By Richard, 12 November 2008
A Monday afternoon in the rain at Rasberry Flat. Quentin, Emma and I met Eric and Graham and sorted our gear. Emma was a late addition to the team so we threw in a bivy bag and tents for 4. The Matukituki was a usual slog up a cow valley, and at Pearl flat we headed up to Liverpool biv which was a nice quick climb with heavy packs. As we approached the biv the rain cloud lifted and we saw that Arawhata saddle looked like three big lines of bluffs with little snow. We convinced ourselves the real saddle must be around the corner. We were well aware that without snow it has a fearsome reputation. Throwing open the door to the biv, we found a couple of Germans there. "Do you have tents?" they asked. "Yes, but luckily we won't be using them as this is a 6-bunk hut" replied Eric. After that they generally got in the way, wouldn't move their stuff and were bad ambassadors for their type in our country.
The next day was fine with just some annoying clag and we headed up to the base of the saddle. It wasn't around the corner. The three lines of bluffs was it. "The closer you get the uglier it looks" said Eric. We decided to at least have a sniff at it seeing we were there.
After cramponing up a fan of avalanche debris we were at the base of the first bluff line. We dropped packs and looked around. The goer was a scramble up some scree and ledges. To get there we had to cross a snow bridge over a stream. I positioned myself downhill with a view under the bridge and guided them over the thickest bits then followed their poon marks across. We found a few cairns on this bit of route.
At the top of this scramble was a small snowfield. We could see old footprints heading across the snow to the right and then terminating at a running waterfall. This is the Moirs route. It is meant to be a snow walk but that had all melted and there was a horrendous looking waterfall that none of us were keen to go near. Above it you could see continuous nice snow slopes leading back to the left to the saddle but it was totally cut off. Bummer!
Eric dropped his pack and wandered up the next snow slope. Above him was a waterfall draining the centre of the face and on the TR of that a 45m slab of compact schist rose straight up. Eric went up and back down it, declared it a scramble not a climb and reckoned we could do it with packs. I think the others skipped up it but there were a couple of bits where I was having kittens and passed my pack.
At the top of this was another ledge and another 30m above was an icefall with what looked like good snow slopes above. There was a general sense this could be the crux of the middle bluff line. Eric and Quentin dropped packs and went prospecting. Eventually the best line was decided to be to cross the waterfall via an easy ledge and then to climb another slab. This was declared to be a climb not a scramble so Eric soloed up and set up a belay. It was easy rock climbing but no one else in the party would have got up without a top-rope as you had to step out on to the main face with some giddy exposure. We hauled the packs up which saw the rough schist put plenty of holes in peoples packs. From here Quentin and Eric went fossicking again and found a route that avoided the snow (as it was quite cut up). It was quite a route. A series of ledges and scrambles that took us safely up through some heinous looking bluffs. It was superb route finding. We were all quite keen to get moving now as the clag had got quite thick and we wanted to be past anything that required friction if it rained. This ledge system put us on a high snowfield above the second (middle) line of bluffs. We cramponed up that, Eric and Quentin were way ahead and you couldn't see much in the gloomy clag but I was sure there was one more line of bluffs. We got off the snow and to my and probably everyone elses great relief the top bluffs were quite laid back - not really bluffs at all, just slabs - we just scrambled up and up and suddenly there we were on the flat wasteland of the Arawhata saddle. What a great feeling! We raced off the top down the easy slopes on the western side and as soon as we got to a sheltered spot we stopped for lunch at 3.30pm.
The rest of the day was pleasant by comparison, though we did sample the extensive scrub of the Upper Arawhata. It was a great feeling to reach the Arawhata rock biv, an iconic bit of NZ real estate. Its got a great 'rock' book. It goes back to 1983. Not a lot of traffic but lots of epics. My favourite was the solo tramper in the 1980s who had twisted his ankle. "Day 6: I am getting weak. Today I went for water and was attacked by keas. I can't leave my gear. In the night they ripped my sleeping bag with me in it."
EPIRBS have ruined all the fun....
The next day we headed down the Arawhata to Wiliamson flat. Some big boulders were fun travel, the scrub less so. There are river flats 200-300m downstream of the biv. It took 50 minutes to get there. Tough place the upper 'whata. Williamson flat is a special spot. From our camp we could see our objective Destiny ridge rising up to the Olivine Ice Plateau. This is a gorgeous looking tramping line, really quite something.
