We were primed, we were keen, we were prepared. After an evening's talk by Sharron, with an unusual disrobing by Steve and Marie to show us the gear we needed to wear, twelve of us were eagerly anticipating our first weekend on the snow with crampons and ice axes.
Friday we all assembled at the usual place at the usual time, to meet Steve with the fresh new club van. It’s absolutely identical to the other club van – which of course means that it’s ideally suited to 12 trampers, climbers or mountain bikers needing to drive for many hours to a road end or lodge. When I first saw the club van I thought it had been custom built exactly for the club’s needs, and I can't think of a single thing that would improve it. Some club members have fond memories of the duchess – but I confess I’m not one of them. Lying in a hot, stuffy, largely windowless cabin while we ground over the rimatakas just made me nauseous. That is, unless we were parked up at the side of the road having broken down again. I much prefer sitting in an airy van with modern aircon and damped suspension. Also there is the added security of bucket seats and seatbelts for everyone, so that you feel much safer if, as a hypothetical example, you find yourself sliding sideways down an icy road.
More on that later.
After a foggy trip to Ohakune, the skies cleared to show a fantastic vista of the mountain, beautifully lit by a full moon. The weekend was looking good, in spite of the weather forecast, which was dodgy to say the least.
Saturday saw all of us up bright and early, and after bacon and eggs we were kitted up and out by 8:30. It was warm (with some broken high cloud) and beautiful conditions for skiing and boarding, with light, calf deep powder. But that meant that it wasn't so good for walking in. Or practicing with crampons. Or practicing self arrests. Nonetheless we split into three groups (in my group was Nic, Paul, Catherine and Cecilia, led by Steve) and headed up from the lodge, keeping to the no-mans-land between the centennial chair and the west quad. What a great day! We hiked through the clear, crisp air to the gentle buzz of the snowmakers bucketing out snow over the centennial. Steve kept up a steady commentary of knowledge, advice, hints and tips as we went.
Once we'd hiked up about two-thirds of the way to the Ampitheatre, we began self arrest practice. This was easier said than done with the soft snow conditions! Nic was able to get a good speed up but the rest of us struggled. This made self arresting a little bit too easy! But we finally found a slope that was steep enough to give us the general idea.
Then we put on our crampons and practiced walking with them. It's an uncanny experience to be able to stand on steep ice and not fall down. For me, a lot of crampon use was learning to trust the steel spikes to hold me.
After an hour or two of throwing ourselves down hills, walking back up hills with spikes on, figuring out one end of an ice axe from the other, and generally getting accustomed to the challenges of a snowy, icy, steep, slippery environment, we headed back to the lodge, to talk about what we'd learned and where we'd been; as well as to play games like jenga and Five Hundred of course, and read some of the surprisingly good books that are up at the lodge. Normally you expect to find some abandoned Stephen Kings and Victoria Holts - but the lodge has great climbing and mountaineering books to keep you entertained.
After a while the other groups started filtering in, and Marie S with (** who? **) cooked us up a treat of spaghetti bolognese - and what I'm learning is a lodge specialty, the wrinkled brown not-sausage special just for the vegetarians. They followed this up with a yummy fruit crumble and we were all sated.
Sunday dawned - windy!! Really windy. I don't know just how windy but I don't think I've ever been in wind like that before. The beautiful dry powder of yesterday was getting ripped off the mountain, and probably ended up at the Chathams, the wind was howling so strongly. Conditions demanded we stay inside and concentrate on our theory, via a cutthroat, competitive quiz format. With chocolate fish from a 10 kg bag as reward.
First, we divided into teams and our first task was to come up with team names. We were encouraged to pick inspiring, heroic names from great mountaineers and their exploits. So Sharron was pretty disappointed when we ended up with the 'Mountain Goats', the 'Snow Angels', the 'HIMMS' and - Wild Man's Blubber?!
I have to say that the questioning covered areas that I didn't realise were directly connected to snowcraft and alpine techniques. For instance:
"What are three types of avalanche?"
"What are four things you should consider before beginning an alpine trip?"
"How do you mix the butter into the flour when making cheese scones?"
"What is the height of Mt Ruapehu?"
"How much flour should you use in cheese scones?"
It was a fun few hours where we learned a lot, such as the names of Marie's ice axe and crampons - Fluffy, Spike 1 and Spike 2 (not sure which crampon was which) and cleared up some dangerous misconceptions - such as the way ice forms on the windward, not the leeward side of rocks and structures, and that you never cook cheese scones in a slow oven.
After a close, tightly fought contest, the Mountain Goats were judged to have just pipped the Snow Angels to first place, and we were all sick of chocolate fish.
After the quiz session, we were all surprised and astonished to find that cheese scones were on the lunch menu! Cooked by Illona and Cecilia and yours truly. They weren't without controversy - we couldn't decide whether the cheese went into the mix, onto the top, or folded into the middle. So we compromised by putting cheese in all three places. Yum!
After lunch some of us did our only excursion of the day, to cart the rubbish out to the skips. We suited up in all of our gear with as little skin showing as possible and set off. I'm glad I wasn't walking any further than the top of the Bruce! But it was a huge contrast when we walked to the vans a couple of hours later - without the aid of crampons. What had been a fairly easy stroll with good grip underfoot turned into a slow, nerve-wracking totter down the path. The lack of grip was coupled with the wind gusts to keep that kept us constantly off balance and sliding. Once we were walking down the access road, the full force of the wind was buffetting and driving us. It was really hard to keep upright and balanced, and a few of us went for tumbles.
The journey down the hill was not without incident either. The Alpine Instruction Course van door got caught by the wind when they were putting the chains on, and now has a little dint where the door met the back bullbar. And on our way down the hill in the snowcraft van, the sidewind literally grabbed the back of the van and spun us around sideways. We must've got around about 45 degrees before Steve was able to ably pull everything back on course and get us stopped. Whew!
So what a fantastic weekend, with drama, excitement, wind, driving snow and chocolate fish. We were all eagerly anticipating the next installment in two weeks time.
Paul's photos: http://photos.pominnz.com/gallery/8891614_4qDft
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