Mountain Stew

In which the author Bryan tuffnell goes flying with Keith richards, visits Wonderland with alice, and meets some real people who were actually there.

Holy cow, that couloir was a bit brutal. Usually there’s a simple rhythm of ice axe and crampons that gets you up steep snow, a kind of steady metronomic cadence that propels you upward at four beats to the bar. I don’t seem to be able to channel my inner Charlie Watts today though. Must’ve left my drums back in the tent this morning...

I’d spent last night camped among snow tussocks and dracophyllums, with the river chuckling its way through the boulders alongside. The plan had been to go further up the valley yesterday, to the hut perhaps, but a little frost flat nestled between snowy peaks was just too gorgeous to pass by. The price of that indolence was this morning’s pre-dawn start. A short wander through celmisia, buttercups and tussocks got me to the November snowline and the couloir that has just run over me.

Time to take five, then. It’s still very early, and the glacier is in excellent condition. It will be hours before the sun casts its cheery glow on the western slopes. More than enough time for some shameless peak-bagging. I’ll drag my ageing carcass over the summits that ring the glacier, but a big hummus and tomato sandwich comes first. Yum!

I first stood on this summit... ah... forty-four years ago. Holy cow! Back then life was all about bigger, higher, further, steeper, faster. There weren’t enough hours in a day to get all the

Left; Roast pheasant surprise. The surprise part is that it’s really a vegetable stew Above; Up-valley view from my lazy campsite and landing site

cool stuff done. Now, the older and mellower me prefers a less spicy kind of mountain stew: a more moderate quantity of effort and risk mixed with liberal doses of appreciation, simplicity and quiet times. Call me lazy. I spend a few hours happily pottering around on the rocks and snow, eating massive hummus and tomato sandwiches, taking photos of my phone case and pigging out on the views.

Okay, you want to hear about the flying, and if I don’t get airborne smartly there’ll be complaints about me to the editor. The truth is... I’m quite nervous. I’m alone in the Alps at noon on a hot spring day, with a hefty anticyclone overhead. A plot of the lapse rate probably looks like a dog’s hind leg, and there are vast mountainsides of rocks baking in the sun below me and a skyfull of heat all around. It’s really about the limit that Alice – my little nylon friend – and I can take on without relying unfairly on Lady Luck.

I want to spend tonight at the hut a thousand metres below, and I’ve got good, safe options: an evening sleddie would put me at the doorstep with a respectable margin of safety, or I could climb down the big couloir

Above; The scene of Sampson’s accidental descent. The first launch is to the right of the picture.

behind me – it’s named after the dude who made the first descent, unintentionally, at nine point eight metres per second squared. He survived. That’s how you use up all nine lives in one go.

But I think I’ll get my act together and fly now. Let’s wander over to those western slopes... wow, it’s steep! Peg the wing out on the snow, get ready, take three deep breaths and go.

YahoOLY COW, it’s REALLY ROUGH up here!!!

We’re rocketing towards the sun, Alice and me, hoovered upwards by the Great Vacuum Cleaner in the Sky. In a few turns we’re well above takeoff, and I don’t need a vario to tell me that we’re climbing fast, which is kind of a good thing because I haven’t brought one. Actually, my pulse makes a fair substitute. This is like a coast to coast drive on a hot day with the top down and an old cassette tape of the Stones turned up loud on the stereo... only we’re off-road, Keith Richards is driving, and he ain’t slowin’ down for nothin’ or no one.

It soon feels like Alice is banging her head on the stratosphere. This is a kind of flying I really love: to be here, alone, a vulnerable little dot in the sky a gazzillion miles over the Alps, above the rock and snow and scrub and scree and rivers and grassy flats and roads, miles and days away from the roadend and the pubs with fine pale ales on tap. It’s a bit daunting though! We’re riding the ragged edge of what’s achievable for an old mountain wanderer and a flying package that gives a bit of change from two kilos. I feel big enough to be excited and small enough to feel exposed.

