The South Face of Douglas

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THE SOUTH FACE OF DOUGLAS Greg Ord Soon after the end of exams the weather map cleared and we crammed ourselves into dirty Derek's tiny Toyota and headed south to sample thej joys of Mt Cook National Park. Two days later while the rest of the team were still sitting exams, Derek and I were sitting on top of Mt Cook, A "get fit" climb for us, we had helped guide a portion of his extended family up there. A great day was capped off with an exciting descent in a whiteout. We returned to civilisation the next day and celebrated with a meal at the THC. The following day saw us join up with the rest of the crew and cruise off down to the aeropuerto (that's Spanish for airport"). Uninhibited by our overdrafts we signed on the bottom line and flew into Pioneer Hut (at the top of the Fox Glacier) in a Mount Cook Airlines porter. Much to our delight the plane circled several times under the south face of Mt Douglas, the main objective of the trip, before landing. A warm-up climb of Mt Haidinger was completed that afternoon with the troops all jostling for line (peak??) honours. 4.00a.m. the next day at the bottom of the 'main objective' was a little early, so we sat around and attempted to psyche up. This worked well for Mad climbers and Englishmen. ? - Greg Ord Derek who oozed confidence but I just felt sick, reminding myself that this was a climb that Douglas is one of those peaks with a very pointy written accounts described as committing. I top. Clambering to the ridge, I stood on the wasn't sure whether I wanted to be summit and gazed down the other side for the committed...or ought to be! first time. Fantastic! I traversed the narrow summit with a feeling of triumph. Belaying Derek up we were both elated, having completed this, one of New Zealand's classic alpine climbs in four hours. An attempt at summit photos was thwarted by the lack of film in Derek's camera. Brave, yes; but a bit of a bozo sometimes! Descending the other side we met Tom soloing his way up. We joined forces and spent some time indulging in admiring the awesome surroundings before continuing. Then back to the hut, doing our best to avoid the crevasses on the way, of course. Jim and Steve arrived back sometime later on in the day, having had a bit of a tougher (a euphemism for a nasty religious experience) time on their route. We wandered on up. There was a section of A successful week of climbing later we arrived vertical ice in the first gully. Derek glided over it back at Mt Cook. We had completed climbs of Mt and I somehow managed to struggle up. Further Cook, Mt Tasman, Mt Douglas, two peaks of up light dawned and the exposure was Haast, Mt Lendenfeldt, Mt Haidinger, Glacier tremendous. We could hear the calls of our Peak, Mt Dixon twice (all 3000 metre peaks) and friends in the next gully and conversed with hoots a main divide crossing at Pioneer Pass. We had of encouragement. Toward the top we rounded a pigged out, peak bagging and were bloated. corner and were confronted with the 'steep' upper portion on the central gully. "Only eighty metres On the trip was T & M Greg Ord and various of the nasty stuff to go", I thought. Fortunately other knobby student types such as Derek Chinn, the rope was sixty metres long so Derek got to Vaughan Smith (Jim), Tom Murphy and Steven deal with a good portion of it. Hooray! Gunn.