Club nights are at Turnbull House, on the first unimpeded Monday of every month. New and prospective members are welcome. Meetings and talks start at 8.00 pm with club business and tea and coffee afterwards.

Meet at the Backbencher Pub on Molesworth St for our pre-section night liasons, from 6:30pm until after 7:00pm. We look forward to seeing you there.

Meguru Inoue - Tramping in the Ruahines

Meguru Inoue

In December getting away from the mad pre-Christmas rush, Meguru Inoue and Terry Crippen (both from Palmerston North) spent a couple of enjoyable weeks climbing in the Arthurs Pass area. Spending a week up at Barker Hut the two of them with others, climbed Wakeman, Harper and Murchison. Meguru did most of the plugging in the soft snow and Terry tailing behind. During the following days Meguru and Terry then climbed Rolleston, with soft snow conditions up and down again. Then it was up the Deception and a climb of Franklin from Upper Deception Hut. With the poor visiability, an addition traverse of the connnecting ridge to the south was undertaken by mistake with some enjoyable rope work before ascending the south ridge proper, giving us a 15 hour+ day!.

Following the Arthurs Pass activity, early January had Meguru and Terry at Upper Tasman Hut for a few days doing a bit of glacier travel and crevasse extraction practice, wandering up Alymer, Hochstetter and Annan in the process. After that Meguru headed into Plateau Hut with her climbing partners from Japan for their attempt on Mt Cook.

It was on this trip that Meguru died when a rock anchor gave way during an abseil descent of Summit rocks.

Meguru lived and worked in Palmerston North during 2006, and joined in on many PNTMC trips. She tramped the Tararuas and Ruahines, climbed on Ruapehu and Taranaki, and continued exploring New Zealand mountains at Arthurs Pass, Nelson Lakes, and then Tasman Saddle early this year. She joined NZAC late last year to ease her accommodation in the mountains, to meet fellow climbers, and to further be part of the mountain scene. She loved the mountain scene dearly. Aoraki/ Mt Cook was one of her aims, and with friends from Japan, she made it to the summit during January 2006. She never made it back down.

Meguru was a popular tramping and climbing companion. It was a real pleasure to be able to tramp and climb with Meguru, to share a hut with her, a smokey fire place, a cold river crossing, or a muddy track. She was a fit and capable woman. When I first asked of her fitness when preparing for a tramp to the Ruahine tops, she told me that she had completed the Jumbo Holdsworth Trail Race once, and wanted to do the Kaweka Challenge with her father one day, and the Tararua Mountain Race. She had a lot of determination, and like Aoraki/ Mt Cook, wasn’t shy attempting such a challenge. On my last trip with her, we tramped into Totara Flats after a sizeable Tararua flood. Meguru relished the sights of the big Tararua forest and river and hills as much as the native flowers- she worked in a native plant nursery, and for Agresearch. She studied the plants, our equipment, the Tararua map (and many other maps and guidebooks), and had many plans to return. She never will. Her many friends will miss her, but not forget her.

Tony Gates

Taupo rocks!

On a couple of trips over summer, Craig and Cat Robinson, Dave Shanks and Rachael Schmidt checked out the rock at Kawakawa Bay. They report it is nice gritty stuff to climb on, rhyolite being a lot easier to smear on than the ignimbrite of Whanganui Bay. There are a couple of nice multi-pitch routes (grades 15 and 16) on the area known as the Point (though the phrase "protection thin at the top" in the rather spare guide notes from www.freeclimb.co.nz, is a definite understatement!) and some lovely crack climbs close to the campsite (note the guide notes again, "save your big gear for the top!").

Kawakawa Bay is not the peaceful paradise that Whanganui is however! Prepare to be inundated in the evenings by drunken boaties with rather dubious taste in music...

Rachael Schmidt

D’Archiac Conquered – NZAC Climbing Camp 2006-07

D’Archiac is a grade 2 peak, and features as one of the 15 peaks in Hugh Logan’s “Classic Peaks of New Zealand”. Joined by two others, Ben Lee and Stewart Dempsey, we spent New Years day walking in to Forbes Biv with 2 challenging river crossings. Joined by Todd Ellis from 5am the next morning we set forth in misty conditions. “The weather doesn’t look very good?”. “Ah, it’s just a bit of East Coast clag, it’ll soon burn off”. We moved quickly through the gently sloped moraine to the first buttress. It was still murky. “Let’s have a look at the top of the buttress before we call it a day.”

Via the V-shaped central snow gully, we easily free-climbed the 200m rock buttress adjacent to the icefall, to arrive in somewhat soft shin-deep snow conditions at the base of the South Forbes Glacier. By this time the mist had burnt off and we were viewing a blue sky day with no wind. We wound up around the crevasses and ascended to Revelation Col (2350m) around 1.30pm, after having lunch. By this time all our boots had leaked in the wet, softening conditions, seemed a waste of effort bringing the extra pair!

