Y2K - It Has A Lot To Answer For, This Bug!

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Y2K It Has A Lot To Answer For, This Bug! Grant Wheaton Our vision was to camp at about 6500ft in the most amazing of glaciated settings imaginable, surrounded by sun-drenched snow draped peaks where muted voices may be understood one kilometre away, and to thus celebrate the millennium... Dreams are free too! A very special place, the Olivine Ice Plateau. - Tew Year's Eve Olivine Ice Plateau camp Things were becoming very difficult! abovet the main section of the glacier (a large Every single tie ripped off the Olympus tent in an flat glacier roughly ovate in shape, about instant. We had full storm gear on by then but even 3.5km long, and completely surrounded by peaks). with the tents deflated, we were unable to hold them Just as we completed our dinner and were about down with two persons inside. This was damn scary. to get all the goodies out to celebrate the end of The wind wanted to roll us up the 40-degree slope 1999 (fireworks and Baileys included) it started and over! Well, I've never heard of a tent being used raining gently from the north-east. Nothing unusual as a paraglider, and to hell with giving it a go or about rain in northern Fiordland! There go our being honorable (the captain going down with the golden sunset photos and no doubt our sunrise sinking ship and all that sort of stuff didn't appeal photos too! at all somehow), SO we decided to bail, heading for Three days of rain and a little wind followed. We a nearby schrund to seek shelter below the glacier were in a sheltered, schist rock enclosed, surface. amphitheater that Les located about 50 metres up Surprisingly, the other tents were standing, more from the main glacier and did little except catch up or less, SO wej joined three of our mates in tent CTC4 on sleep, play cards all day and spent the rest of the long, and tend to the usual YOUR CONSTANT REMINDERS THAT night exclaiming, above camp needs. Cabin fever the howling wind, about was a concern but the THE WEATHERMAN SAYS SUMMER the virtues of Y2K bugs twelve of us managed to WIL ARRIVE AFTER WERE BACK and weather forecasters' survive without demonstrat- AT WORK ARE NOT HELPFULO personal well-being. ing too much enthusiasm Amid the occasional howl for activity. There was even of laughter, at the total a competition as to who futility and stupidity of the could stay in the pit the situation, we held on to longest! The record was not the tent from the inside broken on this occasion, as the fly destroyed itself thus the record still stands along with the poles. at 36 hours of immobility Frozen hands, and being difficult when rain is tapbashed on the nose every ping on the fly sheet a few couple of seconds by a inches from your head! pole cannot be On the evening of the 3rd recommended as a the weather forecast wasi for sleeping tonic either! a brief southerly change Sleep became a distant from the south-east and up memory of white sandy to 35-km/h winds. A mere zephyr no worries beaches and lazy days on the Gilli Isles in Lombok as our tents hailed from 120-km/h winds on mid 1999. This was not turning into one of my Everest. But as darkness arrived my barometer better nights.. reading dropped off the scale and the wind picked The day dawned at 5.30am with wind a-plenty up instantly. It was all on. Full blizzard conditions but at least thel horizontal blowing snowhad lessened with driving light dry snow and as cold as.. ! Most to the odd flurry. The site had taken on the things froze to the ground instantly. What gear didn't appearance of third world war proportions. Three freeze is now in use by the local kea community. tents had been trashed with the material in tatters Tramping and Mountaineering 2000

Bunked down in the snow cave 101 people John Rhodes and poles broken and bent into new forms of art. swollen due to frostbite! Reluctant bodies emerged as required to attend Stories have positive sides don't they? The next to the morning personal needs. It is very difficult day dawned still and crystal clear SO we all went doing anything when you have 90-km/h wind up climbing in varying directions - knocked off Climax your trousers. Try it some time! By the by, if you (2460m), among other peaks. Great day, surely the have everl had problems with loo paper before, some clearest day of the whole trip hundreds of slides sympathy for us please. It is normally white and SO were shot. is snow never allow your paper to blow away! Insufficient tenting was certainly an issue. We Snow and schist are not as comfortable! spent 9-person hours repairing the Olympus tent Reality sunk in eventually as dazed minds cranked and making one Club tent out of two. Due to this, into activity as we took to a nearby bank of snow and being a little low on food, we decided not to and dug a snow cave of cathedral proportions to fit continue on the planned route through to Big Red ten persons. Five hours later we were installed in Mountain and backed off instead to Olivine Flats. still zero-degree conditions inside, hardly able to hear From here we picked a new route (3° days) via the the roar from the wind. Two two-person tents Olivine River upper gorge, Cow Saddle, Park Pass, remained more or less the Fairydown Assault Rock Burn valley, and Sugarloaf Pass to the and the Macpac Minaret. Only, may I add, due to Glenorchy roadend. the position of those tents, shock cords, and the Y2K well, back to the original story: my actions of the people inside. altimeter kept going, the mountain radio didn'thave We shifted the Minaret tent into a cooking alcove a clock in it, we had a considerable amount of stored, underneath a large rock that we had been using to albeit ancient, frozen water to call on (I estimate cook under out of the rain. Zips were ripped apart several cubic kilometres), another 4 days' food on on these tents and there were numerous small tears full rations, a kea is wearing a yellow PVC parka in the fabric. The raincoat was a critical item to Warehouse variety and no doubt Y2K compliant).. lose. Our concerns weren'tover Ruth'st toes were and I'm going to Vanuatu next year at least it's hot when it blows! Tramping and Mountaineering 2000