One of those Days – Rock Magazine 1992
THE FULL MOON IS SO BRIGHT THAT I turn my head-torch off and continue crunching up the frozen glacier without changing step. Jerry is just ahead, silent but for the odd comment about directions. Stars in the sky, mist in the Hooker Valley and not a breath of wind; it’s going to be a great day.
By first light we’re more than 1000 metres above Gardiner Hut, which we left three hours before. Down the valley the summit of Mt Sefton shines in the first rays of the day, and above us is the South Face of Mt Cook-and White Dream. The route is a mixed bag: rock and hard water-ice, the angle 50° increasing to vertical in short steps, then a rock headwall and another steep ice section beyond. ‘Hmm, this looks pretty hard’, I think to myself.
Six pitches up, that fear is confirmed. I’m on vertical ice and one of my crampons has just fallen apart. The front screw has fallen out and the front points are askew. An adrenalin-induced frenzy of foul language and desperate action fails to avert the inevitable plummet down the face.
Dangling upside-down, I catch my breath. Jerry looks concerned. Eventually he says: ‘You’d make a great photo, y’know.’ I make a quick repair by ripping the wrist loop from a mitten, wrapping it round the front points and pulling the cord tight. A Band-Aid is added as a back-up: good as new. I continue over the bulge and up to another stance to belay.
The next three pitches are dodgy to say the least. It’s March, somewhat late in the season, and the surface ice is very thin. Screws go only half-way in, yet most of the cracks in the rock are too iced to take our meagre selection of Friends and wires. Long run-outs and ‘psychological’ belays are the result. None the less, we exit the headwall by a ramp of ice at the end of the eighth pitch and climb into sunshine for the first time today.
I’m leading again with only six or seven metres of steep ice to go. Beyond, the upper face lies back and an easy 30 slope leads to the summit.
‘Hey, Jon, your crampon’s going again!’
‘Shit!’
I glance down and see all my handiwork undone. I try to clip into the wrist-loop of my ice axe but slip off. This time my ice hammer holds me. Attached to my harness by a prusik cord, it saves me from a dive of 20 metres or more on to a dubious ice screw. An attempt to haul myself back up the two metre cord fails
and I fall again, thankful for the holding ability of my ice tools. I place a second screw and repair the crampon again with string and sticky-tape, dangling on 70° ice. My arms are so tired and this climb is
taking so much longer than we expected! If this were Mt Arapiles, I’d probably lower off, go for a milk shake and come back tomorrow; but here, with only one rope, at least 16 abseils below and only a few
metres above, there’s really not much choice.
With crampon fixed, I make a mental note to carry a repair kit next time, and on we go. Desperation and dinner-plate ice; radical moves and wild exposure. Somehow I regain the sunshine and find myself gazing at an easy slope that leads straight to the summit.
‘How does it look?’, comes a voice from below.
‘Piece of cake!’, I call back.
Jerry replies with a cheer.
Tied into a good belay, I can finally ease up. Jerry follows the pitch and leads through. A Canadian, raised on Rocky Mountains ice, he’s technically a far better climber than I am. Coupled with his youthful enthusiasm, this makes him one of the more desirable climbing partners I’ve had this season. We haven’t done badly considering that we only met a few days ago-especially given the seriousness of the route.
It’s 5.30 as Jerry ambles past and we continue together; that’s getting very late.
Nor is the weather conforming to the forecast of light, variable winds. As we arrive on the summit ridge, we are immediately pounded by a full-on nor westerly gale. There is a storm brewing up in the west and all the peaks around us are capped with high-wind ‘hog’s-back’ clouds. It doesn’t look good.
As we stagger up to the summit, we can’t hear each other over a distance of ten metres for the wind. I’m knackered from the climb but the storm and the onset of night mean only a minute’s rest before we must continue along the summit ridge towards Porters Col and salvation. I’m unsure of this side of the mountain, of the descent route-of most things. But sure of one thing: get out of here or we’re stuffed. The ridge isn’t so bad. We traverse over rocks and snow; even in the wind it’s a pleasant change from going up.