From here stretched the summit ridge for 500m, often broken and difficult in places, but always free-climb-able once the ideal path was found, except for one short 10m section about 50m below the summit which I lead. Ideally we would have chosen the steeper snow couloir/slope on the left but conditions were very warm and soft, so the mixed rock/snow ridge was preferred.

Summitting at 5.15pm, conditions changed to being misty with a cool 30km/h southerly blowing across – damn, no decent summit photo! We quickly descended off the top ridge to the main ridge (2 raps) and 150m below the summit turned off to the right to descend the soft, steep (40 degree) snow couloir/slope, down climbing pigeon-hole style facing in, with visibility now down to 30m. After 50m I heard a shouting and something slide past. By the time I looked up I could only see Todd, with Ben being further back in the mist. I felt that dread when you know something is not quite right, you are hoping that nothing has happened, but you ask the question anyway: “I think we’ve lost Stewart?”, I said. “I know” said Todd.

“Stewart, where are you?” I yelled. Silence. I carried on down-climbing for a further 100m. “Stewart, are you there?” I yelled. Silence. I carried on down-climbing for a further 100m. I could see him on the side next to the rocks in the thick mist. “I can see him”, I yelled up to Ben and Todd. I saw him stand up and move towards me and then turn back into a rock as the mist thinned? “No, it’s just a damn rock”, I cursed.

I carried on down-climbing for a further 100m. “Stewart, Stewart”, we yelled again. “I’m down here”, yelled back a voice, strong and sure. We felt so relieved. “Watch out, there’s a huge crevasse not far below you”, he said. And so there was, almost invisible from above in the mist it was 30-50m deep and stretched right across the snow slope, 2-3m wide with a 3-4m drop from the top lip to the bottom edge. We rapped it on a dodgy snow bollard thanks to a section Stewart had filled in with his snow slide.

Stewart was in good shape considering the 300-400m distance he had fallen. He had a black eye and what appeared to be a badly sprained ankle which later turned out to have a small fracture in it. He could hobble along OK but progress was going to be slow.

He said that he had been going down facing in but thought that he could get down faster facing out as he had often done under what he thought were similar conditions to Ruapehu. However the icy conditions of Ruapehu weren’t here and the slipperiness of the soft snow surprised him. Todd saw him turn outwards and was just about to say that wasn’t a good idea when Stewart leaned back off balance and sat on the snow. His feet slipped out and a bum slide was initiated which he first tried to slow with the shaft of his axe without success. He then rolled over onto his front to get more traction, his crampons caught, and he flipped over backwards in a tumble during which his crampons caught a further 2-3 times probably damaging his ankle at this point. After this it was a straight slide on his front, head-first carried along by a plume of snow, for hundreds of metres, with a brief airborne interlude as he rocketed over the crevasse, the soft snow and his momentum saving him from further injury.

We slowly headed in the direction of the rock buttress which I had GPS’d. The visibility was still just 30-50m throughout. We finally rapped off the last of the buttress in the dark, and made the gently sloped moraine at the bottom (1400m) by 12midnight. Stewart and Ben by a combination of moving and bivvying made it back to Forbes Biv over the next 12 hours. Thankfully overnight conditions were very warm, around 10 -12 deg C.

Todd and myself quickly headed back to Forbes Biv where I had a brief few hours sleep before heading down valley to get help. There had been a lot of snow melt which had swollen the Forbes in the early morning, and for Stewart to carry a heavy pack on a dodgy ankle was a little more risky than I felt comfortable with.

It took me just 1.5 hours to get to Mistake Flats Hut on the Havelock, arriving there at 2pm to four 4WD’s, three tents, one hut, no mountain radio, and no people! I seemed destined to spend most of the day alone.

I continued down valley, saw no one else until Black Mountain Hut, 5 hours later and 24 hours after the accident. After raising the alarm NZAC Camp Planner Chris North immediately took charge and debriefed me, noting relevant details, damage assessment, and went through the necessary procedures to undertake a rescue. By 9pm a chopper was inbound from Christchurch. Unfortunately it had to turn around due to low cloud, but returned the next morning picking Stewart up from Mistake Forks Hut from where he was flown to Christchurch Hospital. Here he was diagnosed with a broken ankle and put in plaster. This was a very successful rescue with a happy ending, very well organized and undertaken by Westpac Rescue Helicopters and the NZAC.

