Ascent of the Low Peak of Aoraki

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Ascent of the Low Peak of Aoraki Lisa Lee-Johnson There was a rumble outside the hut andIsat up with a jump, certain that we were about to be buried under a thousand tonnes of rock descending from the cliffs above. It was pitch dark and the hut shook with the force of the storm raging outside. More sleet rattled on the windows and L cursed my overwrought imagination and tried to get back to sleep. was staying at Empress Hut, at the head of the We passed the other two climbers as they belayed a Hooker Glacier, not too many kilometres from short section up rock slabs. The rock was solid but Mt Cook village. The high peak off Mt Cook/Aoraki we climbed carefully, and I breathed a sigh of relief towered directly above us, separated by 1200 metres when we regained snow slopes higher on the face. of near-vertical rock and ice. Earlier in the year a We were all a bit jumpy because of a fall Malcolm geologist had decided that this ridge was unstable had taken several days earlier. and SO Empress Hut was closed. Fortunately for us This had happened on the buttresses below the hut was not locked and it was still included in Gardiner Hut in the lower Hooker Valley. This hut is the daily radio schedules. The storm currently beating normally accessed via several pitches of steep rock at the hut had hit 24 hours after we'd returned from protected by fixed wires running up the cliff. The as successful ascent of the low peak of Aoraki via the previous time I'd been there we had been able to Northwest Couloir route. avoid this by frontpointing up a steep couloir to the There were four in our original party: myself, right of the wires. But on this occasion we found the Bevan Campbell from Hamilton, Malcolm Stoney couloir was an overhanging waterfall, and access to from Auckland, and Tom Sandry from the UK. After the wires was cut off by very unstable looking snow a couple of days at Empress Hut, Bevan had headed slabs. Instead we climbed the icefall until this became out, leaving the remaining three of us to climb impassable, then started up the buttress towards the together. hut. We expected to gain easy slabs after no more We had set off at around midnight, cramponing than two easy pitches and this proved nearly on crisp snow, our head-torches hardly needed in correct. Tom is a great rock climber and he did a the brilliant moonlight. We made good time across veryi impressive job of leading both pitches. But our the Empress Shelf to the bottom of the NW Couloir, enormous packs made the climbing al lot more difficult and seti up a belay for the short steep section through and we were forced to haul packs up the first pitch. the schrund cutting off the couloir. Above this the To save time we protected the second pitch by angle was not too steep and we were quite sliding a prusik up the rope, rather than belaying comfortable soloing. The snow in the wide couloir from above. Bevan and successfully seconded this, was reassuringly hard. The day before we'd left Mt although I lonly just avoided testing the rather sketchy Cook village, a climber had been avalanched in this anchor through sheer adrenaline and some wellsection while descending in the soft snow of the late timed hauling on the rope by Tom. But Malcolm fell afternoon. With our early start we hoped to be well while climbing through this difficult section, and from off the mountain before the slopes softened up too what we pieced together afterwards, it seems as much. though he must have grabbed for the rope as he was For several hours the route was fairly obvious in falling and thereby released the grip of the prusik on the moonlight, and we alternated the route finding the rope. This may have been a good thing as the with two other climbers who had set off at the same anchor was never tested Malcolm fell about 20 time as our party. At one point we scouted a route metres, and stopped when his feet hit a ledge. He onto the rock ridge to the right, but decided to stick completely burned out the palms of his gloves, but to the snow slopes on the left for as long as possible. fortunately only suffered slight rope burn to his I much prefer snow or ice to alpine rock, and we hands. This incident had left us all a little shaken, needed to avoid having to belay, as this would be and thereafter we climbed a little more carefully. very slow with a party of three. High above the Northwest Couloir, we took a rest Some time later, as the sky was just beginning to atop a rocky spur. It took the opportunity to take some lighten, we reached the end of the upper snow slopes. dawn photos. Watching the sun come up from high Tramping and Mountaineering 2000

On low peak with the summit ridge andi high peak in the background Lisa Lee-Johnson on a big mountain is an incomparable experience. sections of the traverse. The route looked al bit more Cotton wool clouds drifted in the valleys still in serious than I'd expected and I was actually quite shadow fart belowus, and we were looking down on relieved when the group consensus was tohead down the peaks of the Main Divide stretching off to the the way we had come up. The other two climbers south as far as the eye could see. The first rays of had come to the same conclusion and were already sunlight caught the summit pyramid of Sefton, heading down. We caught up with them where we'd normally towering far above Mt Cook village but now gained the main ridge, and agreed to join forces to below us too. minimise the amount of gear we had to abandon. We still had some mixed ground ahead, but we We avoided the rock section by abseiling down knew that the main ridge was not far above us. We the couloir to the left (looking down) of our ascent picked a route through small bluffs, sticking to the route. With five of us the abseiling was slow and snow routes as much as possible. After a brief stop cold, and it was a relief when the angle eased enough while I repaired a busted crampon strap, we finally to put away the rope. We then frontpointed down topped out on the ridge. The other climbers overtook for SO long that I was quite convinced that we'd us again as we climbed the last few hundred metres somehow missed the Empress Shelf and were tot the summit, sticking well to the left of thei impressive descending to the level of Gardiner Hut. Iwas most cornices overhanging the South Face. surprised when I realised that we had traversed We'd hoped to traverse the airy one-kilometre across without noticing it and were actually back at summit ridge to the High Peak, thus completing the the bottom of the NW Couloir. My calves went on grand traverse of Mt Cook. Because of this we'dleft strike and we abseiled the final schrund using a funny nothing at Empress Hut, and were carrying minimal T-section snowstake that someone had thoughtfully bivvy gear. left for us. It was still early morning and the weather was Back on safe ground we had al belated lunch stop, clear, but on the exposed summit ridge there was a and then the last leisurely stroll (stagger) back across cold wind blowing, which would have led to a high the Empress Shelf to reach the hut around 5pm. risk of hypothermia if we needed to belay any Smug grins and congratulations all around. Tramping and Mountaineering 2000