New Zealand backcountry ski trip 2008
Day 1 – 2
The plan was to have 5 days telemark touring in the Mt Cook area, staying in one of the huts around the Tasman glacier. I was going on my own with a guide and arrangements provided by Alpine Recreation in Lake Tekapo.
Flew in to Christchurch, rang the guide firm and was told the weather for the intended flight wasn’t looking good so departure was postponed for a day.
I picked up a hire car and headed for Broken River in the Craigieburn Range. About a 90 minute drive. This is a club field well described in Wikiski. Stayed in a lodge just below the snow line. From the carpark you do a pleasant 20 min walk up to the lodges here. Gear goes up on a lift and next year they hope to add bodies to it. You walk up through beech forest and get some fine views across the valley to Torlesse Range. As you climb, you discover one truth about NZ. It’s a land on steroids. Everything is bigger, steeper and wilder than what I know from Oz.
Torlesse Range from Broken River
At the field there are basically two basins to ski with three rope tows. Runs marked as blue I would describe as dark blue. The main access tow is called Rugby for good reason. It’s steep, it flies and to unload you have to be quick to get your skis sideways on the snow – no broad platform here. You have a belt and nutcracker-type clamp to hook up but first have to grab the rope and get moving before applying the clamp with the other hand. Leather gloves or glove protectors are needed and two staff offered to lend me theirs for the day. That kind of help was typical of my stay there.
Most of the main bowl was beyond my skills – late in the season so icy in the morning and heavy in the afternoon – so it was survival skiing; but the basin to the East, Allan’s, had softer snow and some amazing lines so a few linked tele’s restored some confidence.
The exit from Allan’s back to the access tow was interesting. A track only a few ski widths wide traversing a steep slope, including a patch of rock, a rise to herringbone up with left ski tip hanging over a drop, some grass and you were over the spur and could traverse back to the tow.
At the lodge, I got chatting to a young guy skiing up there on the cheap. He’d got a hitch from Christchurch to Mt Cheeseman, another club field on the range, then come across the ridge top to Broken R for the night, and if the weather and snow had been OK the next morning he would have gone back to the ridge and continued to Craigieburn field. The weather wasn’t looking good though so he hitched a ride again.
Day 3
A pleasant drive on the inland route to Lake Tekapo. Passing Mt Hutt (dubbed Mt Shutt by Broken R. locals because of its wind exposure). The occasional patch or windbreak of gums make for pangs for home. Coming up to Burke’s Pass it starts to snow. Excellent. Tekapo town had 25 C the day before and is now lightly carpeted in white. The famous Church of the Good Shepherd is buzzing with pic takers. This building has a clear window behind the altar so the faithful can see the wonders of God in nature … the Lake stretching into the distance.
We meet at Alpine Recreation, the guide company, that night for a gear check and briefing. A late addition to the party is Charlie from the UK who’s taking a very delayed gap year. He’s just finished a 3 month ski instructor course at Wanaka. He proves to be a good companion, skilled in ski touring and climbing and I enjoy his company in the days to come. The guide is Sam Bosshard. I wondered about the name but it didn’t prove literal. His Dad was a Swiss immigrant and mountain climber.
But the weather news is bad. Tomorrow will be good to fly in; after that there may be a half day or so to ski, a couple of hut-bound days and later when we have to fly out (Charlie has a deadline) the synoptic chart projections are not promising. With only three of us a Cessna would be chartered and they’re useless when there’s any wind. A chopper is an expensive but still not a guaranteed alternative for the return trip.
Given Australian forecasts for Alpine regions and their generality, I’m sceptical. But Sam looks at the NZ metservice chart projections and believes them. Over the next five days I become a believer too.
So after tossing around some options and some phone calls we agree to do just a day on the glacier tomorrow and the other 4 days on Two Thumb Range based at AR’s Rex Simpson hut.
We’re lucky: we can piggy back on a scheduled Pilatus Porter trip to the glacier carrying yo-yo’s.
Day 4
Good weather. We set out early from Tekapo to Mt Cook airport. There are superb views across Lake Pukaki to the Alps which are touched by dawn pink.
The Porter takes 8 passengers and all seats are filled; skis are piled high inside the plane and folk are nursing day packs on their laps. There’s a seat beside the pilot and being the only dagg with a DSLR dangling from his chest I win the prize.
