How not to climb Cook and a week on Tasman Glacier

Until today, every time when I went on a serious alpine trip I got hammered hard. I'm like a naive school boy go to see the head master for a good lesson. Usually ended up stunned, amazed, tears in the eyes. After all, to be comfortable in the mountains as a Himalayan thar you probably need to be like one, spend a life walk the unforgiving terrain and breathe the thin air.

Tasman Valley

The trip was meant to climb Cook but Ben and I ended up spent a week rambling up and down Tasman Glacier. The plan was shattered on the second day when we realized carrying ten days food to climb up a steep loose gully needs to have legend status, and we apparently don’t. The day ended turning our back from Boy Glacier, our route to Grand Plateau. Change tactics, go up Tasman Glacier and bag some easier peaks instead.

Ben taking a break at the mouth of Ball Glacier

Tasman Glacier is amazing in its own right. It’s like someone put boulders massive as houses to dust fine as flours in a blender, mix and pour down the valley. And there is a cobra buried underneath, moving the earth, opening the bottomless cracks, cut away the routes of escape. No matter how slowly it moves, You can always feel it, hear the water flowing underneath, rock sliding, ice melting.

Climbing the loss moraine

Hochstetter Icefall

We took a wrong route on our way up the moraine wall to De la Beche Hut. Suddenly I found myself bashed in wind and rain clinging on a steep wall glued together by dirt. There is no way down and a wrong move will send me tumble 150m down to the glacier. I shouted at Ben who has been bombarded by constant falling rock 50 metres below me “turned back now, there is no way up!.” However I know the only way get me out of this trap is to keep climbing up until reach the ridge. Each move was nerve breaking. I felt my fragile life had never been this close to death before. It took me forever to make a move, thought that could be the last move of my life. When I finally reached a narrow dirt ridge, I saw that on the other side the slope is less steep, carefully down climbed the slope back to the glacier. It seemed like my time is not up yet.

De la Beche Hut and Mt Cook

We headed up Tasman Saddle after a rest day, gradually the white ice ran out and crevasses start to be covered with snow. We bumped into the solo Czech climber stayed in De la Bech with us the night before and he is on his way to the village after coming down from Tasman Saddle. He told us his ordeal pushing his way through the crevass field to Tasman Saddle Hut. Later we saw the carnage after we followed his foot prints, snow bridges were broken through with massive crevasses below. Next the holes plenty traces of struggle of the guy crawling out holes. Ben and I looked at each other with amaze, that guy was nuts!

A river of ice

It´s snowing!

When we were 50 m away from Tasman Saddle Hut suddenly a mist descended on us. It was bad because he hut is built on a rock outcrop in the middle of the heavily crevassed glacier. We can do nothing to fight the white-out except to stop and wait, feel utterly powerless. It´s not unhead of that people are forced to bivvy right next to the hut. After don´t know how long, I ran out of patience and started to back track and hope to find a trace of the Czech guy´s footprints. Out of completely luck, we saw a faint trail of foot steps. Slowly and carefully, we followed the trail to navigate through the mine field. And the mist broke just before we reach the hut.

Tasman Saddle Hut

Melting snow


View from the hut

We were snowed in at Tasman Saddle Hut on Christmas and Boxing Days, a white Christmas in the empty mountains. It took us another three days to walk back to Mt Cook Village and the walk wasn´t less eventfull. Ben took a different turn on Tasman Glacier in a storm and we got seperated. He braved through and reached Ball Shelter at night and I went back to De la Beche Hut to raise alarm thought that he might fell into a crevass. Apparently when the rescue drama was playing out through radio waves many people in the village were listening to it. I didn´t know that the news was spread far and wide until Charlie Hobbs (a retired legendary NZ explorer now a proud cafe owner for you haven´t heard of him) gave me the evil smile when I popped in Old Mountaineers.

Walking out after snow dump

The legendary tractor on Tasman Glacier