Intrepid climbers put their mark on all the 3000m peaks

Press, 26 May 1977, Page 17

Intrepid climbers put their mark on all the 3000m peaks

When Paddy Freaney and Russell Brice stepped on to the summit of 9960 ft Mount Aspiring two weeks ago, they became members of an exclusive club — membership, two. With this last ascent in a list of 31, they are the first men to climb all New Zealand’s 3000 m peaks in one summer season. The feat has been tried before. During the 1955-56 climbing season, a young Australian, E. R. B. Graham, climbed 24 of New Zealand’s highest peaks with several partners. In 1959, George Broadbent and Roy Beedham had only seven peaks to climb when they disappeared in the Upper Linda Glacier, while attempting Mount Malaspina. Unusually fit, with good snow and weather conditions, the men had climbed an amazing 20 peaks in a little over a month. Mountaineers may wax poetic about sunsets and alpine flowers, but when it comes to facts and figures, and whether a peak has really been climbed or not, they are coldly analytical. The quality has contributed to the varying total of this mesmeric list of peaks over the ygars. For some time it was maintained that there were 17 10,000 ft peaks in this country. A recount in 1957, which brought in such subsidiary peaks as the Middle and Low Peaks

of Mount Cook, and the West Peak of Elie de Beaumont, brought the total up to 27. Metrication has added four more — Mount Dixon (9875 ft Glacier Peak (9865 ft Mount Hamilton (9915 ft and Mount Aspiring — and the 10,000 ft peaks have become the 3000 m peaks. Those who have climbed these ice-clad giants over a number of years are still only a small band. The first person to achieve it was a Christchurch teacher, Andy Anderson, in 1951. He says: “Over 25 years of climbing they just accumulated.” Junee Ashurst, of Mount Cook, completed the ascents a

By

NANCY CAWLEY

few weeks later and is still the only woman to do so. Climbing mostly together, the trio of Bert Barley, Geoff Harrow, and Tom Newth were successful a few seasons later, as were Gordon Hasell and the alpine guide, Harry Ayers. The famous English climber, the late H. E. L. Porter, came close to climbing all the ten-thou-sand-footers over several seasons from 1923. Junee Ashurst says: “It appears he had climbed all the big peaks and had reached to within 120 ft of the summit of Dampier with Vic Williams, (the guide). How-

ever, he didn’t return . . .” Paddy Freaney and Russell Brice have climbed into mountaineering history bound by a strong fraternal rapport, in spite of differing ages and experience. During their climbing marathon they had not the slightest argument — considering the conditions under which they were operating, that is saying a lot. Paddy is 38, unmistakably Irish, with a quick wit and an endless fund of jokes. He is a man for whom adventure is everything. “Although nowadays,” he says, “I get as much satisfaction from tramping and pass-hopping

as I do from technical climbing — or almost anyway.” He began his serious climbing as a Special Air Service instructor in Britain, and spent six years with the sendee in the Middle and Far East. He has lived and worked with Norwegian and German mountain troops, climbed extensively in Europe, and spent a summer as a survival instructor in the Antarctic. With his wife Lynne, Paddy drove overland from Britain to New Zealand before establishing the Outdoor Education Centre at Arthur’s Pass, in

1969. (En route, the Freaneys climbed Mount Damavand (18,500 ft in Iran and drove around Australia.) Paddy ran the centre for five years, then handed it over to the Canterbury Education Board for whom he now acts as manager. Russell Brice is an electrician at Arthurs Pass. At 24, he still has most of his climbing before him. The two men met when Paddy ran his first mountaincraft course at Arthurs Pass and Russell was a 16-year-old pupil. Paddy says of his climbing partner: “He is a strong Cumber who is really at home on the snow, and is

good company. I expect him to do big things in the next few years.” Both men are members of the New Zealand Alpine Club. Although all of New Zealand’s three thousand metre mountains, except Mount Aspiring, are grouped toether in the Mount Cook National Park, the logistics and technical problems involved in climbing them are considerable. Paddy “dreamt up” the idea of an attempt almost a year ago, assembling food and gear, with his partner, to last three months, but hoping that with good conditions the climbs would take only two.

It shows the calibre of the men that despite atrocious weather they completed their climbs in three months, from December 2 to February 27. Mount Aspiring tantalised them with storms and early snow until the last moment. But, after it was climbed on May 9 from French Ridge Hut, their odyssey was over. The men agree that their chief difficulties were the snow, which remained soft and unfrozen below 9000 ft and through which they had to wallow, the ice and sastrugi (frozen windformed waves of snow) on the rock, and the high winds. They lost, precious time through lengthy spells of bad weather, some of them as long as seven days.

“This put a big mental strain on us, waiting day after day, getting up every hour from 1 o’clock onwards, until, at 5 o’clock or so, we gave it up for another day.”

Food does not last for ever, either. In many cases their supplies had to be spread over almost a week of waiting. At Pioneer Hut, at the head of the Fox Glacier, they had food for 14 days. They came out on the twenty-first day after climbing 10 Main Divide peaks, crossing the Divide via Governors Col to the Plateau Hut, doing a Grand Traverse of Mount Cook’s three peaks, and climbing Mount. La Perouse. Paddy

says: “We were not exactly over-eating on these trips.”

From the outset, the men followed safe climbing practices, realising that the length and variety of their undertaking demanded this. They feel it paid off. They had only one mishap when they slipped and fell on the slopes of Mount Hicks during a southerly storm. Paddy Freaney is grateful for his wife’s support. Her backing extended beyond caring for their home and two young children, when she joined the men on their second-to-last climb, Mount Sefton (10,354 ft Both men have good memories of the help given by the Mount Cook rangers, hut wardens, friends, and fellow mountaineers. Above all, for both, there is the warm satisfaction of having initiated and carried out a project that tested them to the limit.