One peak to the south, Keith steps on the gas pedal again. Around and up up up, Alice rustling and thrashing around overhead, and this time I find it much harder to tell if I’m centred in the lift. The stress level is high and I’m keen on getting away from the divide and into more mellow air. We wriggle, wobble and squirm our way to the the southeast.

Well, that worked, but now what? It’s tough going on the Shaler Range. We’re scraping around beautiful mountains but struggling to stay in the air. I’m drenched in sweat. This is more Cliff Richard than Keith Richards. My mediocre flying skills and lack of boldness has me focused more on landing options than triggers, but in spite of myself we manage to make progress. There are ski tracks on the glacier below but I see no one. Once past the head of the valley we’re back in the breach, on another hold-on-to-your hat ride to the stars. My heart is going about eight metres per second. There’s that mix of elation and jangling nerves as Alice and I go up, up and away.

The valley crossing is optional. There are big flats and wide open spaces below, promising easy times and just a few hours’ walking to get to the hut. No sweat. But I’m keen to fly all the way, if I can. Arriving on the far side, low over forested slopes, we’re offered the most technical flying fun of the day: a determined, serious scratch on a southwest spur. Gain a hundred metres, lose fifty. Search around, lose another hundred, gain fifty. By the time I get locked into a reasonable climb I’ve forgotten to be scared for at least ten minutes.

Now the hut is in sight. One more scratch on a southeast spur, one more cannonball thermal which I chicken out of early, and I’m over its red iron roof. My first guess for the wind direction – towards the sunlit slopes – looks wrong, so we slam around through degrees one hunnert and eighty, and land neatly just a hop and a skip from the hut door. Yahoo!!!

What a day. What a place!

This is awesome. It’s a little after 2 o’clock, and there’s no one around. I lazily pack up the wing and plan the rest of the afternoon. It sounds terrific: I’m going to sit in the tussocks and soak in this little snowy basin while eating peanut butter sandwiches and reading my paperback. Good plan! The sense of solitude here is wonderful. There’s something incredibly special about being alone in these places, as if the world has been made just for your very own plea...

“Hello Bryan”

Holy cow! It’s Anna with a hefty pack and a pair of skis, passing through on a massive mission to get to the west coast highway, today. That’s really impressive. A little flair, along with a heapin’ helpin’ of fitness, and you can make a day extraordinary. Well, I wasn’t expecting company, but it’s great to spend half an hour with another solitary mountain wanderer. We talk about the things we love to do and talk about, and the need to get things done before Old Father Time catches up with us. We’re a pair of Huck Finns going to grey. It’s great. But she’s got a long way to go. I watch for a long time when she leaves, skinning up to the saddle at the head of the valley. A shrinking dot and a pair of ski tracks fade into a white landscape until there’s nothing left in the lengthening shadows but silence and a deeper solitude.

Sunrise, day three. It was perfect crampon snow all the way to an easy summit. It looks like it’s going to be another day of stonking thermals and light winds to dizzying heights, but I think Alice deserves an easy day today. Okay, the subtext is: I’m not mentally prepared for another day of Keith’s driving. Yesterday’s flight, a squiggly out-and-back triangular sort of shape somewhere vaguely in the order of 20 kilometres in somewhat more than two hours in no wind, isn’t exactly going to set the world on fire. In fact, I would later hear of

Below; A great spot to land.

Above; Alice in Wonderland

some impressive XC flights done on this day. But in the context of one bloke’s mountain wanders and the lightweight kit, my little journey yesterday was everything I could ever want in a day of mountain flying.

This morning’s five minute flight from the summit down to the saddle was unremarkable by the normal measures of these things, except perhaps for the launch and landing in crampons on firm snow. But gliding through the crisp mountain air in the rosy colours of dawn... that’s magical. Alice and I are in Wonderland.

The eastern slopes are solid snow, and they’re painted a blushing pink by the rising sun. The view to the north and west takes in deep shaded valleys draped with podocarp rainforest, which yield to huge grassy flats and the sea. Terrific stuff. I land before the sun reaches the saddle. A bit of exploring on the West Coast side of the col, and checking out Anna’s ski tracks from yesterday, fills in a few hours.

