Mt Aspiring NW Ridge
Alex was planning a trip to NZ before moving permanately to Germany. As it was going to be his last trip to NZ for a while, he tentatively put forward Mt Aspiring, as it had been on both our lists for ages. I floated the possibility of doing the North Buttress and Alex enthusiastically agreed. However, we weren't sure if the conditions were going to be on, between it being pretty late in the season, and it having recently snowed, so we decided to take the gear for it but were pretty ready to do the buttress instead. Another friend in Queenstown, Tom, had been frothing for Aspiring and we invited him along.
I picked Alex up from the airport and drove him up to the Remarkables for a quick acclimatisation lap of the Grand Traverse. A couple of hours later we were back at the house angsting over the weather window. The plan was to walk up to Scott's Bivvy in the drizzle on Tuesday evening before heading up Bevan Col to Colin Todd.
We were pretty lucky and the drizzle petered out just as we started riding to Aspiring Flats. Not far into the ride, I hit a rock riding across a stream and got my rigid boots wet! To add insult to injury, there was a perfectly good bridge 50m upstream :D We made pretty good time to Aspiring Flats and continued from there on foot.
We got to roughly where we thought Scott's Bivvy should be and started trying to follow the instructions from the Mt Aspiring Guidebook to find it. About half an hour's fruitless search later we'd nearly given up and decided to explore a bit further down the track. Turns out, Scott's Bivvy isn't where it's marked on the NZ Topo 50 - instead it's about 100m further, right at the end of the DoC track (it's next to the "Trail Ends" sign). We spent a comfortable night there and left the next morning - as a bonus, my boots were nearly completely dry, even though we had a frost in the morning.
We made pretty quick time to Bevan Col, and cruised up the steep slabs on the true left of the river. Upon reaching the grassy knoll we eagerly started scrambling up the small bluffs directly in front. This, it turns out, is not the right way, and we ended up rapping down from a slipperly ledge of frozen snowgrass. Following the rock bluffs further up the valley we came across a far easier, far more well trodden path and cruised up the scree.
The entrance to Bevan Col
Unfortunately, the upper part of the col was almost completely covered in verglas, and what would normally be a pretty cruisy walk turned into painstakingly picking our way through the least icey path, regularly back tracking and finding alternative paths through the ice. It was with no small relief that we got to the tarns at the top and received our first glimpse of Aspiring.
Mt Aspiring from the tarns at the top of Bevan Col
From here, we made our way down to the other side and onto the glacier.
Coming down to the Bonar Glacier
Crossing the Bonar Glacier
From the top of the col it looked pretty crevassed but once we got onto it the going was pretty easy, and we were able to get around the worst of it with a wide arc.
Arriving at Colin Todd we were disappointed (but not too surprised) to see that the North Buttress was completely covered in snow and ice, which made our decision to do the NW Ridge pretty obvious.
Colin Todd hut, Mt Bevan, and my dry boots
We decided to set off early the next day, with the aim of being at the NW buttress for sunrise.