We take off and head up the Tasman Glacier valley. The pilot gets out his paperwork and starts filling it out. ‘Warn me when we’re about to hit something’ he says as we’re pointed to the East valley wall. I decide he’s joking but don’t stop watching.
It’s about a 30 km trip and we get awesome views of the morraines, the glacier, the peaks and the intersecting glaciers. The scale is beyond words.
Mt Cook through the plane window
We get up to the headwall of the Tasman and spy Kelman and Tasman Saddle huts. The pilot warns he will do a touch down and take off on the neve to test conditions and then fly back to land. The thermometer in the window beside me spells out around -5 C.
We’re down. We three tourers get out and the Porter heads elsewhere to drop off the downhillers.
We’re kitted up with harnesses, ice axes, and transceivers with crampons in the pack. The snow is soft. I’m sinking 10 cm or so on my XC skis which are 69mm wide underfoot. Sam and Charlie are on AT gear.
Sam instructs. We’ll ski down a pitch and then skin up to the Ledenfeld Saddle. We are to stay well behind him and to the right for the downhill run. Keep out of each other’s tracks.
We do it. But I’m sinking so far that I’m exhausting myself to tele-turn the skis. Can only manage tight turns followed by traverses. My problem is fear of speed having done in one knee a few years ago. But I manage to get to the bottom without falling over.
Then it’s skins on – a first for me – and we start a walk up to the saddle. It feels seriously daggy, having to push skis forward on the snow and set the skins. But there’s huge grip and the change of zig to zag is easy with small steps.
My chest is heaving. Maybe it’s the altitude – around 2200 m – and I’m not as fit as I’d thought. The scenery is also literally breath-taking and I’m a little spooked by the magnitude of it all.
Sam gets me close behind him, taking the small steps forward that he’s pacing. I decide to do what I’ve told my kids to do on uphill walks: start an internal mental chant … one, two, three four, two, two three four, three two … etc. It works.
Skinning up to Lendenfeld Saddle .. photo by Charlie Mowbray
We get to look west over the centre of the Southern Alps. On a clear day you can see the beaches on the West coast but that side is clouded today. We drop down a crappy slope of soft sastrugi and powder pockets. I’m managing a mish mash of traverses and snow plough turns. My technique drops back to survival level when I’m knackered. We see a good sized soft snow avalanche off the face opposite as we go down.
We head back towards the main part of the Tasman on another pitch of soft snow. Sam instructs again. Watch out for that bright spot down over to the right; it’s a snow covered crevasse. I guess that it’s bright cos the light shines through the snow bridge over it. Sam and Charlie make it look easy doing parallels on their gear. I’m back to zig zags trying to tele and fall over once. At the bottom of that pitch I decide to prop and take some photos. The others spy a nice gully among the ice blocks and skin upwards to it. I see a party of four tourers doing a gully on the East side; it seems close enough but in the photo they come up as pin pricks.
All around us are high peaks, minor glaciers, seracs and a vast vista down the Tasman. You could stand here sucking it in til your toes froze and not care.
The downhillers on their second run
But we have a flight to catch and when the others have done their thing we cruise down to the pick-up point. Following in their tracks I speed up and threaten to rear-end them and have to ski to the side to slow down.
Click here for a vid of cruising down the Tasman by Charlie Mowbray
Days to follow
We have four days to walk in and out and tour from the Rex Simpson private hut at the foot of Two Thumb Range north of L Tekapo town (alt. 1280m).
We drive out, lash our skis to packs and start the 3 hour walk up to the hut in our ski boots. My T2x boots are surprisingly comfortable but an ingrown toe nail takes a bashing. On the way back it’s wrapped in Melolin and I don’t feel a thing. Charlie and Sam though have their AT boots to walk in.
The grass plain is waterlogged in places and we have to do a deal of tussock hopping. Soon it gets steeper and I discover how unfit I am. Sam waits from time to time with good patience, while remarking several times what I must have in the pack. He and Charlie have their clothes, food, crampons and ice axes neatly stowed in and on their 45l jobs.
The clear skies over there make everything look close so tantalising glimpses of the hut aren’t accompanied by imminent arrival unfortunately.
But we get there, settle in, make some lunch and then sit out the rain which marks the afternoon.
