YOUR YARNS
During the last summer holidays, I was sitting on a forklift driving around in circles trying to save as much money as I could for the coming year while still trying to maintain some sort sanity. However, the drive to be back in the mountains was almost as excruciating as the days drifted by. To make matters worse, when I did find out that I had almost a week off work and conditions in the hills were perfect, my climbing partner was otherwise occupied in Australia watching the tennis with his ‘Mrs’. I really felt luck wasn’t going to be on my side this time, but after a typical scroll through my Facebook feed all my luck changed. A young guy from Sweden had just posted that he was dead keen to give Mt Cook a crack and just needed a partner. He sounded experienced, and so after a quick message and an hour and a half phone call I decided I was going to meet him in Mt Cook village that night. Chucking all my gear in the back of the Subaru, and then a quick dash to the supermarket I left Christchurch for Mt Cook at 4pm on Wednesday 22nd. Anticipation built throughout the drive down, but as soon as lake Pukaki came into view with Mt Cook in the background a rush of adrenaline surged through me; and after one failed attempt already, I was biting at the bit to get back up there. I meet up with Joda at Mt Cook village around 8.30pm, we soon realised that both of us were compatible and had the same ideals when it came to mountaineering. Therefore, with intrepidation we geared up and set off into the dark not knowing how the next three days would play out. After navigating the ball hut road for 3 hours we finally arrived at the hut around 1am. We decided to have a quick 2-hour nap here to recharge, as from experience the moraine wall to follow was going to get us worked. After sleeping in only our jackets, we quickly set off again into the darkness. We descended down onto the lower Tasman glacier and skirted along the edge of Ball glacier; this ends you up at the base of a 800m moraine wall, which for the most part is the steepest most unstable piece of shit wall you will ever step foot on. You grimace your way up here for around 2 hours, absolutely hating your life but smiling the whole time. Eventually the sun rose just as we arrived at the base of the Boys glacier. Here Joda and I stopped to have a bite to eat and rope 24
