Crossing the Southern Alps on Skis and Pack-rafts

One week ago Chris, Jakeb, Leigh and myself set off on what would be my first big NZ alpine expedition. The plan was 12 days in total, 3 technical alpine routes and a multi pursuit crossing of the Southern Alps from West to East.

Lake Tasman, Day 8. Photo - ChrisBrinLee

The following are my dairy entrees from each day which show, not everything goes to plan..

Day one.
Yesterday afternoon Priya and I landed at Pioneer Hut with the expedition gear and food. The Neve looked to be in great shape and conditions underfoot were fairly solid in most places. It’s amazing to see so much snow and so little crevasses up here as I’m only used to the open summer conditions.

Day two.
This morning I got up at 6:30 and skied down to a small peak on Pioneer ridge. I wanted to see if I could spot the other party who were walking in but mostly I just wanted to practice my skiing. I had only skied once before at a crowded Treble Cone ski field. I had also never used any of my new touring kit and didn’t want to slow the others down figuring out how to use it all.
I skinned to where it got too steep and got my crampons out, front pointing up a 60’ slope for about 80m before getting to the ridge. I sat up there for a good hour with my binoculars and a bottle of tea examining some of the routes we had planned for the next 10 days. A fair bit of snow around but I figured after a week of good weather it would be great climbing askong as there was enough ice for protection. No sign of the team coming over the Neve though.
I headed back to the hut for some morning tea.

Later that afternoon as I was skinning up a slope behind the hut toward Mt Alack when the others landed in a heli.
It turns out they had a horrible night out on the Chancellor bluffs trying to find the track up in the dark and were forced to bivvy. They made it to the hut in the morning but were worried about getting stuck in the white out and an approaching storm catching them with their pants down in the Neve.

I skied down to meet them and we all skinned up and made it to the bottom of the south face of Douglas in about an hr. My god it looked big. I was pleased with the beta I had and all the research I had gathered as when I looked at the steep face our line stuck out as if it was glowing red. There was already a lot of snow on the route but I could see icy patches for screws here and there.
Could be interesting...

We skied back and me and Chris broke off and skinned up a slope behind the hut to get more skiing in. We flew down almost to the hut in a white out. An hr later the storm hit and we had about 8cm of snow overnight.

Day three.
Bad weather. Mostly slept, ate and read. The weather cleared around 6pm and left behind 10cm of powder. I grabbed my jacket and skied from the hut down to toilet peak but found it hard to turn in powder so a few falls.

Day four.

Woke up to good weather around 7am. Was surprising as the forecast looked horrible for the whole day but there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Left the hut at around 9am to see how Douglas Peak was looking and get some skiing done in the new snow.
Douglas now had a lot of snow plastered on the lower pitches and looks like it’ll need at least week of good warm sun to go again.
We headed up the slopes in between Humdinger and Haidinger. After an hr up we reached Governors Col and spent half an hr taking in the views across the other side of the country. We skied down which I found terrifying at first. There was a fairly wide steep slope to follow down but on my left was a big open crevasse fall and on my right a rock buttress with icy ground and a potentially hidden shrund. All of this would have been fine if it wasn’t only my forth time on skis and my first time in powder. But once I started down it all made sense and I found the powder much easier than the day before. We flew down the slopes and skinned back to the hut just as more whether closed in at around 1pm.
Now I see what powder’s all about!

Day five.