Next morning I’ve decided on a lay day. The splint I have to wear on the right hand keeps knocking the scab off a wound on the thumb and anyway, I’m weary. I tell Sam I’ll go up on the slope above the hut and play. He and Charlie skin up the gully but he yells out not to go up as it’s too icy. They head out for a long circuit to the East and North, crack Stag saddle and come back. Meantime I rest up, take some photos, read the hut log and the company folders. And work slowly through a collection of Robert Frost’s poems in the hut library. Reflect on whether sitting on the dunny where Helen Clark has sat makes any difference. Didn’t notice any and the tale won’t be one to dine out on.
A couple of nights I read the Frost poems I could make sense of to the others. A deep melancholy pervades these works and others. ‘The road less travelled’ in popular understanding is actually ‘the road not taken’ :
… knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
The low light of morning on the pyramid peaks of Hall Range evoked another Frost:
MOON COMPASSES
I stole forth dimly in the dripping pause
Between two downpours to see what there was.
And a masked moon had spread down compass rays
To a cone mountain in the midnight haze,
As if the final estimate were hers;
And as it measured in her calipers
The mountain stood exalted in its place.
So love will take between the hands a face . . .
______________________________________________________________
Sunrise over L. Tekapo … Ben Ohau Range
Next day I’m keen to get out and we skin up the gully and then drop into Camp Ck valley on our way up to Stag Saddle (c. 1900 vertical metres). Sam hasn’t seen pattern base skis in action so with the skins back in the pack soon I leave him and Charlie behind. This rolling terrain is what pattern base skis were designed for.
Kick and glide up Camp Ck valley .. photo by Charlie Mowbray
We get to the headwall and I add skins. There are sizable patches of ice where the skins save some effort and Sam gives instruction in how to cope. I find it irritating to unloop the poles and to keep the skis sliding on the surface. If I fall with an unlooped pole I’ll keep gripping it and bash the weak thumb. But I appreciate that he’s a big mountain tourer where a loss of traction means a serious slide a long way down.
Again, he’s pacing me. I’m used to ploughing on ’til out of breath and stopping but his approach is to go slow and keep going. That’s a change in a lifetime habit for me but I can see his point.
On the way up to the saddle we see the debris of a recent slab avalanche. In a break for a feed, Sam describes avalanche types and their causes. It would take only a small slab avalanche and you’d be cactus. I check to see if my transceiver is still on.
We make the saddle in a strong wind and even with full-width skins on and snow plowing get pushed over the lee side, which is where we wanted to go anyway to get some shelter. We refuel and climb back finding some shelter behind a knob to take the skins off. Then it’s back down through some bowls. There’s a bit of loose stuff there to get some turns in but otherwise it’s hardpack. We glide a long run down the W side of the valley wall slowly losing height. The calves ache with the long minutes holding the ski edges into the snow.
We drop down towards the hut; the snow is a bit softer now and Charlie shows his skills with some vigorous turns timed to the last cm of cover. Sam cooks dinner again, as NZ guides do, and describes his most-welcomed dish: snags in cream cheese with veggies. Charlie and I splutter. Sam says there are no leftovers. We agree we must come back to experience it.
Next morning shows another dusting of snow. I don’t want to hold the others back and stay in the hut doing chores and writing up the diary. They pick a ridge route back up the range and crack Beuzenberg peak. By lunchtime they’re back and we break camp and start the trek back down to the vehicle.
Hall Range from Rex Simpson Hut
For more photos see http://flickr.com/photos/30283858@N07/sets/
Cardrona ski field
I have a few days left and headed to Wanaka to check out a resort. This was October but there was still cover around. Cardrona was recommended by Sam as having some wide open slopes (aka, good for an old phart). Forecast was for gale force winds moderating to strong. Occasional showers. Resort website had it as moderating winds. LoL.
Got up there early. Windy, bit of drizzle. Snow hard, and fast courtesy of hydro-lube. Got some teles going on green and blue runs. After an hour took a break in the cafe. Rain was setting in. Oh well, go out for a few more runs and see. Snow now very much slower and heavier.
So on the start of the last run I decide this is it. And then crunch. Poor vis. Not clear why I came to grief. Left knee screaming. Snow plough to the resort medical centre. Get seen immediately by a doc and then after a short wait by their physio. Lots of pushing and pulling on the knee and non-committal comments. Eventually the doc guesses a snapped ACL. He’s trashed one himself and is waiting for surgery. The physio has to go off mountain and drives me to the medical centre at Wanaka. Here the advice is to do the RICE thing. I see another doc who thinks it’s just an MCL strain but gets me into radiography. Film shows no bone damage. Coincidentally, both the physio and the Wanaka doc are getting into tele turning.
