Couch climbers & aspiring adventurers

Update 5 : 23-09-02

G'day everyone,

A bit of a mix up with my address book and email system means that the last email ended up going out a week late. ( I thought I'd sent if but found that I hadn't).

1. The course - 3rd quarter

I've included the third installment of the proposed itinerary - it covers the first half of the new Zealand section.

Day 44: (February 15, 2003) Depart for New Zealand.

Day 45: Lost Crossing the Dateline!

Day 46: Arrive Christchurch, NZ.,

You will be met and welcomed by our partners. Stay overnight in Christchurch..

Day 47: Travel to Wanaka.

This small resort town, in the Southern Lakes region near Queenstown, is the perfect base for the NZ section of the program. It is also the base location for our partners in this Semester, Mount Aspiring Guides Ltd.

The 5-hour drive from Christchurch is a highlight in itself. The coastal plains surrounding Christchurch are followed by grassy foothills with occasional small towns then you cross Burkes Pass into the arid high plains of the 'Mackenzie Country' with its huge sheep 'stations'. If the weather is good you probably wont be looking at the plains so much as the huge glaciated peaks looming on the horizon ... Mount Cook and the Southern Alps! You'll be visiting these peaks later in the program. Continuing south you pass the giant lakes of this region then cross Lindis Pass into the headwaters of the Clutha River, to Central Otago with its dry rocky hills. On arrival you'll be wanting to head straight to the Lake for a swim before settling into the group house.

Day 48: Rest and recovery day in Wanaka.

Day 49: Prep. First Trip.

Day 50 - 55: Advanced Hike and Basic Mountaineering.

Adjacent to Wanaka is spectacular Mount Aspiring National Park, named for the impressive white spire that dominates the region. It is a great area to first experience the Southern Alps. The objective of this trip will be to approach and climb some of the easier peaks in the area. This is not as simple as it sounds for Kiwi approaches can feature some very challenging terrain. Expect to encounter densely forested gorges, challenging river crossings and difficult route-finding. This will be an opportunity to practice the basic mountaineering skills of travel over rough terrain and use of crampons and ice axe. After this trip you'll quickly realize why New Zealanders have done so well on the Eco-Challenge!

Day 56: Day Off.

Your chance to take in some sights or even sample some of the other adventure activities for which NZ is famous.

Day 57 - 72: Glacier Mountaineering and Rock Climbing.

The mountain weather in NZ can be quite variable. To maintain maximum flexibility we may combine these two activities so as to maximize learning possibilities. When the weather is good it is important to get high onto the glaciers and take advantage of it. On the other hand when weather on the high peaks is bad it's often possible to move downwind into the rain shadow areas and work on rock climbing skills. A couple of bad weather days will give you a needed rest.

The rock climbing will be an intensive study in solid basic technique. Good rope skills will be emphasized - rescue, knots, lowering, rappel - in addition to full-on rock climbing.

NZ mountains are much more heavily glaciated than their Canadian Rockies counterparts and mountaineering is a serious endeavor, which will fully use the skills developed in Canada and NZ. Two venues may be used to give variety of terrain. All round competence to safely travel and climb on heavily glaciated peaks is the objective. Ski planes or helicopters will be used for high glacier access if weather permits. All aspects of glacier mountaineering will be covered: movement on snow, ice and mixed terrain, use of ice axes and crampons, glacier travel and crevasse rescue, anchor building and rope use. You'll also climb some of the most beautiful peaks on Earth!

2. My progress

Well not much has happened in the last week or so. Work is so busy, Michael is coming up to his 21st birthday, VCE exams are nearly here. I have managed to pay the rest of the course fees so I guess I'm really committed now.

I've sent out a number of letters to outdoor gear companies requesting support and have only had a few negative replies so far.

I'll be dropping into Snowgum soon to organise that sleeping bag purchase. Rod (Snowgum manager) has linked me up with Eric Phillips (recently went to the North pole with Jon Muir) and so far we have exchanged an email. I asked about sleeping bags and this is his reply.