Seeing as though all of our planned south face routes were out of condition and the classic mountaineering routes had too much avo risk we decided to use our good weather days to get up and over the Alps and into the eastern side of the country. This involves crossing over into the Franz Neve, finding a pass that takes us down to the Tasman Glacier and then pack rafting out. Since we didn’t need our climbing gear we flew that to along with a bunch of other stuff out with Priya before lunch and then headed down the Neve with our heavy bags. Each of us now carried enough gear and food for our five days in tiger country and also a pack raft each for the lake and river that flows out of the Tasman Glacier. Basically, our packs were heavy as shit and now the snow had hardened up a bunch and formed a crust so my 6th day on skis was a bloody struggle.
We weren’t moving very fast and while skinning up newton saddle Jake heard a big whomph under his skis which is a very bad sign and shows a weakness in the snowpack which ultimately causes the big slab avalanches alpinist around the world fear. We got off that aspect smartly and made it on the pass a short while later, ripped skins and skied into the Franz Neve. We made it to centennial hut on 4pm and got to work feasting on all the perishable food a party heading to Pioneer had told us they left behind. After the DOC weather forcast we all had our back country meals and turned in for the night. Jake definitely wasn’t himself this afternoon. It’s obvious the fright earlier had got to him.

Day six.
A very big day, not so much physically but I definitely found and tested some mental boundaries today.
Started late and hit the slopes by 10am skiing from Centennial hut down towards Graham Saddle. Followed the cirque of big faces east of the hut to avoid the crevasse field. This led us to a big icy slope that had to be side stepped down with skins on. I took a long time and kept slipping which added to my nervousness in the new sport.
After a quick break we cut a track up the saddle. The very last section involved a steep, exposed traverse on a slope that turned icey and dropped down what seemed like a hundred meters over the lip of a big shrund. I headed out after asking Chris how it was. At first he didn’t reply and then he yelled back ‘yeah, it’ll be better now that there’s a track there’. I knew this meant it wasn’t good and after slipping a few times I made it to the saddle as shaky as ever. The way down into the other side looked almost as steep and I was going have to ski it?!
Once everyone was across the traverse Chris took point down the slope that led us to the Rudolf icefall. The little amount of beta we could find had told us it was a straightforward ski down from the saddle but after getting to the icefall we ran into problems. We could see a ridge 200m above us and decided that was a way down. It wasn’t. In order to get onto the ridge there was a very sketchy traverse high up the ridge and after Leigh and myself assessed it we decided to swap skis for crampons and plug across. Now since it was meant to be an easy ski down I had left my crampons in the hut to be flown out after realising they wouldn’t fit my ski boots, so I was using Chris’s. I only got 50 meters onto the slope when suddenly the ground under my feet collapsed.

My right leg and half of my body was now hanging in space while my left hand side was still on the ice. “How strange” I thought for a split second before I realised what had happened. Now that I had removed my skis my weight wasn’t displaced and I was literally dangling on the lip of a hidden crevasse. I slowly looked up to Jake who was above me and yelled something along the lines of “holy fuck, I think im in a crevasse get me a rope”. He calmly assessed his position and took his pack of getting to work. I was having a hard time holding myself on the lip and with my pack weighing about 20kg, I felt I had to ditch it or it would slowly drag me in. The problem was I couldn’t get my shoulder strap off because my hand in the snow was holding me in place. Very carefully I reached around my huge pack still hanging on my back and grabbed my other ice tool ripping it out of its attachment points. I dug down into the snow with my free hand until I hit hard snow and got good purchase with the pick. Then with my right foot still in the crevasse I tried pressing behind me looking for the other wall. To my horror all I could feel was sugary snow that fell down into the now wider hole I was in. I tried kicking forward into the wall I was hanging on which I found was overhung and then I realised what was holding all of my weight could give way if I tried to push up. I tried to remain calm and moments later Jake had thrown me and end of the rope.
With one hand and my teeth I smartly tied in and once he had me on a body belay forced my weight onto the axe and hauled my body over expecting the lip to collapse at any moment. It didn’t and I made it to Jake, took my bag off and lay down for sometime. That definitely ranks as one of the scariest moments in the mountains and what’s worse is looking back at where my crevasse was, it didn’t have any obvious signs of being crevassed terrain. We roped up and finished the traverse.

