Mt Aspiring, Vanessa, and the 40 pitch TR.
Vanessa was a girl i liked in high school. she looked like J-Lo except she had tight curly hair and a boomin' system up top. she also smelled like sexy cough syrup and had really glossy lips. in short, i was totally infatuated but i never even got to first base and i just drove her home to bumblefuck nowhere where she lived. she had a boyfriend named Rob who was into lowrider trucks and sniffing glue, which was awesome. i was into volkswagens, distance running, and marijuana cigarettes. like i said, i never got anywhere, and in hindsight i was pretty glad i didn't - she had a baby when we were about 17 that she had to give up for adoption. Glad it wasn't mine or you wouldn't be reading this.
About 6mos ago i had the idea to shred Mt Aspiring when DMC, Sarah, Rich, and I went up with Harris Mountain Heli back in July and i first glimpsed the burly peak. i suppose shredding this thing was hardly a unique idea as it juts out way above the rest of the horizon, it looks like it's on steroids, and it's nicknamed "the Matterhorn of the South". So i reread "Freedom of the Hills", practiced Prussiking, bought some pickets and ice screws, and tied a rope to the human pack animal Crazy Tony for the recon ascent.
Weather in NZ isn't exactly what you would call pleasant. I couldn't fly up to the col on Saturday when i arrived and when i called the hut for a weather report it said snow to 1400m, hail, thunderstorms and 100kmh winds (it's the middle of summer here). I knew Crazy Tony would be walking up from the valley in that weather while i waited for a window to heli in, so i did what any good friend would do and went mountain biking with Sarah and Matt in Queenstown, and got drunk. The chopper finally flew me up on Monday and Tuesday was our window to climb. We woke up at 2am and the wind was still shaking the hut like a disco in Port-au-Prince. So we slept a few more hours and starting climbing at 5am. A few of the folks that started at 2 or 3am were turning back.
The climb took us 14 hours with about 1/2 hour dicking around at the summit. Our ascent route (the ramp) was 50-55deg on hard snow/ice that took us 20 pitches each way with my 30m rope. on the summit ridge the steepness relaxes enough to skip the protection. Falling on the ramp wasn't really an option for us as you would be toast if you couldn't self-arrest so we quadruple-equalized all the anchors we built as Crazy Tony is actually pretty sensible despite his unfortunate nickname. As Ibu-Proteam safety advisor, i suggest a quicker simul-climbing strategy that was quickly deemed "not a good idea".
Anyway, walking to the top of a mountain and then back down without shredding it is a lot like a long pseudo-relationship with a chick who likes a glue-sniffing low-riding idiot. once you reach the summit (again i got nowhere with Vanessa so my metaphor is actually shit), the walk back down is pretty disappointing when all you can think about is how u should be shredding but instead you're gonna have to downclimb 20 pitches at 5pm below an ice chandelier that doesn't like you and spindrift that is adding injury to insult.
The moral (yes, there's a moral) is that mountains don't want you on top of them. They make friends with unsavory characters like rime, sastrugi, wind, ice, loose rocks in an effort to make themselves seem less appealing and warn you not to fuck with them. People put signs on them to convince you that they are in fact a disagreeable place. You try to respect them and sneak in when the weather is nice, but they're still just nasty. And that's why they need to be shredded, so you can hang your head up high and Claim them.
The West Face. What i want to shred. Next time.
My Heli leaving aka the point of no return.
Crazy Tony buliding our first anchor to cross the schrund at 6am. Only 13hrs and 39 pitches left!
2 or 3 pitches in
The Bonar Glacier. Crevassy.
Pitch,
after pitch,
after pitch,
after pitch,
after pitch.
The view from the Summit east down the Coxcomb Ridge. Looking down the South Face (right side of the knife-edge ridge) makes you want to puke.
You'd have to negotiate this minefield after you shred the West Face.
Pinky the Loverboy.
Crazy Tony.
The Hut.
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Really impresive TR!
Goal for this season: 30 ~ days
Currently: 20
Cool TR pinky.
"Looking down the South Face (right side of the knife-edge ridge) makes you want to puke". haha, reminds a place I went to in france. There was like a 1000m drop (not feet), and these 3 guys were like having a f*cking breakfast right by the edge of it, having a casual chat (unroped & no anchors of course).
Anyway, What's with the heli tho? Too tired to climb to the hut?
Props to tony the tiger for doing it the old school way.
Beautiful place you live in.
I wonder what she looks like now?
http://hakubapowderlodge.com/
F.T.
All Pinky's ladies are looking really bad these days! Why do you think he moved to Japan? You know what they say about "you are what you eat"! Well these gals been eating way too much BBQ
"Looking down the South Face (right side of the knife-edge ridge) makes you want to puke". haha, reminds a place I went to in france. There was like a 1000m drop (not feet), and these 3 guys were like having a f*cking breakfast right by the edge of it, having a casual chat (unroped & no anchors of course).