Unfortunately you have to walk up the Joe to get there. There are some deer trails in the Joe these days. Probably 2hrs is spent zipping along these highways. The other 9hrs are spent sidling vertical bush, crawling over big boulders or pushing through dense scrub. We were all well stuffed at the head of the valley. We poked around in the scrub and found the bivy rock and moved in. The next day it rained as forecast. We were all happy for a day off.
The next crux of the trip was crossing the Joe. Moirs says there is a good natural rockbridge but OUTC reported this to be the scariest bit of a trip here with a death move required - a jump over the raging Joe. This didn't sound like a "good" rockbridge to us, so Eric and I went down into the gorge after the rain stopped and did some prospecting. We found the "OUTC suicide rock", and yes it would ruin your trip. In the direction they did it in they would have had to downclimb a huge mossy boulder and drop 5ft on to a low rock while jumping outwards by 1.5ft over a raging channel. Keen. We went further down the gorge and found the Moirs rockbridge, which is, well, a bridge. You just sedately walk across the top of some big rocks no fuss no bother. Pretty pleased with this piece of prospecting we headed back to the bivy rock.
Saturday was our date with Destiny. The upper Joe is a wild place, huge vertical walls and schist peaks tilted at crazy angles with this dirty grey river surging past. Destiny ridge is a serene place by comparison with ice cream slopes reaching for the sky. We made good time up the tussock and rock and climbed the snow slopes. We roped up and started weaving through some slots. Moirs doesn't mention this being a route conditional on good snow (as it does for the majority of snow routes to the Olivines) so we were optimistic. At 2080m a spike of rock rises out of the glacier and Moirs says to pass it on one side. We walked up to it and got a view of Solution Col where we were headed. Just 200m higher than us the map indicates that you can sidle easy contoured snow slopes around to it from above the rock spike. Sadly the photo for the map was taken in 1985. Today you look down on a tortured broken icefall and bare slabs with dirty smears of rockfalls across it. Clearly we would be climbing most of the way to the top of Mt Destiny before sidling. We dropped down to the spike and got a ruder shock. The snowfield you are meant to nip on to was rent by a monster crevasse running the face of it, the snow had also peeled back from the rock leaving a nasty ‘schrund. So whereas most people would step from the rock to the snow and walk around the rock before regaining the ridge we were looking at a 30m abseil on to a snow-bridge just to get on to the snowfield. Then above us were no guarantees that the rest of the route to Solution Col wouldn't be cut off too. To cut a long story and a few hours short, we did all kinds of sniffing around, set up an abseil and finally took it down. It was just too uncertain, and if we couldn't go on there would be no safe way back on to Destiny ridge once we pulled the rope through after the last person abseiled.
So on a glorious Saturday afternoon we turned around and trudged back down Destiny ridge. Now we had a dilemma. The Joe was awful, a nightmare really. The only other way out was O'Leary pass (Moirs: a slip on this route wil be fatal...). We didn't have time to seek out another crossing lower in the 'whata. A ray of hope was provided by a party we heard on the mountain radio who were sniffing around the Whitbourn glacier. If this wasn't cut off, we could use it to access the Dart from the Williamson flat, but we'd need a guaranteed way through as we didn't have enough time or food to fail again!
We got back to the flats in the upper Joe and pulled out the mountain radio. Disaster! The dial for turning it on had sheared off so we didn't have a radio either. Bugger! Can't ask them about conditions on the Whitbourn. Certainly safe to assume it was cut off too. So the next day we went back down the Joe. It only took 9hrs as we'd learned some tricks about Joe travel. Then it was back up the Arawhata. This was quicker too. We stayed out of the scrub and went up past the bivy rock and camped in the very top of it with Mt Aspiring towering over us. Like my trip to the Red Hills last year you don't really need a forecast when its perfect blue sky everyday, so the next day we climbed up to Waipara saddle, stared into the Waipara terminal lake and worked our way around to the head of the Matukituki. I was keen to go from here to Colin Todd hut and then nip out via the Bonar and French ridge but we decided to go down the waterfall route instead. We found the guides bolts so a couple of rappels made for an enjoyable way down, then it was the slog out to Loopy-Looza land at Rasberry flat. A pretty neat trip.
Richard Davies - scribe
Quentin Duthie
Emma Richardson
Eric Duggan
Graham Bussell