Hey all,
Well after a nice rest day yesterday i figure i can give you a bit of an update on how the course went! The SMC is aimed at covering glacier travel, snow anchors, snow safety, navigations etc. and is run by Alpine Guides out of Mount Cook Village. Our Guide for the week was Scott Walker.
Day 1:
The day dawned fine and sunny, with a heavy frost covering the valley floor around Unwin Hut. Me and Joel (fellow course participant i had meet the previous night at unwin hut) cooked up a brew, and some tasty poridge for breaky before getting the final bits of gear sorted and packed for an 8:30 departure. We were picked up and ferried to Alpine Guides Ltd (AGL) under the hermitage in Mt cook village. We had a gear check and grabbed any hire gear we required such as snow stakes, ice screws, crampons etc. We also meet our guide Scott for the week. He immeadiately began giving my crap for being a telemark skier! After getting all the gear sorted we headed down to Mt cook airport for the flight in on a Pilatus Porter ski plane. After weighing all out gear, and gearing up for the cold temps up high we were looking pretty silly, and all sorted with ski boots, jackets, and harness on!
The ski plane departed at around 12:30, and we were quickly in the air and heading up the tasman glacier. The view was amazing to say the least as Mt Cook cruised by the window, and the Malte Brune range stretched out on the left side with the tasman glacier running along below us! The plane touched down on tasman saddle landing site and we quickly unloaded out gear and food, and re-loaded a pile of waste to be flown back to Mt Cook. The plane departed and an eerie silence fell over us as the engine slowly droned out of sight. We started the short slog up to kelman hut, over loaded with food for the week. The skin up took around 10mins and we quickly made ourselves comfy, grabbed some lunch and headed on up to the col above kelman hut for a 500m Vert ski down to the rest of the food. The view from the coll was awesome, with a gnarly 1000m+ drop down to the murchison glacier! The ski down was possibly gnarlier with a killer breakable crust from an extended warm period for the last few weeks. Their was a good surface haw formed on the shady slopes.
We skied down avoiding the small slots below Kelman hut, and picked up the last of the food and headed on up to the hut for the night! Day one was good, hot and sunny, we had a brew, cooked some dinner and headed in for the night!
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Loading up at Mt Cook Airport (Cam foreground, Joel Behind) |
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| Mt Cook on the ski plane ride in. |
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| The Tasman Glacier stretching out below. |
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| Skinning up from the landing site to Kelman Hut |
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View down from col abvoe Kelamn hut.
Photo does not do the drop justice. |
Day 2:
Well its been a long time in the mnaking so i thought i would let ya know about day 2. Day dawned nice and sunny, with a low of around -10 over night. The sky was thick with horse tail clouds indicating some nasty weather on the way soon. We got some breaky and made our way out for an into to glacier travel and a bit of skiing. We skinned up to the col above kelman hut and had a good run down to just below tasman saddle. We put the skins on and started up, checking out the murchison glacier headwall on the way, their were still some big slots down the headwall, but a definately skiable line. We skinned up to the berschrund below mount alymer and exchanged the skis for crampons and rope and made out way up Alymers arete ridgeline. As we toped out the wind was building and rime was forming on everything, beards, eyebrowns, jackets. We made a quick descent practicing some down climbing, and a neat belay technique the kiwi stomp! Once at the skis we got the skins off, and had a nice decent in some nasty breable crust down to cornice wall where a group of 10 british amry guys were dug in in snow caves, not the brightest tools in the shed as they were camping on a known avalanche path with a big storm approaching, trust the army! We checked their caves out and heades down to the serac's below tasman saddle hut and had a good stuff around their. The weather at this stage was pushing over the main divide so we made a b line back to kelman hut and got in at around 6pm as the wind started getting well above 80kph and the cloud closed in.
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| Ping, summit of Mt Alymer, nice and easy. |
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| The team getting rime building up on them already. |
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| Self potrait, jungle cloud pushing through behind |
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| Seracs below tasman saddle hut. |
Day 3, 4, 5, 6:
Ah right so the next 4 days were not so exciting. We had planned to do a ski decent of hocsetter dome and elle de beaumont however a good old mountain storm had different ideas. Instead we were effectively hut bound for 4 days. We did get enough of a break in the weather to do lots and lots of beacon practice for multiple burials, which was good. We also snuck 3 or 4 mint runs down the small bowl next to Kelman hut in some nice pow pow. Lessons covered veried topics including high mountain navigation, crevass rescue, weather forcasting, snow science, snow anchors and snow shelter. Me and Joel made the biggest demon of a snow bollard in light powder snow that held 4 people reefing on it, we played around with ice screw placement and made many a v thread. Finally, out of shear bodermon me and scott decided to try and cut a massive cornice over hanging a 300m cliff next to the hut. We failed unfortunately after about 2 hours of slog....
Anyways suffice to say Kelman hut was bloody cold, and we were well sick of it by day 6.
Day 7:
As if on que the weather started breaking up at around 4pm on day 6. By day 7 it was bluebird with nice pow pow left from the previous torm. Stability was ok on slopes <30ish degrees. So we made some sweet tracks after packing up and headed down to the Darwin icefall to learn some ice climbing techniques. We put in a bunch of screw placements, and did some bouldering on <5m ice blocks. I learnt about how shit telemark boots are for front pointing....and how hard it is to place and ice screw while trying to stand on you 1/4 inch front points from the tele boots....After this we skied down past the darwin glacier almost to de la beche hut and got picked up by a chopper on a backload, and whisked away to reality once again....
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| Sunrise day 7 |
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| Chopper ride out day 7. 5 people, and packs in a squirrel! |
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| Sunrise day 7. Tasman sea in the distance. |
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| Kelman hut, sunrise day 7. |
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Storm clearing day 6
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