After flying in to
the Plateau Hut by helicopter Erik W and I were
ready for a shot at this massive peak. The ten days
of rain previous to this flight kept us pinned down
in Queenstown climbing peaks in the Remarkables
range and doing a bit of everything we could think
of (with the exception of bungy jet boating and
bungy rocket sky-diving) to keep our minds off of
what we were not doing - climbing Mt. Cook.
Thursday, December
19th,2002 - Erik and I waited an extra day for the
snow to do some more settling and firm up our route.
It would be just the two of us on this difficult
peak and I wanted to be sure it was as safe as it
could be. We talked with some of the local guides
and with the people who had been at the hut for some
time. We chose our route - the Zurbriggen's Ridge.
This is a 3,500 foot face of 45 - 55 degree ice and
snow with really no place to stop and rest. Our
descent would be via the Linda glacier route which
is much easier (normally).
We departed at
11:30 Thursday night after saying a prayer for
protection and guidance, under a full moon. The
route was perfectly lit and the night was beautiful.
After trudging through some breakable crust and
avalanche debris we made it to our first obstacle -
a pair of five-foot bergschrunds acting as the
gateway to our route. Having delicately negotiated
these we were off for a marathon adventure. Placing
some screws and pickets in the more precarious areas
when needed we moved constantly through the night
not stopping for a break until we hit flatter ground
at the top of the face.
Friday, December
20, 2002 - 9:00 am and the sun had been on us for
the last few hours causing us to boil in our skin
and also forcing us to change our route a little as
the sun began to melt the ice freeing some rocks
which were now falling down the route. We navigated
the summit rocks as the parties from the Linda route
were coming down from their summit success and we
knew it wouldn't be long before we were there as
well. At 2:00 we cautiously inched our way along the
two-foot wide summit cap. It fell away four thousand
feet to our left over the east face and four
thousand more down to the right a seventy degree
ice-slope.
Friday, December
20th, 2002 2:00 pm. - A spectacular summit and a
wonderful view, but not really a place to celebrate
with pictures and hugs, especially when your partner
can't see that his ice axe just went in one side of
the cornice and out the other. We saved our
celebration for later.
We abseiled down to
the Linda shelf roughly one thousand feet below the
summit and began our long, slow, tedious, tortuous
descent. The route was soft and the surface crusty,
but at least our packs were heavy causing us to
post-hole up to our hips. We were the last ones off
the peak and all the previous parties had made holes
all over the descent route making it a minefield for
the "sightless legend" as the Queenstown paper had
called Erik.
10:30 p.m. Friday
December 20 - Finally back at the hut after a 23
hour marathon!
10:30 a.m. Saturday
December 21 - A flight back to a good meal, and a
drive on the wrong side of the road to Queenstown.
2:30p.m. Sunday
December 22 - Aukland - Tea with Sir Edmund Hillary
and Lady June.
One of the
highlights of this trip was to meet with one of my
climbing heroes and living legends, Sir Edmund. Erik
and I were impressed by his kind and gentle demeanor
and by the hospitality of Lady June. We shared a lot
of stories and had a few good laughs - some, of
course at EW's expense, and were even able to coerce
Sir Edmund into signing a few NZ five-dollar bills
on which his profile is pasted. Now back home we are
beginning to plot our next adventure to another
corner of the globe. Eric Alexander
