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 (

). 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.

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.

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.

Mt Aspiring NW Ridge

After a bout of heavy rain the weather finally let up and Alex and I decided to try and head up Mt Arrowsmith. We were pretty worried about the height of the river, which wasn't helped by a quick chat to one of the locals on Erewhon station.

We arrived late in the evening, our intention being to head off up the Clyde (and then Lawson the next morning). We planned to climb the walkers route, up from the Lawrence Valley, with a high bivvy that night, to make for a smaller second day.

After one brief crossing just out of the car, Alex made the mistake of leaving his sock where he'd taken his boots off and was forced to cross and recross, much to his disappointment. For the first few hours, we hugged the bank of the Clyde, making slow progress crawling through dense Madagari to avoid the raging river.

Reaching the branch of the Lawrence the river looked a bit less intimidating, and scratched and tired from crawling, we decided to cross the river. Progress was much faster and we made good time through the far easier terrain, constantly criss crossing the river.

Eventually we reached the scree slope we intended to climb, and started the hard work of climbing up the slope, and finding a place to bivvy. As dark started to descend we finally found a place to camp, just below Pt 1862 and happily set to work making camp.

Early the next morning we set off to climb Arrowsmith. Following the notes from ClimbNZ, we started up a valley, just after the plateau. Unfortunately, this turned out to be the wrong valley, we'd headed up one too early (a fact we didn't realise until reaching the top, when we saw Ashburton Peak)! Dejected, and not wanting to drop back down the whole valley, we decided to climb over the saddle West of Pt 2106, and drop down into the next valley.

Once in the valley, we could see the route we'd originally planned to head up, way off in the distant, which did nothing for our enthusiasm. After a quick chat, we decided to make our way up to the South West ridge of Arrowsmith, and up to the summit. How far could it be?

As it turned out, quite a way, the ridge never seemed to end, and there was constant exposure on both sides (though the Cameron side was significantly more impressive). After what seemed like forever, and navigating a number of big and chossy gendarmes we finally made it to the summit, and the views were well worth the effort.

We dropped quickly down the coloir we'd originally planned to come up and navigated down a series of bluffs to get back to the valley, anxious to get down before it started getting dark, getting through the last of them with a full half hour to spare.

From here, it was just a long trudge back around the steep scree slopes to where we'd stashed our gear. In the dark, it seemed to take longer, and we weren't sure we'd find the stash (carefully buried under a pile of scree to stop it getting investigated by Kea). Fortunately, after a bit of faffing around we eventually uncovered it and got to our well earned meal (the cooker finally starting with the very last one of our wet matches).

Mt Arrowsmith

Poseidon is a climb I've been wanting to do since two weeks in a covid quarantine hotel when I returned to New Zealand in July 2020. It's an 8 pitch grade 23 climb which goes up the West Face of the Remarkables, above Jacks Point in Queenstown.

https://www.thecrag.com/en/climbing/new-zealand/queenstown/remarkables/route/2114490081

Gareth Hews, asked at the start of the week whether I'd be interested in a mission up it, which I responded to with an enthusiastic yes! The rest of the week we anxiously eyed the forecast (10mm of rain, on Saturday & Sunday) desperately hoping it would clear up.

Getting up bright and early on Saturday, we were happy to be greeted with glorious blue skies, and we drove off to Jardines to start the walk in. Because of the rain over night the tussocks and bushes were soaking, and we were quickly drenched through to the bone. The first part of the approach, to the big black water tank at the base of the valley was pretty cruisy. Unfortunately, from here the track disappeared into thick bracken, madagouri, blackberries and rose bushes.

Apparently, the approach is normally a two hour walk - however, we reckon it was more of a forty minute walk and a hour and a half crawl. Once we finally reached the base of the climb, drenched, scratched & dirty things went pretty smoothly. There were breif patches of drizzle but by and large the good weather held out. I drew the short straw and was picked to lead the 23 pitch. With a light drizzle I started traversing. 15 minutes later, and pumped out of my mind I rolled onto the grassy ledge with the belay, pysched to have been able to onsight the pitch.

The rest of climb was pretty cruisy, except for one chossy bit on the next pitch, where both Gareth and I snapped off some holds and nearly came off. The rap down was pretty cruisy but the wind and the rain came in for a bit. Back on the ground the sun came out and we had a well earned snack.

On the walk back we thought we'd found a better route, with thinner bushes. Back in the head-height madagouri, we quickly lost it, and had even more crawling to get back out. To anyone else doing the climb, I'd recommend taking loppers or a machete. The crux of the day was definitely the walk in/out. 

fallaciousreasoning's blog.

Poseidon

More Stories

Mt Aspiring NW Ridge

Mt Arrowsmith