Oates: Hate the cerial, like the mountain

We decided to squeeze this into a day approached from Goat Pass via the Minga Valley. The plan was to climb the 'West Ridge' route which takes a gully gaining the ridge just below the summit. Due to some more top notch navigation on my part we missed, but never fear, found the South Ridge and that was plenty exciting.

Looking at the final section of the South Ridge

There are mountains up there somewhere

The day didnt start with promise as we were presented with a valley full of cloud. The forecast suggested it would clear though, so with fingers crossed we headed up valley. Things went our way and on reaching Lake Mavis we were greated by a perfect day.

Mt Oates

From here the route heads over the lower west ridge to drop into a basin on the south west side of the peak. The gully we were aiming for appears from here to head up to the west ridge at about half height in a rather extreme example of forshortning. If you head further round as we did the south side of the moutain is revealed.

The route we merrily wandered by is on the far right here

Heading up to the South Ridge

The ridge can easily be gained on the south side of the steep stuff and from there its a short section of exposed cornice riddled climbing to reach the summit.

Negotiating the ridge

Kieren just below the summit

Thats a 'check' for Mt Oates

Mt Franklin in the background on the way back down

The way down provided some awesome skiing form just past the diffulculties on the ridge. The snow was probably best described as late season slush but with a bit of speed it was good fun. Snowline was hovering aroung 1500m and as I sit inside with the heatpump cranking it could be around there for a little while yet.
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Couloir Peak Recce

This started with the goal of actually skiing the couloir but thigh deep spring powder on the day made skiing open spaces a bit more apealing. Have now got Couloir Peak fairly well scoped out and what was a bit of a pipe dream at the start of the year is starting to look feisable, well sort of.

Couloir Peak, the main section looks relatively straitforward

Headed up to the base of the couloir to check out the exit. You could see this had the potential to be tricky all the way from the road end so wasnt about to drop into this blind. The first bit of good news is that there is easy access to Cameron Col, which means a quick route to the top without having to slog up the couloir.

Access to Cameron Col

Next bit of good news is the first crux on the exit while narrow looks like it might go. Where things get exciting is the second crux, this looks like it will require some hucking heroics to finish the line.

The exit

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Arrowsmiths - Day 4

Day four saw the cloud recede west, but high winds and precip still threatened at the head of the valley. We had to make our way out that day so hatched a plan to head over into the South Ashburton via the Ashburton Glacier and find our way back into the Cameron and home further down valley

Sticking to the wind shadow on our way out of the valley

We aimed for the col between points 2350 and 2238 west of Cameron Hut hoping to avoid any excessively step terrain lee to the NW. This took about 2hrs on what was another hot day in August. Looking at the map now I realise we missed and actually crossed over the col south of point 2238. This explains why the glacier had snuck up valley, but I suppose that's what you get for not taking a map.

The view down Cameron Valley on the skin up

No matter though we had 800m of skiing at our feet and it looked good.

Dropping in on the Ashburton River side

Not a bad way to travel

There was a slight bit of a concern about a rollover near the bottom possibly being bluffs. After careful assessment we decided she'll be right.

Ed at the top of the rollover

Now we just had to find our way back to the car. The Ashburton River provided strait forward travel (there is a 4WD track) but as we were finding our own way back into the Cameron Valley there was still a bit of a possibility for excitement.

The Ashburton River

Couldn't help but think we might be in for more bush fighting as we were heading strait for the area of our little detour on the way in. We headed up the fence line south of Wild Mans Hill and dropped down by the stream north of point 1433. Bit of steep matagouri bashing but it wasnt to thick. Taking 7hrs form Cameron Hut to car certainly beats the standard way out.

Dropping back down into the Cameron

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Arrowsmiths - Day 3

A pretty serious NW front was forecast to be ruining our Sunday but the worst of this blew through during the night leaving us with a rainy/snowy whiteout. The Arrowsmith Range was proving a top notch wind shield though so we went out to check on the snow.