Moments after climbing out of a crevasse - Jacob Moon

By this point Chris had made it to the far side of the ridge and realised it wasn’t the right way. Luckily Jake and I (still nervous wrecks) were waiting in a safe zone on the ridge and were able to turn and ski back down easily. Chris and Leigh had committed in getting to where they were and had to ski down a very steep face back to the glacier.
We found the only way down on the true left of the glacier, a steep thin slope that avoided the huge icefall that took up most of the glacier. We got to a point where the skiing was basically steep ice with fairly high consequence and so I naturally removed skis and put Chris’s pons back on while they kept skiing. Chris had a slip and I left my pack and climbed up to help him before he slipped further. I knew then that he would need his spikes back if we was going to continue safely and it was decided he would kick big steps and I’d follow for the down climb which followed a rock rib to the valley floor 200m below.
We climbed down into the night and once the slope backed off the crust turned into snow and we decided to ski down as far as we could to find a bivvy. The skiing was great and it was a huge relief to be off the steep section of the icefall. Once the snow hardened there was about an inch of crust in some places and it was extremely hard to turn without my skis digging in especially with the weight of my pack pulling me backwards. Also, adding to the stimulating descent my headtorch wasn’t very bright and frozen rocks on the ground kept appearing infront of me and I would have to quickly find a way around. It felt like a video game really.

We got down a fair ways when we saw a nice big old rock which would give some shelter to the wind. There wasn’t much room so Jake and Leigh set their small tent up while Chris and I dug in against the rock and lay out pads and sleeping bags.
It was very cold and after dinner I pulled the drawcord of my 3 season bag tight. The temperature outside read -8.

What a day.

Day seven.

Definitely the hardest day for me. The morning started slow and a nice morning ski took us to where the Rudolf meets the Tasman valley and the snow turns to moraine. Here we swapped ski boots for approach shoes and strapped out skis and boots to our already heavy, clumbersome packs.
The walk to Tasman Lake was only around 15km so I thought with big packs we’d reach it around sundown. I was wrong, again. The rocks were extremely loose and percuriously placed on one another - forcing you to look to each step with care which was mentally draining and slowing our rate of travel to only 1kmph. To add to the rocks the terrain wasn’t flat either and we had to climb over the constant 10-15 meter mounds of loose rock or try find ways around them. There’s no way to describe how shitty this section was without actually spending 15 hours walking through it but I don’t recommend walking out of the Tasman to anyone. Just pay for a damn helicopter.
Our crossing was to be self supported though and after walking well into the dark and sleeping in the dirt and rocks we only had a few km’s to go for the next day.

Travelling over the Tasman Morraine - RyanColley

Day eight.

Discussions and late night planning (only hours before) saw us waking up before sunrise and hitting the last 3kms of the dreaded rocks before we reached the waters edge. We arrived around 9am and to our horror realised we couldn’t actually access the water!
The sheer ice walls from the face of the glacier dropped straight into the cold blue water and offered no way down. There was, however a gully between two walls that led to a small rocky beach on our right. The only problem was that the gully was exposed and constantly being hammered by rocks sliding of the fast melting ice walls. It didn’t take me long to realise this was our only way through to the water, besides walking back through the choss pile 5km to find a way up to Ball Hut. Not happening.
It was one of those situations where if I’d stopped and thought about it I knew wouldn’t of been able to go through with it so before I knew it I had fully committed and yelled out to the others to rock spot. My pack suddenly weighed nothing as I sprinted down towards the gully to ‘run the gauntlet’. It was absolute chaos.
As I was tripping over and stumbling down the canyon there were rocks, fist to head sized, that were smashing into the ground around me but with no-where to hide I kept running towards a rise in the slope that was between me and the small beach. That’s when a huge rockfall stopped me dead in my tracks. Rocks the size of microwaves came crashing down directly where I was heading to, I turned to run back up the gully but saw that more rocks were coming down than when I had come through. I felt trapped. There was a bulge of ice a few meters away so I rushed over and ducked under this. To my luck it was a little cave right in the heart of the firing squad. It was like being on a battlefield as I watched volleys of rocks and boulders sporadically explode around me like machine gun fire. I knew I would have to move and make a run for it soon but for now, I was safe.