Generally I find that I've usually gone overkill on sleeping bags and that in most cases I could have gone with a lighter one. Having said that there's nothing worse than being cold at night. The dual layer is a good idea. If you can't find a suitable bag in Australia, find the warmest one you can with a little extra room inside, then use a down liner, which are available. I know Mountain Hardwear make them but may not be available. I'm sure Macpac make one. Go for down if weight and bulk are an issue and moisture is not. Obviously if it's going to be damp you'll need to consider synthetic. We used a combination of both in the Arctic ­ Dacron main bag with a down inner. However, you may also need to consider a vapour barrier liner (VBL), which prevents moisture from your body entering the fibres of the sleeping bag. That's ok in the short term but in the long term your sleeping bag will get frozen inside. You'll need a vbl if the temp is below about 15C and there's no midnight sun to keep things dry inside the tent. VBL's are best if made of plastic, like a big garbage bag.

3. The journey to here - NZ, Alpine Guides

Following on from the course in Kosciousko I went, with husband Rob, on a Technical Mountaineering Course with a company called Alpine Guides in New Zealand last January. This 10 day course was run out of Mt Cook, which is nestled amongst snowy peaks and wide valleys in the Mt Cook National Park. Rob and I arrived a couple of days early and went for a familiarisation walk up to the Mueller Hut. The small red hut sits on the top of a ridge behind the town and the walk there provided us with an introduction to the steep sides of the New Zealand mountains. There was no snow at Mueller Hut - only rock and cloud. We could peer through clouds up the immense Mueller valley where a glacier melted into the braided river valley and hear the roar of avalanches coming off the walls of the mountains on the other side. We suffered sore legs for a number of days afterwards, making our introductory walk a the source of disability at the beginning of the course. It's the only time I've ever seen Rob with jelly legs. ( We met the playful, cheeky and destructive Keas (parrots) halfway up the route. They nearly made off with the clothes of a couple of women who had stripped off for a quick swim In a tarn. The women leapt out of the water when they realised what the birds were up to.)

Ours was the first course of the season (7 had run earlier) to have good weather. It had been unseasonably wet (the valleys below were in flood when we arrived) and many of the other courses had restricted their activities due to lack of visibility or soggy snow conditions. We had clear weather for most of the course and the snow was only starting to melt towards the end. There were 10 participants (one left after the third day) and three guides. There was one other female student.

Again the course started with a day of familiarisation with ropes, prussiking and other climbing skills. We drove a little way down the valley and spent an afternoon practicing climbing on a large (very) boulder. We learnt to play the game 'hurry up and wait'. It means getting absolutely ready to go (somewhere) and having to wait for the conditions to be right to go. This game is played a lot in the mountains. After some waiting we had to make a hasty trip down to the airport and hop on a couple of planes which flew us up the Tasman glacier in a window of clear weather. We then made the first of many slow and steady slogs up the hill to the Kelman Hut, dragging boxes of food behind us (in plastic bags and attached to the waist or pack by a rope - they just slid on the snow).

Day 1 included the inevitable 'self arrest' - again trying to get a good slide down the hill so that you could practice stopping the slide with an ice axe. Each day then included a combination of theory around the hut tables and travelling and climbing together on the nearby slopes and peaks. The crevasse rescue could be done in a real crevasse as there were plenty around. We had to cross over them as we moved around. Mostly we could see them and jump over but occasionally someone went in, only up to the thighs at the most, though we could see they were much deeper than that. Because of the crevasses we roped up in pairs or threes, with coils around our bodies which could be used to rig belays if someone went in. We learnt to make snow anchors that you could tie off to if you needed some stability or to belay each other on steep sections. We climbed a couple of peaks, one twice. While they were mild in climbing standards they were still breath taking in their exposure to height - a thousand feet down on one side of the narrow ridge and a few hundred feet on the other. We practiced walking in as balanced a fashion as we could, a bit like a cowboy with a wide open gait so that the crampons didn't catch the other leg and send us sprawling. These climbs gave us a chance to practice multipitch climbing and belaying.

We left one morning at around 5.00 am so that we could get across the valley on hard cold snow. It was dark when we left and the sun rose after about an hour. The dawn colors on the snowy slopes and peaks were magnificent. In fact the landscape was always awe inspiring - much sharper peaks than can be found in Australia and enormous drops and valleys. Black or grey brittle rock ridges and some pink, stable rock faces amongst the snow and ice. Over the snowy ranges to the west the Tasman sea could just be seen. Clouds would drift up a valley and then spill over a pass into another.

