Nuns Veil

Jan 2008

After running out of the Huxley Valley I speedily repacked my bag in record time (under 20min!). Then I jumped into the car with Annabel, Kieran, Guy and Jeremy to catch the jet boat across the lake, which Annabel had used her charm to get us for free. We found upon arrival my speed packing was not required, as they couldn’t take us across for another hour. So we found small patches of shaded and wished there was more than the sediment saturated lake water to drink. We got our free ride through the ice-burgs (people actually pay for that?!?!) and began our walk. It took us about an hour along the monotonous river bed to reach Gorilla Stream. Then things got much more enjoyable! The next few hours were excellent fun, jumping and scrambling over boulders as we made our way up the stream. We camped as soon as we could see the base of Nuns Veil and the sun was leaving the valley.

 The next morning we awoke at 4:30am, getting to the base of the glacier by  full light, just as planned. We were not sure what the best route was, so when the snow was starting to look a bit steep we headed up onto the rocks, which were a bit steeper than they first appeared… So when Jeremy and I made it to the top of the worst bit we told the others to wait and sent down the rope (I was silly enough to be carrying the rope, thus had no choice but to make it to the top!). After a bit more easier scrambling Kieran and Annabel decided to head up the snow, while Jeremy, Guy and I stuck to the rocks. This brought us all to the small plateau before the steep snow to the summit. Here we climbed into the shrund between the snow and rock leading to the summit. (we avoided the face because the snow was getting quite steep and the run out included a 500m drop into a rocky gorge…). The shrund was quite easy, safe travel until the end, when it became quite steep and composed of ice that shattered under our picks. I clambered up it, Jeremy following closely behind. The others (more intelligently) stayed in the lovely little ice cave below.

The rock that I reached turned out to be slightly more vertical than it appeared from the bottom. But there was no way I was looking forward to going down that shitty ice, so I clung to a bit of loose rock, trying (in vain) not to nock rock onto those below and took off my crampons. Jeremy scrambled on ahead then threw a rope down for me. On the way up I commented on the fact that “I can see through the ridge!” (as it was compiled of a bunch of loose boulders balancing on top of each other.) Which didn’t cheer up my lovely belayer much! When Kieran yelled up to us asking if they should follow, Jeremy replied with something along the lines of “It goes…” And when they decided they might try pitching the snow instead we heartedly agreed that was probably the best idea! Staying roped up we loosely pitched the ridge. The first 50m turned out to be the most exposed part, as it widened out further along. From there it was only a small bit of snow to cross before the easy scramble to the summit. The snow turned out to be slightly exciting, with a cornice to one side and crevasses to the other (one of which half my body found when trying to stay away from the cornice.) We then wandered up the (not so) lovely loose rocks to the summit. We had a fabulous picnic in the sun with a 360 degree view of massive mountains and waited for our three companions. And waited. And waited. And waited… After a while we decided that they might have experienced difficulty and were not able to get up that route, so we began to head back down. When we got back to the rocks we saw Kieran’s blue helmet pop above the crest of the snow. They had not encountered any problems, just 6 pitches of snow with three people was much more time consuming than 3 loosely belayed rock pitches with two people. So Jeremy and I had another rest in the sun while waiting as the others summated.

We had been watching the progress of another group of three behind us. Two had stopped half way up, and the third, a German speaking guy, was soloing up to the summit. He paused to talk to us, and when we offered for him to join us on our rope on the descent he heartedly took up the offer. While he headed up to the summit, Jeremy and I put up a fixed rope along the ridge to where we could abseil back into the shrund. The foreigner  came back first. Chatting to him, we found out that the other two climbers he was with were Glen and Francesca! So on the way down we all had a good chat, walking down together, as their route  looked much more reasonable than our round about one. They had come directly up the snow instead of onto the rocks. After walking down a part of the glacier we reached a bluff which we abseiled over, then climbed back onto the snow. Soon we reached the soft snow near the bottom and yeha! we could run home to our dinner and beds (18hrs later). 

After a divine sleep in we had a lovely rock hop in the sun to the Tasman valley. There we trudged across the hot flat plain to the lake. We waved and yelled and whistled until a jet came and picked us up.

Terra