Climbs from the Garden of Allah Snowfields

Machine-read text (unproofread)

Read from the scans by software, so it contains mistakes. Typing it up properly would help blind readers: use Suggest an edit.

CLIMBS FROM THE GARDEN OF ALLAH SNOWFIEIDS. "We look upon them, and our nature fills With loftier images from their life apart, They set our feet on curves of freedom, bent To snap the circles of our discontent. Geoffrey Winthrop Young. FOR CHRISTMAS DINNER we hastily gobbled a few boiled sweets, as we cowered under a rock projection, in torrential rain. Ahead of us was the Agnes Bivvy, our destination three miles away, and at the terminal of the Wee MacGregor Glacier. Behind us lay the lower reaches of the Clyde River, flanked by the outer ranges of the Alps. The morning had been spent travelling from the Broadleaf Hut, first over easy river flats, then up steep scrubby bluffs to sidle the river, hard into the gorge side. This place is aptly named the "Sewer." While struggling over the last bluff, with our 60 lb packs of food and high alpine gear, we met the Tuaroa Creek, now a raging torrent. With difficulty we crossed, and, with apprehension we thought of the angry Agnes Stream, Reaching Emily Creek( in fine weather a trickle) my two companions, Max Pemberton and Peter Carpenter, and myself spent a fruitless half hour trying to cross.. We finally admitted defeat. A little excavation and we soon had the Alpine tent up. We blew up our Li-Lus and crawled into our sleeping bags. Lateron the trip, we affactionately referred to our air mattresses I in as our In Lu's!' It rained and blew all night, but we were away again next day by late afternoon and we literally floated our argosies up to the Agnes Bivvy. Our crossing of the Agnes Stream was most spectnculnr. The next day the sun shone, 6ur gear dried out and our spirits rose, so much in fact that we left for a training climb in the afternoon, Max who had not been at all well to date decided to go down river and out, rai ther than spoil our climbing. I left early next day, taking Max back down the Clyde and through the country we had previously earned so hard. Our crossing of the flooded Clyde was easy, but notso on the return, I had quite a tussle. The round trip took me nine hours. Back at the Agnes two Auckland people met up with us and spent the night at the Bivvy. The rest of their party of eight had passed us and carried on up to the Garden of Eden Snowfield to await their Air drop, which eventually did not "drop," Originally our aim had been to enter the Garden of Allah Snowfields by the Lambert Col, to explore around Mt. Lambert and then to enter the Lord River and to climb the virgin glaciers of the Rakaia Peak's West faces, With our party strength weakened we accpeted the Aucklander's invitation to "come up and camp in our Garden, " They were digging in but we

