December 2002 - New Zealand (cont.)
Next morning we awoke to the same miserable weather. Clearly no fly in, which left us with Plan B - walk in! The good thing about a "walk in" is that it's "purer" - you actually climb the mountain from its very bottom. The bad thing is that you have to walk. And in our case, you had to walk a lot. A lot, a lot, a lot. I'm tryng to emphasize the point but you will never be able to grasp the magnitude of my suffering!
The objective of the day (a Monday, I shall add) was to reach French Ridge Hut. To get there, you first walk for about 3 ½ hours through flat land and rolling hills, past Aspiring Hut up the Matukituki Valley. So far so good, but bear in mind that on your back you will carry a week's supply of food, clothing, climbing gear, crampons, snow shoes, axe, hammer, snow stake and toilet paper - all in all at least one ton!
French Ridge Hut obviously is up on French Ridge and thus having reached the end of the valley, you start climbing the bloody ridge. It is hard in simple words to describe how utterly awful this ridge climb is (Paul called it "brutal", but that's an understatement). Avid readers of this website know that I am not a particular friend of the French - in fact, I can't stand most of them. This ridge was thus aptly named and just deepened my hatred for anything French! The sign post at the bottom of the ridge (altitude: 555 m) suggested it takes 3 hrs to reach the hut. That is, I suppose, if you're a monkey, a French, or both. Two-thirds of the climb is actually in a forest whereby you haul yourself (and your one ton pack) up on tree roots, mud steps and through steep river gullies. It's not mountaineering, it's monkeyneering! The last third is through tussock and snow, but by the time my energy was completely sapped. I cursed, I panted, I struggled, I hated this entire f***ing holiday already on Day 2. My back and my shoulders were seriously killing me and I went almost mad (too late, I hear you say). Anyway, we reached the hut (1,480 m) by about 8:00 p.m., roughly five hours from the bottom of the ridge.
Tuesday was a rest day - for obvious reasons! We lingered in the hut, chatted, cooked, ate and slept. There was not much else to do. The weather was still shit (Easterlies, Westerlies... whatever!) and the hut was filling up with stranded climbers. We eagerly awaited the 8:00 p.m. "skit", the daily radio-transmitted weather report sent by a love-sick female Belgian hut warder at Aspiring Hut (it's a long story...). Things were looking up weather-wise and we decided on an early (4:00 am) start for Wednesday, with the goal of moving on to Colin Todd Hut, closer to the base of Mt. Aspiring.
We dutifully set out on that foggy Wednesday morning, following the steps of previous climbers further up the French Ridge towards a high point called "The Quarterdeck" (2,290 m). By the time we reached the col, the sun had finally burned away all the fog and for the first time Mt. Aspiring revealed itself in its full splendour - a magnificent mountain indeed. Our objective, the Southwest Ridge, lay right in front of us in its entire beauty. I finally managed to shake off the horrors of French Ridge and look forward to the climb ahead.
In the meantime, however, it was a traverse across the Bonar glacier to our next destination, Colin Tod Hut. On the way, we recorded the following expedition update:
By the time we reached the hut on Wednesday afternoon it already started to get busy. Everybody had noticed the change in weather and was going to put themselves in position for a summit bid. We managed to get some of the last of the 14 bunks in the hut and many parties camped outside. We had Torteloni for dinner, listened in on the skit ("Forecast for Thursday: fine with light winds" - aaaahh!) and went to the Garry Glitter before bed.
The "Garry Glitter", if you happed to be ignorant enough not to know, is referred to as the "Dunny" in Australian and the "Scheisshaus" in Liechtenstein. Because we had Beef Madras the day before, we went to the Garry Glitter quite frequently! Glad we carried all that toilet paper up the ridge...
