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Faerie Queene – “Upon a great adventure he was bound”

July 2005

Tom Zink, Wanda Stratford, and Mike Peat joined me from Wellington. And we were joined by Tom Wilson who was on an extended South Island odyssey. I picked this mountain as being fairly technically easy for the early snows. As it turned out with a ferry crossing in mountainous seas, and nearly 2" of snow on the Lewis Pass road the technical aspects were buried in the vehicular approach! After disembarking from our very cheap but reliable hire car (thanks Shoestring rentals!) we made rapid progress along the well graded but tedious St James Walkway through Cannibal Gorge arriving at Ada Pass Hut some four hours later.

On Sunday we were up at 5am and away by 6am making rapid progress along to Camera Gully, which after an ankle deep crossing of the Ada River we started to ascend to the dawn of a BSD (blue sky day). The snowline yielded hidden "treasures" - a meter deep of unconsolidated snow over scrub and rocks! An 8m waterfall blocking our path was easily outflanked as we proceeded up through knee and occasionally waist deep snow. In turns of 15-20 minutes each of us broke the way and only by this method with so strong a team were we able to make progress. By 1800m, still 400m short and late in the morning, 3 of us could go no further and retired to an adjacent tarn. At this point the snow firmed up and some mixed climbing on a rib ridge yielded the main ridge which was traversed by myself and Tom Wilson for ca. 1km to the summit which was obtained at 2pm.

Out to the east extensive views were obtained of the Ada and Wairau valleys, with Travers and Tappy in the distance to the north. To the west, a sea of cloud extended beneath us broken only by the jagged peaks of the Spenser range.

After 30 minutes we declared the innings closed and retired from the peak and bum-slid/slogged our way back down (must get myself some snow shoes!) arriving back at the hut at 7pm to make it a 13 hour night-day-nighter!

Walking out the next day we invested some time at Maruia hot pools, which was a welcome finish to a somewhat more challenging than expected trip!

For those of you wondering why some fairly staunch mountaineers would have themselves associated with a mountain with such an odd name ("The gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine" - Ed) there is a bit of history there. Faerie Queene is a poetic parody by Edmund Spenser from the 1500's. Apparently it depicts the Catholic church as being corrupt but about to be reformed by Queen Elizabeth the 1st - quite appropriate for a QB weekend climb!

The mountain was named by an eccentric Irishman WL Travers who worked as a surveyor for Nelson-Marlborough. He named a number of other features after poets too including Lake Tennyson and the Spenser range. See the following links for details. http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/fqueen/ and
http://www.patbarrettimages.co.nz/words/matakitaki191099.shtml

Kevin Patterson