In December of 2017, Dale, Owen, and I traveled to New Zealand and climbed Mount Cook before the weather closed in, necessitating a shift to a driving wine and cheese tour for the rest of our time on the South Island. Six years later, I returned with my wife, baby, and our friends Jen, Colin, and their baby for a visit. Mount Aspiring had been stuck in my mind since the research for our first trip and so I (easily) convinced Colin to pack mountaineering gear so we could give it a go during our time in Wanaka.
To minimize our time away from wives and babies and with a 2-day weather window, we decided to take the helicopter ride up to Bevan Col. Trip reports online varied widely in terms of durations for the climb and descent from Colin Todd hut. The stats suggested it could be done faster than most estimates, so we hoped an early helicopter ride in on our first day would enable us to traverse to the hut, drop overnight gear, and then climb the mountain starting around 11am. We were dropped off a little after 9am and quickly traversed to the hut across the Bonar Glacier in just over an hour but, upon arriving, discussed with a Czech team of 3 at the hut who had been waiting out weather and wind for multiple days and could see that the wind was gusting at the summit at dangerous speeds, so we settled in for a day of leisure at the hut.
Our Czech friends woke up at 2:30am, which seemed a bit early to us, so we let them head out and then mobilized ourselves at 3:30am to be moving around 4am, expecting it to take about 1.5-2 hours before we hit the rock buttress and more route-finding challenges so we’d be aligned with dawn. We had scoped out The Ramp and the Kangaroo Patch on our hike in, but the snow was quite soft and didn’t refreeze, plus the guidebook suggested the Kangaroo Patch didn’t save much time and was less scenic than the full ridge.
From the hut, there were cairns everywhere on the ridge and we soon found an easy snow ramp heading onto the margin of the Iso Glacier, which we followed up to the saddle and then across onto the edge of the Therma Glacier as we followed the ridge to the right. We benefitted from the Czech party’s boot pack and switched onto the rocky ridge in under an hour. It was easy going and so we kept the rope in the bag. After traversing the gendarme, there was a brief down-climb step that was exposed enough we decided to put the rope on and protect it. It proved easy enough, as did the subsequent terrain, but having a short rope between us and simul-climbing didn’t slow us down and enabled us to place protection here and there. A few sections had snow and drop-offs, so we switched into crampons with axes a couple of times.
We caught the Czechs after skirting the buttress to the left. Our beta showed continuing a rising traverse below the ridge crest, but we could see this took us over steep snow. We followed this while the other party cut right and up to the ridge crest. Our path was efficient for the way up, with firm snow and good rock protection on our right, which we simul-climbed. After a bit more ridge scrambling back out of crampons, we were below the final ramp to the summit about 4 hours after leaving the hut.
We’d been nervous about the winds up high, but as we made our way upwards, we only felt a few gusts that threw our balance off—it was otherwise not too bad. The snow was firm and somewhat icy, but had just enough give for secure steps. After a little over an hour, we reached the summit at 9:15am. It was miraculously calm at the very top and we soaked in the views, including a really cool undercast marine layer blowing up the valleys to the West from the ocean. We could see Mount Cook in the distance.
A few moments later, we started down the long section of side-hilling descent back to the ridge, which took us an hour since the snow was still so firm. Back on the ridge, the temperature was rapidly rising and the wind was reducing, so we took off most of our layers and fueled up. We decided to avoid what would now be slushy snow from our path up and stayed on the crest of the ridge as the Czechs had done. This worked well and we eventually found a ramp that traversed back skier’s right as the ridge steepened, which eventually brought us back to our track from the way up.
The rest of the scramble went quickly, now knowing the best path up, down, and around the features of the ridge. At 12:45pm, a little over 3 hours after leaving the summit, we were back on the snow of the Therma Glacier, sinking in about a foot with each step. The rest of the way down to the hut went quickly and we arrived there at 1:15pm, about 9 hours after leaving.
We fueled and packed up at the hut and got moving around 3pm. We’d heard that the Bevan Col descent had wet slide avalanche overhead hazard risk and it was so warm that we decided to traverse the Bonar Glacier all the way to Quarterdeck Pass to go down French Ridge instead. This ended up being just over 4 miles and 2,000 feet of gain on the glacier, which was pretty soft at this point in the afternoon and arduous. Thankfully, the marine layer blowing in from the West provided some cover for us since we’d otherwise have baked to a crisp. That said, it ended up putting us in a full whiteout for about an hour of our journey. It took a little over 3 hours from the hut to the pass, which we crested at 6:30pm.
The descent from Quarterdeck Pass to French Ridge hut was quite quick on the soft snow, which was almost continuous to the hut. Since it was 7:30pm at that point, we decided it was best to spend the night there. Our boots were completely soaked from the wet snow, so it felt really good to get everything off and dry it out a bit. Some kind souls at the hut boiled a bit of water for us and we enjoyed an evening chatting up the other parties. The weather was expected to worsen significantly overnight and through the following day, but we needed to get back to our families, so we got moving with dawn at 5:30am.
It took us about 1.5 hours down the steep ridge and then jungle trail climbing roots through steep sections to the river ford at the base of French Ridge. Just as we reached that point, the rain started dumping and the wind kicked up. We put our heads down and marched down the trail, enjoying the ambiance as much as we could despite being completely soaked and a bit cold. It took about 5 hours from the hut to the car—not as bad as the guidebook suggested. When we got there, we piled straight into the car as the rain dumped down outside and then rallied our way out to Wanaka, meat pies, wives, and babies. Great success!