Right: Jerry Ahere on the lower face of White Dream Image by Jonathan Chapman.
Crossing a snow-field, trying to see the col through gaps in the cloud, concentrating, I feel a sharp pull on the rope from behind and a moment later I’m tumbling backwards towards a 200 metre cliff. I know
immediately that Jerry’s fallen and dragged me off. Precise thoughts, precise fears. If we are to survive, I have to self arrest.
Snow churns up round the pick of my axe as I lean on it with all my weight. The fall slows, then stops. I start to breathe again. We turn left at Porters Col, down into the howling mist. The fall has really spooked me and we’ve untied and are moving independently, front-pointing downwards into what seems like a bottomless pit. Every step is agonising to the tendons in the backs of our legs, our throats are parched and we both wish we’d stayed in bed this morning.
Jerry considers letting go and sliding all the way down; half an hour later, confronted by a 20 metre ice cliff, he’s glad he didn’t. In the last light of the day we set up an abseil from an old snow stake and slide off into the darkness.
Easy walking and the odd crevasse; it seems we’ve left the worst behind. Then the slope becomes steeper and soon we’re confronted by a further ice cliff. We untie again and set up another abseil with our last snow stake. Just as we’re about to go, there comes the deep, violent rumble of an ice avalanche. Our wasted minds register that the noise is coming from directly above us and the consequences quickly sink in.
‘Oh no, please, not us’, I mutter quietly.
We’ve been through an awful lot today and to be killed now seems grossly unfair. Jerry flattens himself against the snow and I follow, clinging to my ice tools and thinking small. Blind, totally self-centred fear takes over. Here we are, unroped on the edge of a cliff, at night, in a storm, with tonnes of ice and snow thundering down on top of us. I hang on as hard as I can. Ice blocks bounce off my helmet, slam painfully into my shoulders and back, and I wait for the big one that may smash me to pieces at any moment without so much as a ‘pardon me’. But the big one doesn’t come; nor, for that matter, do any bone-crunching rocks. The thunder finally dies and we both look up, amazed that we’re still there.
The rest of the night remains a bit of a blur in my mind. Images of ice, silhouettes of crevasses and cliffs, words and noises from the darkness are all I recall. Too tired to be scared any more, we plod on, following one dead-end path after another, back-tracking and searching in a labyrinth of ice. Jerry has no head-torch and I have only one crampon. For hours, we wander, slipping on loose ice blocks and abseiling into nothingness. For a long time it seems as though we’ll never get out of this place; that we’ll spend the rest of our lives here however long or short a time that might be. Then, through a bizarre set of circumstances that still baffles me, we find ourselves on a clear, moonlit slope that leads straight down to
Empress Hut. The clouds have dispersed briefly and the path in front is crevasse-free and gentle. A short rest, a 15-minute stroll, and we’re stumbling over rocks to the door of the hut. It’s 3.45 am-we’ve been 24 1/2 hours on the go.
Left: Jerry Ahere leads towards the headwall on steep, thin ice. Chapman Right: Original 1992 Rock Magazine Article
The water stings my mouth, the warmth of soup made from a packet of freeze-dried peas and an Oxo cube brings us back to cognizant thought and true happiness. There are no tears or cries of joy, just quiet relief as we sort ourselves out. It’s been a long day. Priority one (food and beverages) seen to, it’s time for priority two (bed). Lying down is easy the soft mattress seems to hold me in air-but sleep takes a long time to come and is restless when it does. Survival instincts and reflexes refuse to shut down.
Dreams of ice and rock, of falls without end, of swinging ice axes and thundering avalanches, keep me turning throughout the night. Tomorrow my body will probably regret that it was ever born and will send nasty messages to the brain that controls it, reminding it of how silly it’s been. But that’s tomorrow, and tomorrow is another day.
