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Drawn Upwards

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Crossing the divide into the Landsborough (Easter 2019) (Maddy Whittaker) Our mountains, how they bend and fold. Glaciers flowing from rock to ice to me. This past year I have been mesmerised by the scale, the shapes, the way light plays upon the ice and the patterns the wind whittles in the snow. I used to think it was a strange force that draws us upwards. But now I understand that this force is not so strange at all.  Some moments seem to burn brighter than others. The first time I saw the Bonar glacier, clambering over the top of the Quarterdeck, the golden moonlight and pink rays of first light washing the snow in a magical glow. The first time I scrambled upon warm granite in the Darrans, impossibly steep rock expanses rising straight up out of the sea. My first New Years in the hills, running through golden tussock, my memories tinged with the overexposure of golden hour. My first trip deep in the bowels of the Landsborough. Water cascading everywhere in a wild...
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The West Coast Névés: A Hard Earned Battle on Foot!

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The West Coast Névés (Lottie Armstrong) Party: Maddy Whittaker, Imogen van Pierce, Lottie Armstrong, Jamie Gardner, Rebecca Vella King and Conor Vaessen Times are certainly changing. It turns out walking from the Fox Township up the Fox Glacier to Pioneer Hut is not what it used to be! On Waitangi Day, six of us set off from the township and 14 hours later arrived at Chancellor Hut, the first day of our four day trip on the West Coast névés. The crux of the entire trip was getting to the start of the actual Fox Glacier - the point where not all that long ago a road used to go to. Now the road has been claimed by the river which runs hard against a series of bluffs - which involve hundreds of metres of vertical bush bashing to get around including a rock chimney in the forest and some pack hoisting. It is certainly an inspiring country. From the swift opaque waters full of chunks of ice in the rivers to the constant rockfall around the glacier - there is no part of this la...
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North West Ridge of Mount Aspiring

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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 nex...
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