9/9/2019 - 10/9/2019
Party: Conor Vaessen, Maddy Whittaker, Tom Hadley
This mission began on a Monday afternoon when an irresistible weather window presented itself to us for climbing Mt Brewster. There was the promise of clear skies, no wind and great snow conditions. Maddy, Conor and I packed up our stuff and jumped in Conor’s corolla to begin the journey to the Brewster track. I think we all tried to sleep at different times but the stoke of mountains meant none of us really succeeded. After a record minimum of faff time, we arrived at the bottom of the Brewster track at 9pm before heading off into the night. As we began the climb our layers came off, breathing quickened and we were sweating hard. Emerging from the bush line we were presented with a panorama of snowy mountains, softly glowing in moonlight. After the final trudge up through the snow we reached Brewster hut around midnight, it seemed we were sharing with some skiers. We jumped into sleeping bags to grab a short nap before waking again at 2am to begin the climb (the others in the hut were probably pretty confused!). We started the climb crunching our way up the flanks of Mt Armstrong. Tiny bits of ice skittered away beneath us as we plunged our crampons and ice tools into the firm snow. Gaining the ridge towards Mt Brewster, the sun began to dapple the snowy peaks with an orange glow. All of us suddenly were reminded of why we were out here. 5am, 2400m high, pretty cold and digging into a pancake cooked 12 hours ago, life was good.
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| Conor and Tom on the ridge towards Mt Brewster (Maddy Whittaker) |
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| Tom climbing up to the summit ridge (Maddy Whittaker) |
We travelled the next section roped up to cross the glacier on Mt Brewster’s south face before climbing the snow slopes up to the summit. We made good time, kicking our feet into compact snow and punching our tools in above before reaching the top. We straddled the east ridge, before continuing to sidle around the summit to the final climb up the north east face.
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| The team on the summit (Maddy Whittaker) |
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| Maddy on the summit (Tom Hadley) |
Things started to really ramp up at the last stretch. Rather than an easy couloir of bomber ice which I expected, we instead found a crumbly, sugary section of ice called sastrugi. Rather than pitch the section, we decided to go up unroped as time was definitely of the essence with the warming temperatures. Conor lead the charge, carefully using his tools and crampons to kick steps into the ice. Next, Maddy attacked the section head on. There was definitely a crux, where we had to dig our feet into the walls of a chimney and haul ourselves up on our tools through a committing vertical step. Having not done a whole lot of front pointing, I felt a mix of nerves and intense focus as I considered the probably fatal run out below. Once onto the summit ridge we approached on the sharpest of ridges onto the summit.
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| Conor abseiling off the summit ridge (Maddy Whittaker) |
Maddy Conor and I could not have been more stoked, the flanks of Mt Brewster plummeted all around us and a tapestry of mountain stoke spread out before us. Woohoo! Ah, now the coming down. A very well thought out call was made to abseil off the summit the way we had come, leaving behind an OUTC snow stake (increasing safety while lowering pack weight is a win win). After the three of us had made it down safely, we began the journey home. The weather was warm, snow slushy but spirits were high as we reached the hut. The final downhill through the bush took us back to the car for 6pm to conclude a pretty epic climb. That made it a respectable 21 hour job car to summit to car. We rolled back into Dunedin at around 2am on Wednesday morning, not quite making it to happy hour. Thanks to Rowan for helping us with dinner on the way home and Maddy and Conor for the most epic of midweek climbs.
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