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Freda du Faur- 100 years- ascent of Aoraki 11-Dec-2010 At 4:58:49 PM vwills

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Maybe it should be in trip reports but had a thoroughly good time in NZ for 2 weeks to Dec 5th. No precipitation over that entire time. Of course, have to whinge about something- namely it was very hot, only occasional freeze and difficult access in parts.

Got to Mt Cook Village on Monday afternoon and after sorting gear the Aussie contingent (Gemma, Tash and myself) headed up to Sefton biv at 730pm not wanting to waste a day of golden weather. It was late by the time we had dinner and went to sleep under the bivi rock (like after midnight) but we got up at 4am and climbed the Footstool. Pleasant warm up. Some toxic sunscreen in the eyes made Gemmas descent miserable and half blind so we rested at the biv for a day and then headed back over the east ridge of the Footstool to traverse the range over Cadogan and duFaur peaks. Cadogan was straightforward but a whiteout, wide schrunds, some mixed climbing and a lot of up and down saw us making a bed of rocks and bivying at 930 that night 2 hours out from Copland shelter.
Fortunately the weather cleared and we headed across the pass and down the Hooker the following day.

A team of 8 NZ women ascended du Faur peak from the Copland shelter later in the week. They may have been perplexed by our radiating footprints from the summit.

A days resupply saw us walk back up the Hooker to Gardiner Hut, and the following day to Empress. We were joined by a friend of mine who has been up the valley a fair bit and who was amazed by the poor state of the ice and snow. We looked at Earles ridge on Cook and climbed up to Earles Gap but the Empress shelf side was cut off with very wide schrunds a lot of large icefall. The rock straight up from the gap was not appealing so our plan was thwarted. We looked at the NW couloir to Low Peak and gave that a try but turned around at about 3050 m when the snow and ice ran out. It may have been possible to traverse to Porters Col but the seracs looked rather threatening and stuff was falling down regularly from very early in the day. The west ridge looked like a good way to go with 2 Kiwi women doing a grand traverse from Gardiner that way.

We returned to Gardiner and headed up the Noeline Glacier to try Nazomi but got hemmed in by large crevasses and cliffs on the true left. Perhaps we could have run the gauntlet of the icefall off the south face of Cook but even that looked cut off and deadly.

Still it was great getting up the Hooker and despite conditions rapidly deteriorating at least we werent stuck in huts for days on end.

The afternoon tea and dinner and talks were all interesting. There were a few documentary makers getting footage and apparently Mayan Gobat-Smith is going to do a reenactment in period costume (though up the Linda). Good luck to her.

One of the most interesting things about reading a bit of history was how much conditions have changed in a very short period of time. Hooker hut is pretty much cut off now but pack horses used to carry supplies beyond this. Copland pass which used to be considered an alpine tramp now consists of hours of moraine bashing, a horrible cable for the moraine wall, a disintegrating ridge and a rock threatened snow slope to get to a pass which had a fairly steep ice ramp on the Copland side to get off.