Anyway, What's with the heli tho? Too tired to climb to the hut?
Props to tony the tiger for doing it the old school way.
Beautiful place you live in.
thanks doode. The french are animals. i'd love to check out the scene in chamonix one day just to firmly cement my place in lameness.
the answer to the other question is that i have more money than time. it takes a few days to walk up to base camp from the valley. Add that to the weather issues and you're looking at a minimum 7 days to climb this thing. If i could take that much time off work i'd go to Japan.
FT, if i could remember her last name then i'd try to find a photo on the interweb to put a face to the (pseudo)name. but that's the problem with diazepam, so many things i can't remember.
salty margaritas
Youll never catch me climbing that thing.
That shit scares the fuck out of me!
http://hakubapowderlodge.com/
Great TR pinky. The steeps on that just look insane and climbing it for 14hrs+, unreal. Next time you can try to shred it but man having to pitch it the whole way sounds wicked. It is a great story and a well put together TR. I can't believe you pulled your camera out on that steepness.
wow impressive. is it actually a skiable peak or just a sweet ass sideslip?
... not sure what happened but my monitor went fruit loops when I opened this thread.
sorry about your monitor daryl. Lightroom is supercool. here is an un-pinky'd image of the west face that i ripped off from Australian Geographic:
Apparently it has never been skiied from the summit. the rock band is the issue, i guess the people who have skiied it (a lot of people have) traverse in below the rock band from the NW ridge (lookers left). It seems like to me you could cut through the couloir in the rock band at the top of the SW ridge and ski a single line from the summit. If i climb it to shred it i will climb straight up the guts of that face 'cause i have no idea how wide the choke is in the couloir. My understanding is that the couloir is 55-60deg and it's 180m vertical and would def be the crux of the descent.
1) I don't think you could climb it with snowboard boots. It's front-pointing almost the whole way and it would be brutal with snowboard boots. I bought Drivers this year to see if they could frontpoint without the pain, but i haven't tried them yet.
2) You would need a partner who is 100% committed (unless you do it solo) because there's no easy way down.
3) Doing it solo would be stupid even if you're a great climber because the glacier is really really nasty.
4) The schrund in the face doesn't look nice at all, and it's getting worse every year. It would be best to try to ride it in November or December.
5) Logistically, it ain't easy. You need a week out there to get the right conditions.
On a side note, two guys roped together fell off the summit and down the west face a few years ago and fell 1200m to the glacier. Somehow they managed with escape with one broken ankle between the two of them. Rucky.
salty margaritas
1200 meters. wow.
What happened to Pinky the park rat?
Pretty sick climb dude
the only thing a ride down from that peak has going for it, is that we have the same name and maybe I'll be able to weasel into your portion of the house ...
please wait until you've had many days enjoying life and many more nights holding up the bar at master braster before you strap into that one.
I say this in a loving way.
you've discovered the "electric blue vignette" effect. Nice!
It sounded scary enough when you wrote about it to me, but now I am really scared. Sort of in agreement with Daryl here but I know you don't like to leave your missions incomplete...
09/10 days on snow: 33 so far
08/09 days on snow: 51
Hey man, don't you know this is a skiing forum? What's up with all this hard core mountaineering crap. You're setting the bar way too high and no one else (especially meadow skippers like myself) is going to have any confidence in posting TRs. Think about the little man.
Seriously though, this is a very, very cool / impressive TR. Congratulations dude!
haha. There's nothing left to ski in this hemisphere man! seriously though any one of you could climb that mountain, it's just about getting the right weather. No harder than climbing Shirouma, just a little more technical.
salty margaritas
A very beautiful line.
Congratz for sending it.
That is quite an experience to have under your belt. But I wonder what that very big mountain like that would think of you using the phrase 'shred it' in most paragraphs?
A Haiku from Santoko Taneda:
I slipped and fell —
the mountains are still
Quite an accomplishment Pink Dog, but it appears you have taken those pix out of some comic book.
One man wolfpack
A Haiku from Santoko Taneda:
I slipped and fell —
the mountains are still
speaking of respect. some knucklehead had actually pissed on the summit. stay classy NZ!
also, i 100% agree with respecting mountains in our actions. respecting them with words is something i'll leave to you haiku-quoting hippy types
Thanks for reading though. I get the feeling people don't actually read the TRs.
salty margaritas
All Pinky's ladies are looking really bad these days! Why do you think he moved to Japan? You know what they say about "you are what you eat"! Well these gals been eating way too much BBQ
THat may be true but time has not been all that kind to Pinky either...
Schweet TR. Sicktarded even
34 days on snow this season 55 days last season