Chockstone Forum

      Sponsored By
      ROCK
   HARDWARE

Chockstone Photography

Australian Landscape Prints

Chockstone Forum - Trip Reports

Tells Us About Your Latest Trip!

Topic Date User

Summitting Aoraki/Mount Cook - 9th December 2011 15-Dec-2011 At 6:24:38 PM PThomson

Message

G'day all,

I've just recently returned from Kiwiville, for which the objective was to summit Mount Cook, New Zealand's highest peak and -even via it's easiest route- a reasonably technically demanding alpine climb. Knowing that a few climbers here share my keeness for mountaineering, I thought I'd post my trip report for any other prospective Mount Cook climbers.

First of all, I should say that I elected to be guided by Aspiring Guides, rather than trying to organise the climb myself. Though I knew my fitness was more than adequate, and I've had previous mountaineering experience (summitting Elbrus in Russia last year, some mixed climbing, basic ice climbing and a week-long alpine skills course a few years ago) some of the route-finding on Mount Cook, the ice-climbing (my paricular mountaineering weakness, as I haven't done a huge amount of it) and the crazy weather-patterns scared me off persuing that course. So it was that on 7th December I rocked up at the Aspiring Guides offices in Wanaka and met my guide. As it turns out, my guide was a rather famous Peruvian mountaineer by the name of Aritza Monasterio, who -if you look at a few books on Mountaineering in Peru- has put up some rather well-known first ascents (including 2 on Siulu Grande), and manages his own mountaineering company in his home country. He works in NZ with Aspiring Guides during the Peruvian wet season, and returns to Peru to guide expeditions during peak season. Hardly the Kiwi Cook-Master I was expecting, but in my opinion: 'score!'

We headed out to Mount Cook airport and ran into Aarond and his girlfriend who were waiting for their own chopper flight into the mountains, and -like me- had been grounded the previous days due to bad weather. After some delay we flew up to the Glacier Plateu via a crazy Kiwi chopper pilot, and settled into the remarkably well-equipped Plateu Hut. The afternoon's agenda was a warm-up climb up the nearby Glacier Dome (2367m, a relatively straightforward hike up a hill, with a touch of ice and mixed-climbing on some loose-rock at the top. I felt good after having dashed up and down Roy's peak (a climb of 1278m) in Wanaka the day before in slightly over 3 hours, so the round trip up Glacier Dome took us less than 2.5 hours. Not a bad start.

The weather for the next two days was looking to be some of the best for the season -having been notoriously unpredictable so far-, so we decided to push our luck and do another warm-up climb before tackling Mount Cook on Friday 9th December. The prospect of 3 days of climbing with no rest and progressively earlier starts every day was a bit unnerving, but needs must when the devil drives, and at this point in time I was feeling fine. So, the next day we departed at 0630hrs for a dash up the Anzac Peaks, the highest of which sits at (2528m). The journey up the peaks is pretty straightforward, consisting of crossing the Glacier (and associated crevasses) below the Plateau hut, a romp up a steep snow slope, a bit of ice climbing on 60-degree ice, and 2 pitches of mixed climbing on -once again- some of the crappiest rock I've ever climbed on. From the top of the climb you have a rather exposed hike along the ridge up to the first peak, and then along a ridge up to the second, with some basic scrambling involved. It took us about 3 hours to reach the summit from the Plateau hut, and -still feeling good- we made our way back down the mountain with the help of an abseil and some down-climbing on ice. The entire journey took under 4.5 hours... But at only Grade 1 Alpine climbing, you'd like to hope that it wouldn't take too long.

After that it was time to prepare the gear for our Mount Cook attempt the following day. Since we'd be getting up at 2330hrs (for a 0030hrs start), we hit the hay at 1800hrs. Having learned from my mistake the night before (the Plateau hut was bloody crowded, and thereby noisier than a Metallica concert), I threw in the earplugs and slept like a log.

Our idea for Summit day was to head out before the other parties in order to avoid a Summit Rocks bottleneck. Talking to most of the other parties we learned that they were getting up at midnight for a 0030-0100hrs start. So, up we got at 2330hrs just in time to find out that the other parties -not having earplugs and not being able to sleep- were already up and managed to depart the Plateau hut before us. We left at 0030hrs and Aritza set a blistering pace, so much so that by the time we reached the Linda Shelf (The difficult diagonal traverse up a steep plane to the base of the couloirs used to access the upper reaches of Mount Cook on the Linda Glacier route) we'd passed every party except for 1 of the groups that bivvied the night before at the top of the Glacier (and still managed to pass 1 of the other bivvy groups), and 1 pair of climbers whom I'm pretty sure levitated up the glacier.

The walk up the Glacier to the Linda Shelf essentially consists of 3 hours (at our pace) of walking steadily uphill in a consistent zig-zagging pattern, dodging some of the terrifying cravasses (rigged up for crevasse travel, naturally) and trying to find the best of the snow in a thick fog. The advantage of the fog was that it wasn't as cold as it might have been on a clear night, so at the top of the shelf I was feeling fine. We cleared the shelf in good time, but found 2 groups already in the right (direct) couloir, with chunks of rock and ice bouncing down the narrow ice slot onto those below. With little other option we headed to the left couloir, which -over 3-4 pitches of ice-climbing- takes an indirect path to the summit rocks. We negotiated the funky 'Shrund at the base of the couloir, and headed up the ice with the sun starting to rise as a distant red glow right at the end of the first pitch.

It was here were the problems began, as some of the more experienced groups opted to short-rope and climbing without 'pitching (something I was up for, but understandably the guide wasn't, knowing my relative ice-climbing weakness) moved past us, while the Bivvyers in the right Couloir also moved further ahead. By the end of the 4th pitch of ice dawn was well and truly on us, and we'd managed to get ourselves bottlenecked on the summit rocks.

The summit rocks consist of 3 pitches of moderate mixed ice/rock climbing, with a few interesting (and strangely technical moves) on the horribly loose rock, amongst some easy ice climbing. Due to a bottleneck on the main (right) route up the rocks, we opted for the more technical (but less chossy) left route, the resulting bottleneck leaving me out on the arete, front-pointing with my crampons in a stemming stance on some loose rock for a good 20 minutes while I waited for a party in front of me (guided by Guy Cotter, Director of Adventure Consultants, and whose rock-climbing routes out at Tombstone rock in Wanaka I would later climb on) to move off the belay stance (himself bottlenecked). I wouldn't call the climbing here hard, especially if you're used to -say- grade 16 trad climbing with all the fun moves and loose rock that grade in the blueys and point perpendicular encompasses, but with mind-blowing explosure and the added confusion of trying to decide whether to 'dry-tool' (use my ice axe/hammer on the dry rock) or just climb on it normally. As it was, I found some good handjams and ice-tool camming actions in the various cracks that made the experience much more enjoyable. Throughout these summit rocks we leap-frogged with 2-other parties, and probably lost an hour of time due to delays at belay stances, but finally we reached the summit ice-cap, with the summit ice in amazing condition.