| 09.09.09 - NEW ZEALAND -
LATE WINTER IN FJORDLAND
The Summit Mount Macpherson
Last
week was busy, with lectures in Auckland, Wellington,
Dunedin, Christchurch and here in Wanaka. The reward,
this week, has been some fine spring skiing in the
mountains around Wanaka and a visit to the place I have
wanted to see for thirty years – the Darran Mountains in
Fjordland.
The Darrans winter climbing guru, Al Uren, took two days
off work to drive me down to stay in the excellent New
Zealand Alpine Club hut beside the Homer tunnel, on the
only road to penetrate this wild country. The road was
only re-opened at midday on Sunday, after the clearing
of the biggest avalanches Al has ever seen in the area.
(The Milford road avalanche control service is one of
the most sophisticated in the world). The debris at the
tunnel entrance was piled 20 metres above the road.
With dodgily high temperatures and a dodgy forecast,
there was no chance of climbing anything very steep or
technical.. But we did get a fantastic day on Mount
Macpherson, stopping at Homer Saddle to pass the time of
day with a typically tame Kea – wonderful, comical,
alpine parrots, whose numbers are declining.
Tame Kea
Macpherson Ridge
Then on up what would be an easy scramble in summer,
but gave some quite steep ice, with a gigantic windslab
crown where the avalanche patrol had dropped one of
their 25 kg bombs to release hundreds of thousands of
tons of snow threatening the Milford Road.
Wind slab crown
The summit was magnificent, with stunning views
across the dense forest of the Tutoko valley and past
Mount Tutoko to a distant shimmer on the Tasman Sea.
That combination of totally uninhabited nothofagus
forest, huge snow peaks and fjords reminded me of Tierra
del Fuego. But in Tierra del Fuego there are no keas.
And no tree ferns.On Tuesday we woke to normal heavy
rain and set off back to Wanaka.
Leaving the hut
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