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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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Snowdrift Range Traverse: Tom's Version of Events

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8/3/20 - 12/3/20 Party: Thomas Hadley, Maddy Whittaker, Torea Scott-Fyfe Maddy and I had “done uni” for an utterly excessive period of about 8 days and both had an itching for an epic. The plan was devised by looking at the expanses of wavy blue contours of the snowdrift range, a series of epic glaciers nestled in the inhospitable olivine wilderness. We created the route the best way possible, drawing an ambitious line on the map with lots of big question marks and hoping for the best. We planned to traverse the entire snowdrift range, a route which had a lot of unknowns for us. Particularly, a steep face of blue contours required to get over Mt Lydia's North shoulder. We knew one party had ascended it in early season conditions, but other than that, we were unsure. We set off at 6.30pm on Sunday evening up the Matukituki valley to Liverpool Hut, accompanied by Torea who planned to stay the night with us then return to Wanaka for work that week. After a few wet dark hours ...
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The Talbot MacPherson Traverse and Fiordland Slab Climbing

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28/12/2019 - 29/12/2019 Party: Conor Vaessen, Tom Hadley I eagerly jumped off a bus straight into Conor’s corolla, parked in the Dunedin Countdown carpark. After a whirlwind of shopping and gear accumulation, we hit the road, headed towards the Darrans mountains, headed towards the granite, headed towards pure unadulterated stoke. After a night spent at some high quality accommodation (camped in a paddock near Gore), we parked at Homer Tunnel and tilted our heads back to take in today’s objective, the Talbot MacPherson traverse. This traverse of between the peaks MacPherson and Talbot is the classic mountaineering day trip of the Darrans mountains and has been enjoyed by generations of kiwi alpinists. As we started climbing towards Talbot’s ladder, the sheer immensity of the Darrans was impressed upon us. The looming granite monoliths around us formed an incredible amphitheatre of grey rock, soaring into the dramatic cloudscapes above. Once the ridge was gained, we made our ...
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