We drove up SH1 (Super Highway 1 according to Whit) after ditching lectures and procuring a tent and some other gear tidbits from craig's shed of wonders to meet up with a crack team of North American Hikers (NAHs) coming down of a the notoriously testing Tongariro Crossing + Doom Ascent. A text boasting their domination of doom at 3.30pm set the tone for much umming and arring as to how long we would have to spend in Ketetahi carpark waiting. Luckily for them, they ran down from Ketetahi Hut and were there in reasonable time. We squeezed the NAHs in the back 3 seats, piled on their gear and made the 30min drive to their car in Mangatepopo Valley, wandering if they were, a) anti-social, b) didnt like us or c) couldnt understand our english dialect. It turns out they were asleep, obviously i didnt understand this concept, climbers know when to call it quits, and i had never been tired before.
Pulling up to Mangawhero (sp?) campsite i was surprised to find it more busy than it had been during the AIC 2 stay, nevertheless, we found spots and cooked a rather proteinous sausage, baked bean, lentil and cheese gloop for dinner.
We were driving up Whakapapa gorge at 11 after a not quite alpine but plenty early start, drawn out by a kilo of bacon and a small pan... and racked up and started the walk 'North' along Te Herenga Ridge. After walking more than "a short way" across glass strewn scree slopes and contemplating a death defying scree gut descent (with 2 helmets between 6 of us) i re-checked the guide book, remembered which way Auckland was and which way i drove down on and came the realization that we had walked south along the ridge, not "north" as the guidebook had so infuriatingly simplistically described. Backtracking we returned to Meads wall and headed North and found the Crag in literally 5 minutes.
We set up a rap of two shiny ring bolts with 2 50m ropes and Whit set of down, a few troubles later he and George were at the hanging belay and i was setting off down, repeating pull blue, pull blue over and over. Upon realising the ropes hit the ground with 10m to spare, i clipped the ropes to their belay and scooted off down to the ground. A much needed ego boost after many months of mediocre wins.
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Once everyone was on the ground we set off towards the routes which caught our fancy, the NAHs went to do some instructional stuff for a couple of the less experienced guys on some short sport routes and i jumped on a 2 pitch 17 called scoopage ** 1 rope length and a bunch of textbook placements later and i topped out at our previous rap station, so much for two pitches. Upon rapping this time i forgot the whole repeat to self which rope to pull routine and ended up pulling both ropes and as i found out later getting the knot in the middle of the rings :) It would have been a fun prussic had we not been able to walk around!
So, stripped of our twin ropes (Whakapapa gorge doesnt have many truely continous crack systems, rather hexagonal blocks and cracks everywhere, at every angle; so not conducive to single rope leads.) Whit decided the only line at the crag which appealed to him was Electric Earth, 24** 5 bolts, i assured him i had read somewhere the 1st ascencionist reckoned around 21 if you are tall (sort of a lie) and he gave it a good effort, but as the grade tried to warn, it was really quite difficult...I tried after and also got spanked, but did manage after a couple of rests to clip the anchors and lower off for another go later. Which ended similarly by the way...only on the descent i didnt clip into the rope running upwards so had to swing my little heart out to anchor back into the wall, feeling like that pretty girl in Verticle Limit whose 3 equalised cams didnt hold... The resulting aid i used to get from a bolt on the roof of a 26 to my route next to it had to rank as the most retarded thing i have ever done. But after 45 mins hanging in my harness the route was cleaned and remained unsent by either of us.
Walking over to the others they were trying to climb a nice looking line (Serial Pillar 18*) which happened to go through a small waterfall, during the crux, they actually were sending and some were working the moves through the crux!
After this we went over to Half Moon rock, some guys fried up some more Bacon, and we searched the front of the outcrop for any non mossed or closed cracks. We saw one placement behind a dodgy looking block and Whit started out on the lead, getting a meter above the piece (at 2.5 meters) and pumping out looking for another and ended up downclimbing. The grade was easy but the pro was non existant, the route only 6-8 meters high so i gave it a go, deciding to commit past the piece and hope for a placement further up, luckily the holds were all there so i just climbed rather than faffing around with shitty gear and it was an awesome route :) sort of. I would surprised if anyone ever wasted their time on it as a lead so i named it Bacon, 14. :) Paraphrasing Andrew Bisharat, no matter what anyone tells you, grades are not the most important thing, but immortality, is. I reached a higher plane that day...
We set up camp in our wilderness environment, feeling very Bear Grylls if not for the warm Ski Huts visible above us. Either way, the weather didnt set in, we had just enough food and it was a lovely starry, moonlit night camped up at 1700m in the NP, with views of Mt Doom and Mt Ruapehu Summit looking spectacular. During the middle of the night, the other heard what they thought was landslipe, it was just me and whit rolling over on our exped inflatable mats... and i heard a roaring just of wind over our little valley which i thought was a eruption, my assertion further backed up by helicopters waking us up in the morning, but i didnt bother to get up to check for lahars or to see something pretty cool for an undergrad geologist, the aforementioned sleeping mat was far to comfy.
The chopper continued its building material ferrying up to the torched hut mid field all morning and eventually we decided Bomb Arete (16***)in the Mangetepopo valley sounded cool. Walking up to the bluffs i realised i had again miscalculated the guidebooks information. So we decide dot go the closest cliffs to the tracks. Which looked excellent anyway. They were, we started on a starred 13 called Death Wall, which if you eliminated the ladder tot he right, was a unique prefect crack, the likes of which i had never climbed before, it ate my small cams and was an awesome lead, there were no bolts so i built an anchor on the perfectly fissured and spiked rock and the other 3 followed up. The plan was for someone else to lead to next pitch but the others werent confident building an anchor so i set of again on the slightly harder, but still super well protected, verticly cracked and juggy by steep wall of Ta Lo, 15. Finding a sling anchor around a high spike from which everyone could 2nd up and then rap down cleanly.
Mark then did the first pitch on lead, his first trad lead, then the NAHs headed off and it was back to me and Whit and the stone. With plenty of trad lines from 13-16 in front of us. Whit did a cool fist crack, utilising every big piece of gear possible, and at one point did the obvious thing, cut loose his feet and attemped to campus up on his fist jams/ double gastons / (however he managed to hold onto that crack), finding better beta and completing an awesome clean lead. I did a 16 up a corner, which was super fun and way more challenging than the previous routes i had lead that day, followed by another 16 in another corner, but this one had a small roof to surpass, protected by a chock stone, a cam and a half arsed cam i shoved blindly into a crack round and over the roof. So, obviously well protected, i managed that, the crux and then did some awesome climbing, using the textbook cam placements up the corner, into a chimney protected by a couple of good nuts. Awesome! Complan 16*
With the light fading we headed off back to Wellington, the impending Week dragging down our high spirits already :( but Central North Island Radio and my newly discovered cruise control, plus seeing a douche that overtook us pulled over with plod made the journey back seem not as much in the wrong direction as it really was :) The National Park is so special, to climbers or trampers, there's no excuse not to be there!
President 2011