I realised when I stood on the Hut balcony and looked over towards the peaks we climbed, that I had no idea how to judge the best route through that kind of country. I had no experience or knowledge that would let me know whether to walk over the smooth bits or the undulations, close to a rocky outcrop or in the middle of the valley. This sort of knowledge is fundamental to the ability to move around up there independently of guides. I realised that I needed a lot more experience - hence the next course.

One of the biggest challenges was social. We were not the only occupants of the hut which can accommodate up to 30 people. The beds were mattresses laid next to each other along the length of the mezzanine floor of the hut. People sleep in line with the amount of personal space relative to the number of sleepers. Even the other sleeping room downstairs had 8 people in it most of the time. We became used to the snores and snuffles of each other sleeping but tolerance was stretched on the night or two when the hut was nearly full. The only privacy was in the toilet which had such powerful ammonia fumes eminating from below that eyes would water and noses run. You did not spend a moment longer in there than was absolutely necessary.

On the final day we went down the glacier to the bottom of an icefall section. There were eroded ice cliffs of about 40 ft high which we used for ice climbing. Again this was a part I loved - climbing up the ice with crampons and ice tools creating grip on the vertical ice faces (we were climbing with safety ropes).

It was tiring but not exhausting, very exciting and within my ability level. I'm sure that the incremental learning and good pacing by the guides contributed to my sense of success on that course. I finished the course very keen to do more.

4. News from/about others

Freda Du Faur is an Australian woman who climbed in New Zealand in the early 1900's. Her biography, written by Sally Irwin is called Between Heaven and Earth and is published by White Crane Press, 2000. On the 3rd December 1910, Freda's climb was the seventh ascent of Mt Cook (New Zealand's highest mountain) and the first by a woman. Freda and her two guides, Peter and Alex Graham, succeeded in climbing Mt Cook in the record time of six hours up, two hours there, and six and a half hours down(p 141).

The following small excerpt from the biography describes one of the early climbs Freda did, with her favourite guide Peter Graham. They were with Tom, who had to come as chaperone because it would have been out of order for Freda to go 'alone' with Peter.

On 18 December , Peter set out with 'chaperon porter' Tom, while Freda, familiar with the route they were taking up the Sealy Range, remained behind for the weekly arrival of Australian letters. An hour later she followed and caught up with the men who were carrying heavy swags and together they climbed the next five hundred feet or so where they bivouacked for the night.

Sleep was hard to come by as she was excited and drizzling rain meant she had to be aware enough to ensure her belongings did not touch the canvas and get wet; cold weather was bad enough, wet clothes as well could be lethal. Eventually she fell asleep, to waken at 2.30 am to the billy boiling. The sat out in the cold, eating breakfast, amongst the tiny mounds of tents and haversacks, observing mountains around them. Freda wrote later in her diary:

'Their summits stood out clear against the deep blue sky in which innumerable bright stars twinkled and flashed. As I watched, the stars faded one by one and the first streaks of dawn lighted the eastern skies. Brighter and brighter grew the colours, and soon a patch of rose lit up the dead-white snows of Mount Sefton: Onward and upward it crept until the whole summit flushed to the glowing crimson. One after another the light caught the surrounding peaks edging their cold snows with glittering gold.'

Visual splendour was something she, and Peter Graham, for that matter, never tired of.

With the 'gold' now glimmering on their chilled skin, they set off across the vast snowfield of the Annette Plateau before the sun softened the snow and the day became a slog. … As they began to climb poor Tom became 'a novice on rock and consequently rather unhappy. He was short in the limbs ( and breath) and had visibly not been intended by nature for a mountaineer.' ...

Roped, they set out up a steep and frozen face about a 3,000 foot drop to the Mueller Glacier below. Peter , as he cut steps, kept an eye on her as this was her first experience on this type of climbing, but she said she covered any anxiety with 'my cheerful grin', and once on the steep rock face beyond, her only problem was her inexperience with the rope, which seemed to be 'considerably in the way'. but soon, when Peter Graham turned to check on her he usually found her proudly at his heels. 'Did not know I was taking out a blessed cat', was her mentor's comment.

Freda is now becoming recognised as a significant part of New Zealand's climbing history and there is a section dedicated to her achievements at the Information Centre at Mount Cook.

New Zealand has a women's climbing group which can be found at www.womenclimbing.freezope.org There are plenty of women over there who regularly or occasionally climb - including I gather, their prime minister Helen Clark.

Thanks again for the support

Linda