Additional photo’s/details can be viewed at http://kpatterson7.photosite.com/D-Archiac/
Climbers Kevin Patterson, Todd Ellis, Stewart Dempsey, and Ben Lee

Kevin Patterson

Tired, Sunburnt and Satisfied

It is a very rare occurrence that I am sitting in front of computer staring at a long-range weather forecast planning a trip into the hills without a tinge of nervousness. So it was again when with two friends, Sam ‘Woka’ Newton and Kip Chapman, I pulled in to a grey and dreary Omarama two days before New Years with exciting plans but much uncertainty over the weather situation. A quick analysis of the forecast showed a weakened southerly tail over the Southern Alps, petering out over the following two days then seemingly endless sunshine.

The decision was made to go with our original plan of a four-day trans-alpine trip between the Ahuriri and South Temple valleys.

The first day was as predicted overcast and showery. However that didn’t seem to matter as all we had to do was wander up the beautiful Ahuriri Valley and get into position to cross the Ahuriri-Temple Col in supposedly improving weather the next day. The four-and-a-half hour walk was the perfect leg stretcher for the harder days to follow.

With the weather a little miserable we decided to stay the night at Top Hut, approximately five kilometres before the head of the valley rather than camp higher up. We considered a good night sleep and an early start more advantageous than a high camp.

We woke up the next day to more miserable weather. It was supposed to clear during the day, so we took the gamble that it would do so in time for us to successfully cross into the South Temple Valley. My weather curse however seemed to be overshadowing the forecast as we set out through intermittent snow flurries and generally claggy conditions. We chatted to a couple of Germans who had tented further up near the top of the valley and had decided to wait the weather out. This conversation did little to fill me with confidence.

As we began facing the possibility of a quite significant navigation exercise through white-out conditions to make the col, the cloud in front of us suddenly lifted to reveal the tremendously impressive south face of Mt Huxley. The forecast was coming true. Ecstatically we ploughed our way up the snow-covered scree and boulders under the south face, dodging bluffs on our right hand side. The previous few days of inclement weather meant our next three to four hours were spent plugging knee-deep steps up the 700 or so vertical metres to the col.

With the sun on our backs and the sweat pouring off us we arrived at the col panting and breathless. The views over into the South Temple Valley and the South Branch of the Huxley were magnificent and quickly made up for the jelly-like feeling of our legs. We didn’t linger though as the snow was softening so we wanted to get off it as soon as possible before the inevitable sliding wet snow avalanches began. We also finally realised that all three of us had forgotten a sunhat.

An extremely fast descent into the South Temple, a satisfyingly late lunch and a weary trudge into South Temple Hut capped a very tiring but fantastic day. We turned in early; somewhat concerned with what effect two more days of good weather may have on our chances of contracting melanoma but nevertheless revelling in our mission.

The first part of the following morning was spent fashioning Lawrence Arabia style head scarves and bandannas and somewhat ironically hoping that the early morning high cloud would not burn off too quickly.

Our plan was to go over a small pass in the Barrier Range next to Mt Maitland that led into the east tributary of Watson Stream. This would then carry us back into the middle part of the Ahuriri Valley.

The first objective was to establish ourselves in the small valley which ran up to Mt Maitland. No easy task as we spent most of the morning navigating around, over, and under loose rocky bluffs. Although this was quite enjoyable we knew that it was consuming valuable time and energy. Once done we picked our way along the arid valley floor marvelling at the impressive rock flanks of Mt Maitland. I think all of us were already planning the next trip back here to climb it!

We knew at the head of the valley that we faced a couple of steep grinds to the col. There was a lot less snow on this side of the range so rather than step plugging our way to the top we had to contend with a few hundred vertical metres of extremely loose, large blocks of scree. This proved to be the most leg-burning part of the trip. For every step up, we lost at least half of that as the rock under our feet slid down the slope. All three of us chose different lines, confident in his ability to find the line of least resistance. It didn’t seem to matter though as we all arrived at the foot of the final snowslope at the same time. It was a great feeling arriving at the top of the col and descending down into a valley that we knew saw very little traffic save for the odd tahr and chamois.

We felt fitter than we did the day before so we decided to push on to the confluence of the northern and eastern branches of Watson Stream and managed to find a reasonable campsite with great views of Mt Barth, Mt Rigel and Mt Heim.

The final day was thankfully short. Navigating our way through the beach forest above the gorge out of Watson Stream and into the Ahuriri was easier than we thought and it was very gratifying to sit on a spur above the valley, eat morning tea and stare at the mountains that we had missed due to the low cloud on the first day.

A pleasant wander to the car and back to Omarama to check on our sunburn and investigate where the weather would take us next.

This is the beauty of travelling in the South Island when one has time on his hands. Within seven hours we found ourselves at Homer Hut in Fiordland soaking up the evening sunshine, with an eye on the next adventure.

