Aspiring Stuff

Mt Aspiring, New Zealand

7 December 1999

What a peak. I’d seen it three years before, from a distance and in every gear shop in the land. Now, after several aborted attempts, we were poised in Wanaka with a promised weather window of a few days.

An early rise had us kicking up dust driving to the spectacular Matukituki valley. With about seven days food we were ready for a siege. With about seven days food we had huge packs. Heavy too. What with all that climbing clobber and all - serious shit. The walk though is fantastic. Along a track, through meadows, never far from the crisp river loaded with trout. Big ones too! But that, is definitely another story.

A river crossing soon had us cursing said river. Colder than a cold thing. But the main curse was still to come. The French Ridge. An epic tangle of twisted roots, narrow trail, landslides and all manner of obstacles. Add some tired trampers with the huge-ass packs getting heavier all the time and you will appreciate that after eight hours we were absolutely knackered. Fortunately the weather was going to be bad the next day so we would have a day of rest in the brand spanking new French Ridge hut.

The morning dawned with predicted mediocre weather, which rapidly improved to be perfect. Oh well, we could barely stand never mind walk anyway. Next again morning we were crunching up the glacier in the early light and it was brilliant. Brilliant weather. Brilliant views. Brilliant place to be. And it's 6 December too! Brilliant. We padded up the Quarterdeck and summitted the nearby Mount French before dropping down to the Bonnar glacier and on to the Colin Todd hut. The views of the south and west faces of Mount Aspiring were just epic.

By nightfall Valerie had 15 men to sleep with. Despite this we were up by 3am, and almost last away from the hut as the other (guided) parties had set out a while ago. The route passes a straightforward (II) gully that pops you onto a feature called The Ramp. The ramp is just that, 600m of rising traverse sloping at about 45 degrees. Brick hard neve. A fall was out of the question, so we roped up and moved together like a steam train we soon overtook the guided parties who were pitching the route. Limited by our two snow stakes we did 150m runouts between stances. Regrouped and padded off again. Take that, calves.

Soon we were out of the shadow and into the sun. The long northwest ridge taking us all the way to the classic pointy summit and a view from coast to coast, peak to peak. Wah! Mount Cook hundreds of kilometres to the north, nearby mountains all dwarfed by the Matterhorn of the south. The only drawback was you couldn’t see this Matterhorn, but believe me you could feel it!

The descent was steeper than the ascent, as you can no doubt imagine, so we pitched down the ramp and into the hut after a textbook ascent of New Zealand’s finest. The rest of the day was spent recovering and feeling pity for the late arrivals – these guys were getting value for money from their guides! Still Valerie managed to mouch some real food (oh, I forgot to mention the other helicoptered-in nearby with real food, cheating but better fed) instead of the freeze-dried yuk I’d been force feeding her.

Next morning was another alpine start with huger than huge smiles as we scrunched our way up the Bonar and down the Quarterdeck to the medusa of the French Ridge. Epic tales of long walkouts notwithstanding the thought of beer and pizza dangled in front of us for a 14+ hour day covering some ridiculous distance all the way out to the car and the paradise of Wanaka.

Aspiring stuff.

Mark L and Valerie C