Adventure 234

Above: Serenity greets a climber topping out a gendarme in the Central Darrans, northern Fiordland, with the Mt Revelation and
Taiaroa Peak on the left and Mts Underwood and Patuki on the right, above the Taoka Icefall.
The Midi gondola is only one of several in the Chamonix
valley. There’s one that takes you to the top of Le Brévent
(2525m), from where you actually walk downhill for 20
minutes to get to the base of the 300m-high rock climbs.
And the Flégère gondola and Index chairlift deposits you, at
2595m, at the base of the Aiguille Rouge range.
But this also transforms one the world’s best places for alpine
climbing into a complete cluster.
It couldn’t be more different in New Zealand, where it’d be
unusual to see other parties in the country’s best mountains
for alpine rock climbing. The Central Darrans, in northern
Fiordland, encompasses the peaks in the Te Puoho cirque,
as well as those surrounding Lake Turner, including the
ridgeline from Mts Patuki to Madeline. The area is gifted
with vertiginous and glaciated walls of hard rhyolite, which is
much more compact than the schist that dominates most of
the Southern Alps.
But getting there is a tad more challenging than standing
in a gondola bin for 20 minutes. Tales of extreme tramping,
known among Darrans climbers as ‘danger-walking’, is
enough to deter anyone from going there. A couple of friends,
for example, ended up taking their ropes and climbing gear
for a massive walk; they managed to get to the fabled bivvy
cave known as Turner’s Eyrie, but it took them two days and
several close shaves to get there, and they needed the third
day to rest before walking out on day four.
The best way in is a matter of debate, but they all invariably
involve snow and glacial travel, rock scrambling, and the
unique Darrans experience of near-vertical plant-pulling.
Our route - from the Lower Hollyford River to The Eyrie in
one push - was a 17-hour day: bush-bash up to Rainbow
Lake from the Hollyford valley, scramble over a col near Mt
Tuhawaiki, drop under Mt Taiaroa, gain and then negotiate
the Te Puoho Glacier to another col, ease nervously down a
tenuous slope known as Lindsay’s Ledges and, finally, cross
to the Karetai-Patuki col and stumble up the final stretch.
By the time we crawled into The Eyrie, etched into the
northwest side of Mt Karetai, it was 11pm. We were fried. My
climbing partner, Jimmy, only made it through half his dinner
before nodding off, still half-seated in his sleeping bag.
The rewards, though, are immediate. The Eyrie looks out
to the snow-capped towers of Tutoko and Madeline and the
rocky spire of Te Wera. We spent a week exploring, including
twice climbing a 300m-high cliff face, scrambling the south
ridge of Te Wera and the north ridge of Karetai, and reaching
the summit of Mt Underwood via the Taoka Icefall.
And all to ourselves. All I knew in the aftermath of the trip
was that I had to return to such a unique place - the country's
most exquisite, with infinite rock and adventure to be
sampled.
It also made me consider the pros and cons of a lack of
infrastructure. Part of the magic of the Central Darrans is
how empty and wild it is. It would be a completely different
experience if there was gondola access, and crowds of
climbers at the base of every rock wall.
But getting there is no picnic. One of New Zealand’s best
climbers told me he has no inclination to explore the area
because of the walk-climb ratio, as in, heaps of ‘dangerwalking’
and relatively little climbing. I didn’t really understand
until I was in Chamonix, where there are massive clusters of
climbers, but the ratio is flipped.
The advantages were never more starkly obvious than when
my climbing partner and I arrived at the south face of the Midi
one morning. Our stiff elbows had helped us to be the first
ones there, and we started unpacking our climbing gear just
as the sun’s first rays enveloped the tower of granite in front
of us.
My stomach turned nauseous, however, when I realised I’d
left my climbing shoes at home. I sprinted back up the snowy
ridge, took the gondola down, raced through town and up
a hill to our apartment, grabbed my shoes, barreled back
down the hill, and stood in a sweaty mess while catching an
ascending gondola bin.
Where else in the world can you rush home to retrieve a
forgotten item and be back at the base of a granite wall,
3700ish metres above sea level, within an hour?
16//WHERE ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS/#234