preferred to use the tent rather than the snow cave. Leaving early next morning, the four of us started the gradual climb up the Wee MacGregor Glacier. First the jumped up morraine, then the ice and snow of the steep faces to the Pert Col at 6,500 feet. We had a brew, surrounded by the wealth of Alpine Soenery. Climbing up on to the Garden of Eden Snowficlds we slugged it to Adams Cel put in a camp at 6,200 feet, between Guardian Peak and the South Newton Peak, Peter and I set out early next morning for a climb on Mt,Tyndal, the highest peak in the area 8,266 feet, Working our way up and around the huge crevasses to the summit outcrop, we were joined by five Aucklanders for the final pitch. Apart from the 200 foot' summit rock ridge, we were in a land of snow and ice. On the return from Tyndal we climbed Baker Peak, an casy climb, and arrived back at 4.p.m, the virtue of a high camp. The weather still held fine so next morning we set off early for the peaks of Farrar, two pcaks on the extreme South Garden Snowfield. We ascended the first peak by the steep South East Ridge, having to cut our way in many places. The view of the back of the Godley Peaks was magnificent, perched above the dccp greens of the Watarara beoch forests. Farther in the distance Cook stood cut, domina ting its neighbours. We desconded the East Peak of Farrar, by a steep loose rock face, and made around stecp snow faces to the West Peak, an easy rock climb. these two peaks on the Garden side is a heavily crevassed snow face. We descended by this to Angel Col. Behind the Pcak ( Guardian Peak) hetween Angel and Adams Col is the neve fo eding the Adams Icc fall and Glacier. We cut behind Guardian Peak and pecred over bluffs to a jumble of ice, a thousand fect below us. The reflections off the snow were by now giving us trouble and that night we suffered in camp with snow burns, On the return from Farrar we had noticed a ridge of high peaks running pannllel to the Tyndal -Newton Group. The highest of these gave promise of being the one which was originally to have been our objective from the Lambert Snowfields, or the Garden of Allah, Next morning Matt F, Keith W. Patricia C and myself leftat dawn, and cramponed to the head of the Bcclzcbub Glacier. For the rest of the day, from thercon we climbeu in virgin country. At the head of the Glasier is a small group of peaks, we climbed the highest 7,300 feet to gaze at the huge expanse of the Rakaia Peaks, Opposite was the torturcous ice face of Mt,Lambert, 500 fect higher than we. South of Lambert ran our objective, a high ridge of four peaks of 7,500 to ty our skill. We had little difficulty in descending to our packs on a high/named saddle then ascending Peak 1 of 7,400 feet. Between Peaks 1 and 2we took three quarters of an hour to descend a seventy five foot vertical step in the ridge, to an ice ridge as sharp as a knife. This fine ice Arete terminated on a steep snow face that gave us some apprehension.. Below us yawned the crevasses. From here we began the traverse of Peak 2, in earnest. The exposed snow face forced us to belay carefully and snatch what small outcrops of rocks we could find as anchors. We were rewarded with a wonderful view from the this being the highest Peak of 7,550 feet. The peak had two summits and the atopet down" from the second one was quite a problem, we were faced with either a difficult repell of 20 feet on the Beelzebub Glacier side or a shelf traverse on the Adam's face. We chose the The face, which was very exposed fell for 3,000 feet into the Adams below, Asthey Matt and I joined onto Pat and Keith's rope and we were able to lower the axes and packs in places. It all took time, but with care we were able to"safe" one another. We finally got back on to the ridge, the twin summit traverse had taken five hours. Above us, further along the ridge, rose Peak 3. Pat and Keith began to tire, and decided to descend leaving Matt and I to carry on. We put the pace on, and after a long, snow arete had been surmounted we scrambled up the last few rocks to the top - at 7,400 feet (according to the aneroid), The time was 6.30 p.m. a little late for such a height. In the distance we could see Pat and Keith, threading their way 2,000 feet below us, amongst the crevasses. We decided to leave the fourth peak, somewhere in the clouds, now rolling in from the coast and to return as speedily as possible. We belayed whilst going down the rock rib, and an occas ional stumble reminded us of the fact that by now we were extremcly tired. The rib terminated and we took to the snow - incredibly steep. It was pigoon-holing all the way down, and ignoring the view of the glacier below as we looked between our legs, Every cunning move in technique that we knew came into play. After an hour of this in which we had descended only one thousand feet, we met easier slopes and glissaded for 800 feet in one go. Racing across the glacier we slugged it up to our camp on the Col, We had been on the move for fourteen continuous hours. The following day the weather showed signs of breaking and the Aucklanders, not having received their air-drop decided to pull out. We joined forces and left at mid-day for the Perth River to Wataroa. To reach the floor of the Perth Glacier from the huge shelf, which constitutos the Garden of Eden Snowfields, we dropped down from the extreme head of the Glacier or neve. This was not direct enough for some of the party, one falling off an ice wall for 40 fcet, to land on his ice axe. He broke only the axe. After our sojourn of five days on the snow the greens of the Perth to us seemed vivid, and our evening camp with a fire and the Keas squawking, was another world, The weather finally broke, as we left next morning in heavy rain, We soon came to grips with some of the roughest bush in New Zealand, This. was soon in flood and we were forced to slash our way high above the river. It was exhausting work, Late in the afternoon we met a side stream whose torrent was a roaring gutter of water. We were forced to spend three hours in constructing two bridges of saplings and ropes before we were able to cross and once safely over travelled by torch light until a huge rock offered us shelter from the storm. The storm blew itself out in the night and as we left next morning the sky appeared blue, Our next obstacle, Scone Creek was in flood but we were fortunat te in being able to use the wire rope as an aerial-way, our chair being a piece of timber suspended by rope slings and karabiner clips, From the scone to Wataroa we enjoyed a good track that would have done credit to the Tararuas, Our journeying down river, on the track was memorable with the beautiful Westland rain forest shown at its best with the sunlight flickering through. In retrospect we had a difficult trans-alpine crossing of the Alps, We had received a hiding both going in and coming out. The area of the Garden of Eden is notorious for bad weat ther, we were most fortunate in enjoying fine weather on the tops. Although we hardly touched the virgin country, this being our original objective, we had seen some of the country that was entirely new to us and had enjoyed our climbs. On reaching the "Coast" road, we looked back up the Perth, rain clouds caressed the ridges hiding the snows where we had trodden. G.H, Thompson