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Outside Magazine November 2003

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The Hard Way
Head Trip (cont.)

ALTHOUGH I ENJOY scrabbling my way up almost anything, I came to New Zealand to climb its highest peak, Mount Cook. But after Mount Kitchener, I knew I wasn't ready. I didn't know enough yet. So I drove south to Mount Aspiring National Park and hiked up to the French Ridge Hut.

The most poignantly named peak on the planet, Mount Aspiring (9,960 feet) is an extraordinarily aesthetic pyramid of snow and black rock, the one mountain on the tick list of every Southern Hemisphere climber. My objective was the southwest ridge, a classic ice arte. Two other teams in the hut—one American, one Aussie—had the same goal, and I was hoping to tie in with one of them. Unfortunately, they were both gone by one o'clock the next morning. Crunching across the Bonar Glacier around 8 a.m., I met the Americans coming back. They'd turned around due to ferociously high winds.

I carried on to have a look for myself. At the base of the ridge I met up with the Australians; they were packing it in.

" 'Igh winds and 'ard ice," said one of the threesome, who all were from Perth. "Another day, per'aps."

Craning my head back, I eyed the 3,000-foot ridge. Plumes of spindrift were scouring the top, leaving nothing but a swooping white cleaver of ice. Oddly enough, the scene reminded me of Wyoming in winter. Wyoming and wind are synonymous. After a decade or two, you practically have to be lifted off your feet to even notice. As for hard ice, I'd take that over gripless slush any day. All in all, I figured the route didn't exceed my conditional comfort level.

Everybody has a CCL. For those born and bred on the coast, rushing seas are de rigueur, and they think nothing of a squall that puts their ketch over to port 45 degrees. (Landlubber to the core, I get queasy in the bathtub.) For those from the desert—Bedouins to Bushmen—100-degree heat is hardly noteworthy. And those from the rainforest find 100 percent humidity no sweat. It's all what you're used to.

I summited the southwest ridge of Mount Aspiring in two hours, maneuvering through easy rock bands and connecting ice gullies, staying on solid, slick ice on the leeward side of the arte, exiting through a narrow vertical chute of ice-rimmed stone that reminded me of something I'd climbed on Scotland's Ben Nevis. The key to determining your CCL is knowing yourself well enough to recognize the risks you can tolerate and those you can't.

The next morning the weather was so tumultuous, the French Ridge Hut seemed to be cutting through clouds like a ship through swells. There were ten mountaineers aboard, and only one—a square-jawed, 23-year-old Australian sailor named Timmy Gill—wanted to climb. He and I scaled the snowpacked cracks of Mount Avalanche (8,587 feet) in a near whiteout, having a blast together.

"Three hours up, one down," I wrote afterward on the back of my map. "Rap route indiscernible beneath ice. Left four slings, two nuts. Just off glacier sky cleared like a blessing."

Times, speeds, conditions, thoughts—I write them down. These postclimb debriefings help me gauge the range of the possible. After a few peaks, I have a baseline of data. I can compare my own ascent rate and assessment of difficulties with whatever a guidebook may say, as well as with the subjective stream of beta from other climbers. In this way I begin to mentally relax and allow the muscle-memory acquired through decades of climbing to carry me.

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