Gaultheria and forget-me-nots appear along the fringes of melting snow. The sun is warm; much warmer than it has a right to be. Back at the hut, brunch is massive sandwiches eaten in the sun, leaning against warm rocks. Pretty cool.

One more flight, I reckon, a small one to get me down the valley. I pack up and leave the hut.

A sloping shelf of snow leads to a basin below the peak to the west. There’s a fine launch here, and soon Alice and I are ready to rock’n’roll. 3 – 2 – 1 see ya! YA – oh, wait for it... yep, it’s okay so far – HOO!

What a place.

We scrape around the south side of the peak, sometimes looking for lift, and sometimes just looking. When I find it, the thermal is a scrappy, short-fetch thing that rolls up from the rocky gully below. It becomes more useable as we climb, until it’s a ‘surfin’ the small stuff on a longboard with the Beach Boys’ kind of thermal. Brian Wilson is lot kinder to Alice and me and our nervous dispositions than Keith was. Less exile on Main Street, more surfin’ safari.

I want to land on the flat where I camped two nights ago. It’s now an easy glide away, and we arrive above it with plenty of height to kill. We float down in a gentle helix, carving a halfstrand of the gene for ‘downwards’ before rolling level and flaring to a stop in the tall tussocks. Yahoo!

I’ve got plenty of time to wander down to the next hut. There’s a track at the end of this flat, and it’s great. It picks its way through mossy rocks and river gravels under a canopy of mountain beech and hoheria, in dappled light and carrying the sweet damp scent of forest.

By now I’m feeling a bit proprietal about this valley. I pack up, start walking across my flat, past my old campsite, when four – four! - fit young guys with big packs festooned with crampons, ice tools, snowstakes and helmets intrude on my solitude, pulling up in a cloud of dust from their boots.

“Hi Bryan!”

Holy cow, that’s twice! It’s Eric and friends, heading up-valley to climb the peak I was on yesterday. Or as Eric put it, to climb NZ’s most accessible alpine peak by its least accessible route. Cool! We swap notes, and then with a flex of turbocharged muscles, the lads boost it up the valley. I select low gear and shuffle down to the hut. Tomorrow will be a lazy few hours’ walk back to the road end and civilisation.

Midnight. I’m in my sleeping bag, reading by headlamp, when the distinctive kerthump-kerthump of rigid mountaineering boots echoes off the deck. Curious, I get up to greet the newcomers. It’s couple of young climbers, and they look like they’re just back from ‘Nam. They are justifiably trashed after a hard tour of duty in the Alps – two peaks attempted, various tussles with difficult sections and double cornices, two epic retreats, and no sleep.

They’ve got massive packs for a weekender, crammed with twin half-ropes, ice tools with more teeth than Jaws, crampons that could kill a bear from twenty paces. My heart

Below; Here’s the cheap and easy snow anchor method I use for alpine launches. I grab a handful of bamboo kebab skewers from the kitchen, cut them down, and tie a short piece of cord to them. Fine undyed wool is best.

Above; Alice has loops inside the cells for attaching anchors, but in practice I find the tabs for the A lines easier to use. A total of four anchors, spread over the centre half of the span, works fine for me.

goes out to these lads. I hear echoes of my youth in their stories: the days when you measured yourself against your dreams and you really lived with every breath you took in the Alps, in the air, on rivers, wherever you found your freedom.

Bobby McGee to the contrary, freedom isn’t having nothing left to lose – it’s having everything to gain. All that drive, all that passion – why does it have to fade?

I go back to my sleeping bag. Tomorrow will be an easy shuffle down-valley to the roadend. I’ll have the privilege of sharing a few hours with eight year old Hannah and her dad. Like just about all kids that you meet overnighting in huts, Hannah is great company. I get to hear her stories and try to see the world through her eyes. After six decades in Wonderland, it’s nice to recalibrate from time to time. A good stew has many flavours.

Left; Looking back at the second and third launches, the former on the distant sunlit summit and the latter on a snow shelf below the highest peak on the left.

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