Can hobble around so dine very well at a place overlooking the lake. Next morning the knee feels like crap and I’m happy to have the scheduled look by a Wanaka physio. She reckons it’s an ACL rupture and puts me into compression sock, brace and crutches.
But good service all around. No fault accident scheme means I’ve had two physio and two GP consults at minimal cost. Just have to pay for crutches, knee brace and Xrays and the local GP surcharge.
The service from the travel insurer is another matter however, and another story.
Some reflections on gear
For the soft snow the Boundless were too narrow. It was exhausting work doing mediocre teles. That said, I’ve never had lessons under those kind of conditions and will need to take some before going back. The bindings were 7TM Tours. They’re DIN-rated releasables. Unfortunately they don’t release fowards.
The guiding firm gear guide, and the www.ski.com.au BC forum advice, was to take a hard shell jacket. Next time I’d take soft shell for better breathability.
Full side-zip overpants are a necessity. Mine were of Paclite with Proshell reinforcement. They worked fine until the rain at Cardrona where the water resistant zips leaked where they cupped. That could have been expected and I’d take them again.
I mostly used polypro gloves which were fine. In harsher conditions I used Ventia material overmitts on them and the latter didn’t impress. Didn’t breathe very well at all. Greasy wool mitts were a backup for colder weather. Sam wore insulated rigger’s gloves when things got cold. Course he needed to have good grip to pull an unfortunate out of a crevasse. And these are good on club fields with rope tows too. They wouldn’t fit over my splint though.
In L. Tekapo a shop was selling Icebreaker thermals at a discount. Picked up a 200 gsm zip polo top. Next door picked up a knock-off brand that was about 50% heavier. Wore both for 5 days non-stop. Soft against the skin and no stink at all at the end. Exxy yes but definately a step above polyester base layers. And a step or two below for washing convenience.
Headwear: I like the black wool fishermen’s caps you can buy at ordinary outdoor gear shops for 12 bucks or so. They’re comfortable in a wide range of conditions and have a peak to keep the sun out of your eyes. If there’s a cold wind you can readily pull your jacket hood over it. Only when it gets really chilly do I don a thick fleece beanie.
I took a DLSR with an 18-55mm kit lens and a 70mm prime. Sam astutely advised on the Tasman day to keep it around my neck under the hard shell or I wouldn’t be taking photos. The kit lens performed well and I wouldn’t bother with the prime next time. Only disappointment was underexposure of snow vistas. I’d tried exposure adjustment but just couldn’t see what it was doing on the LCD screen in the bright light. Then exposed for the sky and dropped the camera to the scene but that didn’t work either. Of course, the pics can all be adjusted with s/w and a couple of those posted on flickr got the treatment.
Experience with the guiding company.
I knew nothing about avalanche conditions or crevasses and was on my own initially so of course contracted for a guide before leaving Oz. Alpine Recreation did the job; their comms, food and logistics were excellent. They kindly found some sourdough bread for my lunches. The Rex Simpson Hut is theirs and has a pot-belly heater, two burner gas stove for cooking and 12v solar-powered lights. It also has sleeping bags, pillows and mattresses. (AR have an extensive program of 3 and 5 day stays in the Hut involving day tours into terrain of varying degrees of challenge).
On a clear afternoon the sun coming in to the hut from the W warmed it nicely and windows provided inspiring views over the Lake towards the Godley Glacier valley and the Hall Range.
In normal conditions, whatever they are these days, you can ski much of the distance from road to hut.
We had unstable weather which Sam reckoned usually starts in the Sth Island high country around Sept. 20, though this year he said it came a day early. Certainly, for big mountain touring you need to leave a day or two at least free before and after to allow itinerary changes.
*****
Would I go back? Like a shot. For the big mountain stuff.
And with fatter skis / better technique / and after a much more serious fitness regime than this time.
****
Sources and links:
http://www.alpinerecreation.com/alpinetouring.html
Sam Bosshard: sbosshard@xtra.co.nz Specialises in big mountain climbing and touring. Based in Twizel. Damn good guide.
Broadbent, J. (2004) New Zealand Backcountry Skiing Christchurch: NZ Alpine Club
Volken, M. and others (2007) Backcountry Skiing: Skills for Ski Touring and Ski Mountaineering Seattle: The Mountaineers Books