Subscribe to Outside Magazine
advertisement
Survival Guru

Today's Question
How do you make primitive snowshoes? answer

What should you do if you get lost driving in a snow storm? answer

Eco Adventurer

Today's Question
What is the greenest ski and snowboard on the market? answer

Can I really damage a coral reef with sunscreen while snorkeling? answer

Videos Ask Dave
  • What kind of dog will make me look manlier? answer
  • Is there a sport that safely combines my twin passions for guns and kayaks? answer
  • How come most of the world's cultures enjoy eating goat, but Americans don't? answer

Online Favorites

Special Issues

Photo Galleries
save this page print this page email this page
  • share this page

Outside Magazine November 2003
Page:
1 2 3 4 5 6 

The Hard Way
Head Trip (cont.)

AFTER MOUNT AVALANCHE, I tried to solo Rob Roy (8,725 feet), a hoary, magnificent mountain also in Mount Aspiring National Park. But I went super- light and got caught out. After 6,000 feet in six hours, I was still 1,500 feet below the summit when another trenchant gale descended. I tried to dig in and bivouac, but without a stove or bag, I started to freeze. To save my bacon, I realized I'd have to turn back and descend through the maelstrom. I lost a glove and my footing several times over 21 hours of continuous climbing.

Two days later I attempted the MacInnes Ridge of Nazomi Peak (9,557 feet) with one of New Zealand's finest mountaineers, 40-year-old Allan Uren. He'd tracked me down at the Unwin Hut in Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park. It took us two bivies, but we topped out on Nazomi under fine blue skies.

Descending to the Gardiner Hut, we were only a three-hour glacier walk from the Empress Hut and Cook's Sheila Face, but Allan wasn't interested.

"I rather feel like a spot of tea," he said like a true mountaineer.

I had not come to New Zealand to climb alone. I prefer a partner. Climbing with the right partner is safer and more fun, with memories to share years later. But the weather was here now, and I was here now, and the most coveted peak in the Southern Alps was beckoning. I was going up.

Cramponing up the heavily crevassed Hooker Glacier, I jumped each mortal gulf with determination. I stopped several times to glass the Sheila Face with my monocular, trying to commit every outcrop and ice runnel to memory. I'd met two alpinists, Matt and Pete, who had climbed the Sheila Face three weeks earlier. They told me it took them two hours to navigate up the Sheila Glacier and cross the 'schrund, seven and a half steady and deliberate hours to climb the face, 13 and a half patient hours to descend.

Ogling the face, I poured these numbers into the matrix of what I had learned about myself on the past five mountains in the Southern Alps. With no partner and no protection, on terrain that was not overly technical, I figured I could realistically climb 1,000 feet an hour. The Sheila Face of Mount Cook is 3,000 feet high.


Next Page
Page:
1 2 3 4 5 6 


• Subscribe to Outside and get a FREE Gift!
• Give the gift of Outside Magazine!
• Subscribe to Outside Online's free weekly e-mail newsletter featuring gear reviews, fitness advice, galleries, podcasts, and more.