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The Editor was told there were only 11 on this trip. I counted 19 on the trip list. Only 14 turned up at the Railway Station but we gained another two enroute (Steve Burns via a taxi ride to Porirua, and Sean Wakely out of the mist and tofrential rain on the mountain).. %. Apart from all that, the trip to Dawson Falls in the bus, then the 90-minute climb up the "golden' ladder to Kapuni Lodge during the late hours of Friday and early hours of Saturday went O.K. : This was going to be a "hard" weekend. No bars-hold, no sote Bunches. Well, the rain came down in arctic buckets-full on dawn, Saturday. A quick, very wet, trip to the loo sorted the trip leader out and his decision to instruct from the pit for the morning was met with derision all round. We wont go into just how the knot came. undone. Suffice to: say the trip leader now has a large lump on his back and can. vouch for the texture of the concrete entrance to Kapuni Lodge. : A variety of. crevass-extraction methods were studied indoors during Saturday and. an equal variety of stews concocted during the evening. Sunday dawned to a quiet wind change and by 7.30 the party was scrambling upwards towards Fanthams Peak; a quick yarn on how to rope up, and 2 series of slides down to the bottom of the actual summit cone. We climbed steadily upwards through two cloud layers, enjoying the release from the world below and the confident bite of crampons. Greg Aimer and the trip leader reached the summit crater in time to climb the Sister and the top, and dabble on Sharks Tooth heforo the cloud layer rose to engulf all. One instructor, Chris Collins, nicely, held a slip on the way up, illustrating to: all that static belays and. self-arrest do work "to a certain degree". Greg and the trip leader both witnessed a spectacular fall by an Auckland University climber from near the top of Sharks Tooth to its bottom. SoI much for. ice-screw. runners In thick cloud the troops climbed down, abused almost continually at this stage by the trip leader for the lateness of hour. Pete, the driver, was little. worried, however, as, Dawson Falls had, proved an hospitable. spot to while away the hours. All in all, not a bad weekend and most'of us did manage to climb the great udder.
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