‘Fill ya boots’ at Plateau Hut

By Chris Munro

The problem with climbing from Auckland is getting there. Sure, flights are cheap to the South Island but you’ve still got to get to the mountain. Public transport can get you there but you use up precious days waiting for buses. Here’s my bright idea: Ask the Canterbury section’s trip officer for a Christchurch contact to find a climbing partner: You get someone on the end of the rope, plus accommodation in Christchurch if needed and just need to share petrol costs there & back.

First step: find out the email for the Canterbury section’s trips person. Pat Pendergrast’s name came up in the newsletter from the NZAC Canterbury section so I flicked her an email. What I didn’t realise was that I had emailed the wrong Pat. Pat Deavoll from the National Office replied saying I’d emailed her instead but she’d be keen to climb with me if that was OK. Er, yes, climbing with one of NZ’s top climbers would be OK.

Fast forward to December 26. I get off the plane and Pat tells me there’s a flight booked out of Mt Cook tomorrow morning 1st thing to Plateau Hut
so we’re driving to Unwin straight away. It’s my first time to this side. You can’t beat a chopper flight for giving you a sense of the environment.

Climbing at Cook is all about weather windows. We had our first one straight away: Lay tracks to the South Ridge of Dixon that afternoon then up at 3am next morning for the climb. The South ridge consists of a short face climb to obtain the ridge then a couple of pitches of rock then staying on the snow covered ridgeline till you top out. Pat was happy to lead all the technical sections and went up the first rock pitch. Three meters up from the bottom is the crux and gets described as ‘interesting’ to ‘desperate’ depending how good your rock climbing is. The sloping chimney had no cracks or holds on it’s lower side and Pat managed a delicate ‘wiggle’ to get past it. I could get no further and had to ‘aid’ it with my prussicks. Not a great confidence boost on your first climb! A little breathlessly I summited and enjoyed the view.
The descent was down the easier East ridge but the rising temperatures made it a bit mushy underfoot.

Pat conducted a little research in the hut book and discovered how little this hut gets used by independent climbers. In the seven days we
had there only a handful were there under their own steam and most of them foreigners with the vast majority guided parties. Apart from Pat and myself there was only 1 other kiwi climber (not a guide) the whole time. Where are all the kiwi climbers? Isn’t this the high season for climbing? The other interesting fact was the complete absence of entries from April until November in the hut book. Not only are we coming less often but never in winter. Maybe kiwi climbing is going soft (me included)?

A rest day followed Dixon. The next weather window was forecast as good in the morning, bad in the afternoon. There aren’t many short climbs to do from Plateau so we decided to climb the rock on Anzac Peaks from Cinerama Col. Not really a climb but more of a pleasant scramble for three and a half pitches then abseiling over the ‘schrund to get back onto the plateau to be back to the hut early afternoon.

My goal for the trip was to climb Cook via the East Ridge. This involves climbing the East Ridge to Middle Peak and traversing the ‘highest mile’ to High Peak on Cook & descending the Linda glacier. To do it you need a long spell of settled weather (15-20 hours) to avoid an Inglis-Doole style epic on the summit ridge. That never came.
Instead we opted for an ice line on the East face of Dampier. Four pitches of nice mixed/ice before the severe gale wind forecast came in.

A few guided parties made it up Cook that day via the Linda. Guided climbing seems to be a bitter/sweet experience to me. The glossy brochures promise a summit experience with an experienced guide - as long as you have a high level of fitness. But what invariably happens is clients over-estimate their fitness & experience for this climb. I saw very disappointed climbers whose guides decided they weren’t up to it physically and pulled the plug on their $4,800 dream. Then there’s the type-A personalities who convince their guides that they’re up for it - against the better judgement of the guide - and results in a marathon effort from client & guide to get a result. Watching this dynamic play out gave me a glimpse of what this relationship is like for Everest aspirants in books like ‘Dark Summit’ which I read at Plateau.

We only had a few days before I had to be back in Auckland and Pat back to work and the forecast was worsening - no weather windows for the
next few days. I pulled the plug on my East Ridge dream - for the moment. We used every bit of good weather we had and I climbed routes I would never have attempted without Pat so I left feeling I had accomplished a lot - ‘Filled my boots’.