“I had nowhere to hide, it was like being on a battlefield as I watched volleys of rocks and boulders sporadically explode around me ”

The others had been calling out since they saw the big rockfall coming down and finally I let them know I had found somewhere safe (relative of course).
Leigh came down next and I watched him crash down the sloping gully just as I had minutes before. I called him over and could see the relief in his face as he saw the shelter. Jake was next and he came down slightly more controlled than the two of us but the look of fear in his face was still all there. Once he’d reached us I was laughing at the situation we were in and the fact that we were basically trapped, pinned down by the gatling guns above. Leigh shook his and with a distant stare said “it’s been a while since I’ve felt this rush you get after doing something really dumb” Jake replied slightly more agitated “this was so fucking stupid man oh my god” his legs shaking.
Chris was lagging behind on the walk over and because no one had wanted to wait around watching all the rockfall we had all run down before anyone saw him. We sat there yelling out from the cave but there was no reply from the glacier. It was decided that we’d have to move over the slope to where the small rocky beach was if we were to get our pack-rafts pumped up and into the water without them being hit and destroyed. The rock fall seemed to die off as a cloud moved over the sun and Leigh ran out into the open as a rock spotter while me and Jake made our way across the slope and then did the same for him. By now Chris had appeared on the ridge so we coaxed him down also.
After that excitement and stupidity we were finally able to get our rafts pumped up and in the water, storing all of our gear inside and strapping our skis to the sides. After lugging these things around for the last few days it was great to put them to use.
Once on the water the wind pushed us along at a surprising speed. It didn’t take long to realise the weather was changing quickly and suddenly I was worried about the Lake crossing as breaking waves were appearing around us. That’s when what was probably the funniest encounter of the trip started coming towards us. A speedboat full of tourists and a guide approached. The driver yelled across the water “hey it’s my responsibility to let you guys know that’s there’s a big storm approaching and you’d better get off the water very soon!” We thanked him for the heads up but let him know we were waiting for Chris who was still pumping up his boat. “Oh woah man you’d better tell your buddy to get away from the glacier man that’s really unsafe” we all burst out laughing. “If you’d seen what we’ve come through in the past few days this is the least of it” Jake yelled back. “Where have you come from?” the Guide asked looking down at our skis. We told him we’d come from Fox Glacier.... “oh...right”. The guy fired his his boat back up and turned around.

Finally getting to the Tasman Lake - Jacob Moon

We all kept getting pushed along and by the time Chris made it to us we were halfway across the lake. Wind rushed down the valley towards us sending dust and rocks through the air.
We made it to the end of the lake in no time and dropped into the Tasman river. The river welcomed us with a series of wave-trains and a couple nice wee rapids. I didn’t have a splash deck on and after the first set of waves the frigid waters left me soaked and freezing. We got a ways down the river to where Priya was waiting with an SUV and lamb burgers. Just where we taken out Leigh popped his boat, what luck!

Paddling across the Tasman Lake - ChrisBrinLee

This marked the end of the trip and we were all relieved it was over with smelly hugs all round. I was glad the discomfort was over but part of me wished the adventure would continue.

We spent the next few days in Wanaka resting and going to the shops/physio before I hitched a ride back to Fox to start back at work the next day.

Bloody good adventure and my first funded expedition. I look forward to more big missions like this in the future and it has really opened me up to the idea of sponsorship and the places it can take you.

Huge thanks to Chris for organising the whole shebang and to Eddie Bauer for making it happen. To Leigh and Jake to suffering alongside with and to the wonderfull Priya for looking after us all.

- Expanding Perspectives Expedition, Pioneer hut to Tasman River. September 2018.