December 2001 - New Zealand (cont.)
Wednesday
After the exertions of Tuesday, Wednesday was going to be a somewhat easier day. After a good
long sleep and big breakfast (what else?) we headed back to the rock wall in the valley. We
put in seven or eight pitches of beautiful climbing, some of them pushing to the limit of my
ability. The abseil at the end is always my favorite part - commando-style action straight
out of Mission Impossible!
Our idea for the evening was to fly into Turner's Bivy for an overnight and early morning climb
of Mt Madeleine (2535 m) on Thursday. We organized a chopper for 6 pm. A bivy (or bivouac),
by the way, is essentially a shelter other than a hut or tent for an outdoor overnight, such
as a cave, rock shelter or similar. But more on that later.
As it happened, our heli pilot had left for the day when we turned up at 6 pm, forcing us to
spend the night at a lodge in Milford Sound. The good news was that this provided us with a
shower. The bad news however was that the night would never be as peaceful as in a bivy. As
far as the showers are concerned, as so happens the ladies shower/toilet were under renovation
and so the girls were sharing facilities with the boys. Nothing too exciting about that, apart
from the fact that two out of three toilets had just run out of paper. Girls on toilets without
paper are like passengers on a hijacked plane - they panic! Luckily, with me sitting in the
well stocked (paper-wise) third cubicle, I was able to calm the shrieking gals down by passing
tons of toilet paper on under the partition.
Sleep would also not come easy. The dormitory next door housed six American girls with funny
accents who kept exchanging girlie stories and giggling long into the night. If at least
these had been raunchy tales of sex and love it would have been fun to listen to. But no, these
were just terribly boring anecdotes of little interest (remember American Pie: "and one time,
at band camp..."). But the giggling was menacing. Paul eventually went over there in his
underpants and put a stop to it. (The sight of Paul in his brief must have been quite a shock
judging from the abrupt quietness...). But no sooner had the giggling stopped, one guy in our
room started snoring like it was the end of the world. After a short argument, Paul also
managed to put a stop to that.
Silvan & Paul in Milford Sound
