Location: Pioneer Hut, Fox Glacier neve
Dates: 6th – 13th October
Description: Day 1 was spent roping up for glacier travel in the fox heli-services car park and sipping a few anticipatory coffees while we waited for a weather window… This eventually came and allowed us a picture perfect late afternoon heli landing close to the door of Pioneer Hut. Unfortunately the door was covered by meters of snow from a recent storm, so the shovels came out and we dug our way into our mountain abode, the gasping and sweating was soon replaced by our whooping and laugher as we laid down a few evening ski tracks on our back yard ski run. After a day of orientation, scoping, skinning and some work on pitching and belay placements we got in an early morning start and picked our way up the North West side of Mt Haidinger. This ended up being a very long day with the summit rocks gained after 3:00pm. The evening sunset views gave way to a calm clear evening of plodding our way back down to the head of the Fox neve. The next day we somewhat thankfully justified a hut day to allow the weather and our bodies to recuperate. The following day our next alpine start saw us moving across the crest of the neve to the South West face of Mt Haast. We pitched our way up a grade 3+ snow & ice gut towards the summit, until we were turned back by showers of frozen tennis balls and low visibility. The following day we packed up and skied toward the Fritz Range and down the Fox towards the glistening Tasman Sea . It wasn’t long before thick clouds prohibited us from seeing each other, let alone the appropriate way through the crevasse fields. Path finding was assisted by a group of friendly folk from Centennial Hut heading towards Chancellor Hut – where we all spent a night in nervous anticipation of heli-able weather the next day – which we were conveniently graced with after breakfast! All in all a very successful trip with objectives achieved and the team bonding well.
Eryn
