It hadn't snowed since the dumping we had in April and despite various land owners in the area telling me there was "bugger all snow up there" I remained optimistic. I hadn't put my skis on in over a year after my knee surgery and I was rearing for an adventure. The other team members, all snow crazy individuals, were extremely excited about walking long distances to get minimal turns in. The goal was to reach the ridge glacier on the SW ridge below Mt Hutton for some guaranteed snow, views and glacier travel practice. Route up to the Ridge Glacier from Memorial hut We encountered our first speed bump on our first night after a mid night arrival into Tekapo when we realised just how low the temperatures were expected to get during the weekend, -11C. Given previous chilly tenting experiences we doubted that our gear, or our fortitude, would be up for the challenge. When we arrived at Memorial hut the call was made to do a day trip up the Alisa Stream to see the snow coverage and then go for the Ridge glacier as a day trip the following day and stay in the hut that night as we were expecting a front through. Mt Lucia on the opposite side of the valley with all its snow, in the shade. Our side of the valley, in the sun was a stark comparison! PHOTO: Julian White It was an incredible day and we were eventually rewarded by snow but the land owners description had been accurate, on the sunny aspects there was bugger all. Yet we had skied and I had not forgotten how to ski, we were stoking! The next morning, after a night of sleep talking/ yelling at each other in the hut we woke to snow! The excitement soon fizzled though as we attempted to navigate the valley floor now covered in an inconvenient depth of snow. The formula of 1 hour for 5 km and 1 hour for 500 m vertical was not working and we decided we should have left the hut well prior to first light. My spirits were down as I realised that we would not be able to make the Ridge glacier at this speed and I lost motivation to keep going at the prospect of skiing disguised rocks. The team, to their credit, did not falter and remained pumped to ski what appeared to me to be a strip of ice and rocks covered in icing sugar on the approach to the Faraday glacier. Their enthusiasm was infectious and we continued on. Lynette and Sam missioned it further up the slope and skillfully linked a decent amount of turns while Julian and I watched insisting there was only enough coverage for two people. Julian, having just completed and impressive 12 months of skiing, shared some words of wisdom while we waited. Of all his ski trips and sagas he had realised that is often takes a second trip or second attempt to reach your initial goal, so many lessons are learnt the first time! Decision making time, up to the left is access to Ridge glacier and straight up the valley in the cloud is the Faraday glacier. Lynette and Sam ended up skiing up the valley on the right. PHOTO: Julian White Back in the hut again that night we debriefed over sharns and decided that the Ridge glacier was definitely doable in a day trip from Memorial hut if you left earlier in the morning, if the conditions were more productive or if you drove further up on the true left of the stream. Or if you grew some balls and camped further up the valley.. All good lessons and good experiences! At some point during the evening someone... Lynette... Asked, "we are skiing tomorrow again right?" We all looked at each other and said "yes, yes that sounds good" internally I was thinking "oh shit, I'm going to die". The next morning we made good time up to Lady Emily hut and then further up the right hand side to the standard winter touring routes where we found some great lines to ski. Extremely questionable snow pack greeted us on our accent and we heard "whoompfing" as we climbed and a snow pit showed slab coming away immediately due to an old granular layer. Our area was safe due to the large number of big rocks showing and acting as anchors but further up there were no rocks visible and we decided not to go any further. Our descent, Sam carving some sweet turns on his new splitboard with plenty of rock anchors around and beautiful dry snow on top of ice. PHOTO: Julian White All in all another great experience with awesome people in an amazing location! Many lessons learnt, some disappointments but at the end of the day it wouldn't be an adventure if it all went according to plan and isn't that why we do these things, to have an adventure!? Trip profile over the 3 days with a very slow travel day in the middle! Journey map thanks to Julian White
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Mt Rainier is one the highest mountains in the United states and definitely one of the most prominent at 4394m (14,417ft) with 4026m of prominence. It dominates the skyline in the Pacific North West, standing out from the surrounding peaks just asking to be climbed. It was after seeing stunning views of it from Crystal mountain a few years ago that I decided I really wanted to ski it. Back then I didn’t have the skills or knowledge and I was at university so I also didn’t have the time. Now though I have the skills, knowledge and time so in January Gabby and I put it on our spring time bucket list. There are several main routes up Mt Rainier. The most common is the well tracked Disappointment-Cleever route, it’s the least technical but also the most popular (could be considered crowded later in the season). It’s also not as ideal for skiing so we decided to do the Emmons-Winthrope Route on the more western side. It’s longer and more glaciated but the more common route for skiing. Our other friend Ben who joined us for the trip had previously climbed this route was confident it was the route for us. We definitely thought we had the skills and knowledge but at the same time we were unprepared and didn’t seriously consider the altitude. We’re both relatively fit and strong but I had spent the previous month surfing and doing volunteer work in the Caribbean. Gabby had been working in Hong Kong mostly kayak guiding. We underestimated the difficulty of climbing/skinning up 4000 vertical metres after basically sitting at sea level. It was one of a few mistakes in our planning. We had heavy packs with luxuries such as slippers and snacks for days. We’ve done overnight ski touring trips before but all our previous glacier trips involved being helicoptered to a hut. Physically carrying the gear for glacier travel and for overnight camping also added a huge weight to our pack. It was really hard and after only about 1000 vertical meters we were crawling along, looking for places to ditch stuff from our packs. We planned to ascend and descend in two days with the night spent at Camp Schurman (2800m), at the base of the Emmons Glacier. The last few hundred meters to the camp were even slower, we were moving at about 200 vertical metres per hour and just made it to camp in time to set the tent up in the last few minutes of daylight. We were exhausted and were beginning to feel the altitude but we decided it wasn’t too bad and we should attempt to summit the next day. We set off roped up at 5am, feeling good with much lighter packs. We negotiated our way around smaller crevasses with ski crampons on the firm early morning snow for about 2 hours before the altitude again started to take it’s toll. After a rest at about 3500m all three of us weren’t feeling too good and Gabby’s resting heart rate was still very high. At that point we thought it would be unsafe to continue further and we turned around. We were all disappointed but the descent down the glacier past steamboat prow in the mid-morning corn was perfect and made us feel significantly better about our decision. We made GS turns in hero snow, hooting the whole way down Glacier Basin. We had a great few days and learnt a lot. The biggest take home lesson for Kyrgyzstan was the need to be more physically prepared. Training with heavy packs will be essential, as will having light weight gear. I can see many thousand weighted step-ups in the next few months. Having a base camp at a medium altitude will be necessary too to minimize the effects of altitude and some mental preparation for the long days will also be required. Our mental fitness is going to be just as important as our physical fitness. |
AuthorMarian Krogh Archives
August 2019
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