads with you to fly and not tackle
the infamous walk out along the Tasman Glacier, take note. If you choose to
ignore this advice, make sure you follow your guide through the ice maze that
is the tail of the Tasman Glacier. Spectacular though it may be, four hours
of frustration, picking your way through the ice cliffs and crevasses, seemingly
making no progress, will quickly change your mind. If the first section isn't
enough, then the moraine desert will make you really question your decision.
One of our guides even found what looked like a human leg bone in the middle
of the moraine. Was this the remains of some lost mountaineer or a memorial
to an unfortunate animal who made the ill advised trip into this parched
wilderness?
At least I can say I have stood on the summit
of Mount Cook. Much of the moraine is the remnants of the spectacular summit
collapse of the mountain from 1991.
Of course, there is always a sting in the tail. Eight days of glacier travel and icy faces had produced no real moments of true danger, no point where we felt out of control. So what were three of us doing desperately trying to dig finger nails into a rapidly disintegrating slope with boulders bouncing off our helmets meer metres from safety, from home, from beer and from a shower? Having an "epic" on the moraine wall almost seems to be a rite of passage on the Tasman Glacier. But, hey, we all survived to tell the tale and laugh about in the bar at Mount Cook Village.
I certainly came out of the course craving more time in the mountains. I felt elated and a little scared at times but I certainly learned a lot. The guides were nothing but fantastic giving us enough rope to learn the hard way but never enough to hang ourselves. Anyone seriously craving spending some time in the hills could do a lot worse than to learn to do so safely and have a great time on the way. The only problem is, it is kind of hard to return to the life of a desk jockey and the daily routine after this kind of experience. Everywhere I look I see mountains; little piles of apples in Footscray Market conjure thoughts of another expedition into the wild.
I loved it. And so would have my Dad.