Hayden Cox

Volunteers Needed To Help Save Ruapehu Hut

The Hut at Delta Corner that we all know and love is in need of some serious TLC to keep it functional. There will be a working bee on the weekend of 17th 18th March. The main areas of work are:

1.Some work on the exterior door
2.Put a big solid handle system on the front door
3.Aluminium plate on foyer floor
4.Replacing the access hatch to the water tank to keep our water clean (currently contains a lot of debris)
5.Some work on the foundations
6.Fill holes in external cladding and eaves

We will need people with handyman skills and as many again to assist them (hold, fetch, pass). The assistants get the opportunity to learn lots of skills. They need to be fit to be able to keep on the go for most of the day. There may be some heavy carries from the carpark or preferably from the top of the ski-lifts. Most important though a willingness to work and sense of humour.

Could anyone who wishes to volunteer please contact: Amanda Redvers or Jen Brown (contact details in the committee list )

WebCams

If work is getting on top of you, and you would rather be climbing, check out the links below when the boss isn't watching. (A big thanks to Don French)

Mt Egmonth/Taranaki
http://www.geonet.org.nz/taranaki.html

Central NI Volcanoes from Taupo
http://www.taupodc.govt.nz/AboutTaupoDistrict/WebCam.htm

Mount Ngauruhoe
http://www.geonet.org.nz/ngauruhoe.html

Mount Ruapehu – from Chateau
http://www.geonet.org.nz/ruapehu.html

Mount Ruapehu – from Ohakune
http://www.unique-art-gallery.com/gallery/webcaml.htm

Tararuas from Wellington
http://www.wn.co.nz/cameras/cam01.php

Nelson Lakes
http://www.snow.co.nz/clients/nelsonlakes/webcam.asp

Castle Hill Basin
http://www.castlehill.net.nz/webcam.htm

Mt Cook
http://www.alpineguides.co.nz/popup/cam.htm

Two Thumb range & Multi Brun (east)
http://www.tekapotourism.com/webcam.htm

Aspiring
http://www.lakewanaka.co.nz/index.cfm/web_cam/

Queenstown
http://www.skyline.co.nz/queenstown/webcam/

Scott Base
http://www.antarcticanz.govt.nz/education/2568

Allsorts of others at
http://www.enzed.com/cam.html

Christchurch Tramping Club Reunion

CHRISTCHURCH TRAMPING CLUB 75th ANNIVERSARY
Weekend after Easter 2007 (14/15 April 2007)
If you have ever had any involvement with the club come and help us celebrate

For details see our website http://www.ctc.org.nz
or contact Rex or Greta Vink
Ph (03) 352 5329, PO Box 527, Christchurch
email greta-vink@clear.net.nz

You think you have what it takes?

Family and work commitments have meant that I am not getting the time to dedicate to VertiGO that it deserves. If you would like to take over from me and add your own personal touch to the publication, send an email to me.

Editor

Aconcagua : 2007

The highest mountain in the Southern Hemisphere and outside Asia is the perfect choice to take your high altitude trekking to the next level. I'm organizing an Aconcagua expedition on 11-12/2007 and I'm looking for people to join the core group to work out the details during the next few months.

The expedition will be as independent as possible and guided or unguided depending on the route choice. Climbing Aconcagua does not necessarily require technical climbing skills but experience in high altitude trekking and fitness is required as the goal is not to use external help beyond the base camp. Later, when the exact budget, date, route and timetable have been set the expedition will be open for any club members to join.

Especially for those who aim on taking eight thousanders later Aconcagua is extremely good practice. I am also considering combining an acclimatisation trip to the Cotopaxi (and possibly the other volcanos there) in Equador just before the expedition. Please contact me through e-mail at jsarkila@gmail.com for more information and visit www.aconcagua.com for general information about the mountain.

Juho Sarkila, Wellington

Nepal – depart NZ late April 2007.

We are looking for additional people keen to go to Nepal – either for atrekking holiday or to climb Island Peak.

Sherpa Kamal Rai and his wife Sara are facilitating the above trip to Nepal, working with Adventure Travel. So far there are 3 adults + 18 mth old child in the trekking group and 3
adults in the climbing group. We currently have space for 3-4 trekkers and 1-3 climbers.

Guided Camping Trek 1 : Everest Base Camp and Island Peak (20 days).
Challenging, limited technical climb. Approx NZ$5,200

Guided Camping Trek 2 : Sherpa Villages (17 days). Easy. Approx NZ $4,800

Prices include: return airfares, taxes, accommodation in Thailand and Nepal,
food, internal airfares, climbing permits

For further information contact: Sara and Kamal Rai 04 528 3814, 021 747 994
Waypoint Adventures www.go2nepal.com