Some compression tests in our world of white

Plan A was to go check out Banfield Hut at the bottom of Jagged Stream but some wind slab on the slopes below Peg Col and the fact we couldn't see a thing put us off this plan.

Coilour on the western side of the valley above Cameron Hut

We spotted this couloir on the other side of Cameron Valley though. This was another quick lap from the hut and was wide enough to pick up some speed in, powder filled and a lot of fun.

Ed at the top of the Couloir

Some high speed turns further down

The day was saved!

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Arrowsmiths - Day 2

Day two of our Arrowsmiths excursion we were feeling a little tired for some reason. So decided to go for a quick ski up to Peg Col, this turned out to be a good choice as it netted us some of the best turns of the trip.

Ed cranking the turns below Peg Col

Most of the way up to the col consists of fairly low angled terrain but the last 200m turns into the 30-40 degree range and facing dead south was holding onto the goods.

The approach to Peg Col

Ed preparing to drop in off Peg Col

This bit was a blast

The return tip only took 2 1/2 hours so we had plenty of blue skies left, we were both feeling a little trashed though so spent the rest of the afternoon sampling Cameron Huts reading material. The next day was forecast to be a hut day, so I thought Id save the top shelf prose for then. Saturdays fair was 25 Beautiful Homes, I cant help wondering how this bit of literary gold made its way into the mountains.

Ed testing out his new Spirit 2s

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Arrowsmiths - Day 1

We have been keen to head into the Arrowsmiths all year and now the avalanche danger has finally dropped thought it was time to check it out. This range at the head of the Rakia is just east of the divide and turns out its a good place to be in an nor wester. Its also the haunt of Methven Heliski as it offers big verts and plenty of steep skiing. We unfortunately didn't have a helicopter but that would take all the adventure out of it anyway.

Another slight drawback is Ed had an evening test so we didn't leave Christchurch until 8:30pm, we also had to stop pick up a pair of skis and cut some skins for them. Ed took a little while to get the hang of this so we arrived at the Cameron Vally road end at a casual 2am. Still no need to let that put us off, so up valley we head. Had done this walk once before in the dark and missed the track above the gorge which wasn't ideal. Keen to avoid making the same mistake I may have jumped the gun a bit heading up the hill (by about an hour actually, ops) our resulting hour of fighting the local foliage was possibly even worse than going through the gorge.

There is an easy track up the valley, this isn't it.

But this worked out great as we arrived at the hut in daylight like normal people. We then had a bit of a nap and unfortunately this sort of set the tone for the trip as our sleep patterns were thrown a little out of whack.

The head of the Cameron at dawn, the huts at the snowline.

The goal for the day was to ski Mt Arrowsmith, I knew it was a pretty quick climb via the South Cameron Glacier as I had done it before, so we got up at lunch time and were on our way by 2pm a really late or really early start? You decide. The downside of this approach was it was baking hot and the slush that the snow pack turned into made for though skining.

Some steep skining on the Carriage Way route to the South Cameron Glacier

This in turn meant we didn't hit the summit till sunset and with the snow getting its freeze on our plan to ski the Grand Gully off the top was looking a bit suicidal.

Continuing my knack of summiting at sunset, Mt Arrowsmith

So we settled for a ski from below the exposed bit. No photos as it turned into another of our night skiing adventures. Got my first experience of a nasty breakable crust and am still working on a technique to handle this. My current approach of catching a tail and face planting leaves something to be desired. Luckily the last few hundred meters above the hut had some sweet recrystallized powder so we got in some fun turns at the end. Back at the hut at 8pm for our double dinner life was good.

Ed approaching the Grand Gully on Mt Arrowsmith, next time...

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A brave step into Blogging

In the hope that one day someone will give me some free stuff and so Ive got somewhere to post the good photos without giving them away, thought I might try my hand at a blog. You'll have to excuse my english skills. So hope you like it and please don't hold back on the comments. Read more