Weta Prowl

At the end of March Prajot and I teamed up for a mission into South Temple Valley at Barrier Range. The climb we did is called Weta Prowl on the South Face of Mt Steeple, a grade 3+ rock route with crux around grade 14. It was a big day out, took us 19 hours from car to car since we were pretty slow and the climb was around 6 hours with 7 pitches. Prajot had a taste of his first alpine rock adventure and I had a blast leading the climbs. We didn't take any photos so a rip-off from NZAC website, Weta Prowl is the blue line.

Rolleston

In mid April the plan of climbing Mt Aspiring was dashed by rain. The Aoraki 2nd year mountaineers decided to leave the snowy peak behind and head to Arthur's Pass for some goodness of alpine rock, after all it is late summer and the rock is warm and dry! Brucie, Bia, Alice and I went up the classic grade 2+ Otira Face on Rolly. The climb was long and we did end up doing the famous bivy half way down the Otira Slide around 1am the next day. And as soon as we squeezed behind our bivy rock, the wind picked up and the rain started pissing on us. We probably all had the coldest night in our lifes. The funny part is at the first daylight in the morning we saw a big fat cairn around 50m from where we bivyed and probably we could have walked out easily if we were not blind. Good mission nevertheless!

Otira Face

Bring it on!

Climb, climb, climb, climb, climb...

The last leg to the summit

Summit time!

Abseil into Crow Glacier

Descend into the night

We had to stop descending at 1am, found a rock, sat down, and it rained :(

All photos by Alice Edginton & Bia Boucinhas

Mt Loyd

I have been living in South Island for 5 months now. The first alpine mission I went on was climbing Mt Loyd in Ben Ohau Range with Asher back in March. I think we did something like 9 pitches and few pitches of simuclimbing to climb the central buttress, the crux was up to rock grade 17. My first grade 4 and had a good taste of what Southern Alp has to offer in summer.

The walk-in into Freds Stream

Asher gets ready for the first pitch

Some knife blade

Central Butress of Mt Loyd in its full glory

Photos by Asher March