First Big Mountaineering Trip (And Snow Day) in NZ

 August 12th-16th
I hope you didn’t hold your breath for this one.

Right, so 11:00 PM Friday night we pulled into the parking lot at the trailhead, packed up our things, and as you might have guessed, started hiking. Lucky for us we had an easy gravel trail to follow with a full moon to help light our way (with some headlamp assistance). We hiked at a brisk pace, keen to make it to the Routeburn cabin as soon as possible. I think the fact that it’s a 2 or 2.5-hour hike and we did it in 1.5 just shows how eager we were to get to bed. Correction on that: Tom and I were eager to get to bed; apparently Max and James were eager for tea, because, yes, at 2 in the morning as Tom and I scrambled into our bags, Max and James had the camp stove out and were chatting over a cup of tea. Typical Kiwis. Got to love them though (though the hikers in the next room didn’t; Max may have a problem with volume control).

Now, for those of you who don’t know, along with mountains, sheep, and LOTR, New Zealand is known for avalanches and crevasses. I actually just read a book by a kiwi climber who’s been to the alps and maybe the Himalayas, and he noted that the snow conditions of NZ seem to be more unstable than a lot of other larger mountain ranges, and so many experienced international climbers are killed for underestimating the mountains because of their size; they can be just as technical as you want and take several days to go from base to summit. If I was a meteorologist or physical geographer I’m sure I could give an explanation with how being an island near Antarctica contributes to this with a special wind/jet streams (well, I’m assuming it does), but I’m afraid I’m not; but if I come across that answer, I’ll let you know.

Ok, now that I’ve scared mom and Grammy, onto why I shared that little anecdote. The sun can become your biggest competitor on the mountain, because it makes good snow conditions go bad, real quick. So Kiwi alpinists like to start their days early, because they want to be at the summit and down before early afternoon, or at least off their snow route before the sun hits it. So, at 4:30 in the morning, we were rolling out of bed and packing up (there were probably a few cups of tea passed around, I’m afraid my memory isn’t that good that early).  At 6:15 though, while I waited across the stream for others to finish up their morning business, I realized I could have snatch another half-hour of sleep. I guess, being a slower hiker (at least when it comes to going up really steep hills with a heavy pack-hey, ‘I’m paid to hike slow’ -Marya) means I have to make up for it with efficiency. Thanks Jim D!

We made our way across and up the valley in 1.5ish hrs. to the base of the route where we pulled up our harnesses and strapped on our crampons. I looked up the snow chute to the top of the couloir about 900 m above, a steady 45-50 degree slope leading up to it. I was already feeling the fatigue seep through my leg muscles. I studied the bulges of compacted snow in front of me, remnants of old avalanches. And I had a short little chat with James that went something like…

“Do you still think we don’t have to worry about avalanches?” Being from the northeast US, avalanches weren’t something I had to really worry about before, so my knowledge was limited.

“Hmm…ah yeah, I reckon it’ll be alright.” He said in his soft, though always optimistic voice. I learned at some point later into the trip that none of them had actually taken an avalanche course; James was the most experienced, having read a book on them.

For the parents and grandparents reading this, we did this climb about a week after the last precipitation and it had been sunny all week-thawing and freezing repeatedly. Avalanche danger was very low. Even the avalanche website said so (weather people never lie).

I glanced over then at a Kea bird* that had just perched itself on a rock not far away. “I think he’s mocking us,” I noted to James. …I wish I had wings.

            And so began the long hike up the couloir. A grand 3.5 to 4 hours of very tiring work; sadly we didn’t have much Styrofoam-like-snow, so we were post-holing quite a bit. And I’m afraid running does nothing to help my hiking fitness. I was pretty relieved when we reached the plateau just before the last couple hundred meters up to the summit. Max and James dug out a nice couch out of snow for us to enjoy our lunch (and break the wind) with a well-earned view. 

 

After our leisurely lunch we went up over the bulge to the summit, where we paused for a short break to admire the views (which remind me of the Himalayas, don’t you think?) before making our way down to theatre flat to set up camp. This actually turned into it’s own little adventure, for when we were about a half a mile from camp we had to start bush-pushing through some pretty dense bush. What Max said would be 10 minutes turned into an hour.

            Finally, at around 7 pm we arrived at camp. Of course, first thing when we got into camp Max and James changed out of their boots into crocks, started a fire, and started making tea (any sane American climber would have set up camp, changed out of their boots, and cooked dinner-maybe the boots first if they were that bad). After 3 hours of tea, biscuits, food and chillaxing, we all crashed.

            The next morning: up at 8:30, tea, breakfast, flafing (wasting time doing nothing), packed up camp and headed out of camp around 11:00 for the 6 hour trek out, hoping to beat the snow storm we knew was coming. The snowflakes started to come down on us as we started our way up and over the pass.

            Thank goodness, we did manage to beat snow, at least enough that when we got back to the car, we were able to make it back down the dirt road to Queenstown before the road got bad. However, we weren’t able to escape Queenstown; thanks to 6ish inches of snow, the roads in and out of Queenstown were closed for at least the next 24 hours (funny, Queenstown is a ski-resort town). Meanwhile, up in Auckland, people left their offices to head into the street to dance and sing winter wonderland, all over some flurries you could hardly see. This would be why almost the whole country of New Zealand shut down over a small blizzard. We didn’t make it back to Dunedin until mid day on Tuesday. Luckily, James’s mom has a house in Queenstown, so we were able to rest in warmth and watch the snow come down through the window, while sipping our tea and eating biscuits.

 

 *Endangered native bird of New Zealand. However, they are smart and tend to be a nuisance. One was attacking Jaz’s campsite once while Jaz was in his tent. He threw some snowballs in its direction to scare it away, filled a potlid with snowballs and put it next to his tent door. The Kea soon returned, grabbed the lid in its beak, dumped the snowballs and flew away with the lid.