18/2/2020 - 19/2/2020
Party: Torea Scott-Fyfe, Tom Hadley
I'd just arrived back in the South Island and Torea had just finished 12 days of fieldwork when we met in Wanaka. There was 2 days of workable weather ahead of us and we were both ready to get stuck into some mountains. Tom: “Hmmm well the Raspberry flat road is open again”, Torea: “Oooh yes we could climb some domes”, Tom: “Hmmm how about climbing the big dome...?”, “Yes let’s climb Mt Aspiring!”. The next morning, we set off with light packs and lighter legs from raspberry flat at 8am, jogging and walking along the expanses of the Matukituki valley. The open grasslands soon turned to beech forest, then to scrub as we carried on. We arrived at the waterfall in 4 hours time and began the push up to Bevan col. After negotiating slabs and bluffs, the expanse of the Bonar glacier spread itself out before us. We moved our way through gurgling blue crevasses to arrive at an empty Colin Todd hut, how good!
At 5am the next morning we set off into the stillest of mornings, moving steadily from cairn to cairn through the windless night. We decided against going on the snowfield to the left of the ridge, instead opting for a tricky downclimb at the end of the shipowner ridge just as the sun rose. From then on, we negotiated our way along the Northwest ridge, leaping along the ridgetop or sidling on the chossy flanks to make our way upwards. We both were loving the endless scrambling, finding fun corners and cracks to ascend as we made our way up. We both delayered rapidly as the sun rose and we neared the summit, the windless conditions kept things very warm on our ascent. Finally, the ridge fell away, we were on top. There was not a breath of wind as we looked around us, peaks and glaciers spread out in a stunning panorama, how epic!
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Torea nearing the top on the NW ridge (Tom Hadley)
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Tom on the ridge (Torea Scott-Fyfe)
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Tom on the summit (Torea Scott-Fyfe)
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Considering how much of the day we had left, we scrambled back down the ridge, both of us starting to dehydrate rapidly with the lack of snowmelt on the ridge. We were both feeling pretty dizzy and looked forward to the water tank at Colin Todd hut. As we returned to the hut, we guzzled water and refuelled with a salty feed of lentils, peas and some awesome risotto provided by the hut food box. It was going to be a long night ahead.
Crossing back over the Bonar and down Bevan col, we watched the moody clouds accumulate on the skyline, then roll into envelope us. Just at the top of the tricky waterfall slabs, rain began to fall, making everything nice and slick. We’d carried a 30m rope in case we needed to abseil here but in the interest of time, both of us were keen to downclimb instead. Torea led on, bumsliding her way through the thin ledges of vegetation towards the waterfall. It was a silent process of careful descending, clinging onto tussock then lowering ourselves down to the next shelf. Before long, we were back down in the Matukituki. We managed to make our way back through the scrub just before night fell. A quick longing look at the dry shelter of Scott’s rock bivvy was all that was allowed, as we plunged back into the rainy night. Soon we found a rhythm and the hours began to tick away. Just as the fatigue really started to kick in, the welcome sight of raspberry flat greeted us. It was around 2am, a 20.5 hour mission, hut-to-summit-to-car. Happy days.
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