ASCENT OF AORANGI, 1962—III Route Lies Up The Spire Of Hell'

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29916, 1 September 1962, Page 9

ASCENT OF AORANGI, 1962—III Route Lies Up The Spire Of Hell'

JT is the work of an hour across to the foot of tne Haast Ridge, the high north wall of the Hocas.etter Icefall which has g.ven access to the Plateau since Green decided on the route after several abortive attempts from other directions We were so far barely two hours out from the Hermitage. Now, suddenly, the rotten steep broken wall of the moraine and the shattered ridge reared into the sky For two hours we struggled with the ridge as pack straps bit into our collar bones. This at least was now the way it was then. This route lies up the spine of hell. And so also is the Hochstetter the same, creaking and grumbling in its frozen cascade, smugly remembering the earliest years of alpine description afforded it.

The heat on the ridge generated by my puffing progress was uncomfortable but the wind was. champagne when I crested a rocky top. None the less I was delighted to reach the hut which balances incredibly in a notch carved out of the ridge. Early

This is the third of a series of articles by GUY MANNERING, in whieh he writes of an ascent of Mount Cook this year, and refers to early attempts to climb the mountain.

climbers had to make use of a single rock on the face of the mountain and shelter as well as they could partly beneath it. There was a cup of tea brewed on the hissing primus by a party ahead of us, and there was an air of untidy expectancy in the hut. for this is a place for climbers who are here to climb mountains as the weather wills. Four of the 12 bunks had been vacated by a party now on the mountain and traversing to the Hooker.

The wind was slow’ly increasing and the afternoon sky dashed with lenticulars; the hogsbacks. forebears of the strong nor’-west. By late afternoon it was raining and the hut settled down for a storm. The hut boomed as it was blasted by the

wind and rain splashes drifted in through the rattling doors and windows. Just before dark came the sound of a scratch of metal on rock and the door opened. A party of six wet and tired climbers still wearing crampons and roped together staggered into the hut. They had completed a traverse of the mountain and had crossed the other party on the summit ridge in the evening’of the day before. They had been climbing continuously since before we had left our boating camp nearly 100 miles away. Radio links with the Hermitage indicated bad weather for the next day and it was clear that all beds would be occupied, those weary from the climb would not be a worry for some time to come and those of us awaiting a climb spent the hours reading paperbacks from the hut library as the storm boomed on.

By afternoon the following day the storm had eased and the traverse party left for the Hermitage. Their advices of a cattle track to the summit of the mountain

was heartening for us, for we should not need to waste time finding a route through the great broken blocks of the Linda icefalls. The new radio forecast in the evening pleased us and the three parties still in the hut bedded down early ready for a midnight breakfast and start on the mountain. The alarm rang almost before sleep came, it seemed. Bacon and eggs at midnight were eaten with an anxious eye on the sky as the stars were being swallowed by a heavy haze. There was no moon. By the time we were ready to leave the hut the other two parties had decided the signs were against success and their breakfast became instead a late supper—they undressed and returned to bed.

Neil and I set out in memory of the maxurs of the early climbers: "Start out. you can always return early without feeling sorry for yourself if the day Comes right ”