An old letter from Leg 1

Day 8 (Liverpool hut)


We have just (as of yesterday) completed our 1st first. Though we were unaware of it, we were the first party to cross the cascade saddle for the season. Some parties had tried but they turned back, they can’t have had either the elegance or the subtlety of the Andy & Rion U-Nit.


I thought I would describe in detail day 6-7 in detail as you may do this route later in summer. The climb up from dart hut to cascade saddle was relatively straight forward and it is clear that we are getting stronger. Though by the time we reached the saddle Andys’ ankle was giving him considerable grief. He has ankles that role in (I think it’s called inner perpetrating or something like that) and have been bruising against the inside of his boot. This condition had really started to aggravate on the climb down from Troas. The day off on day 5 was supposed to cure it but did not really.

This day off had been nice. We had played cards, read maps and played chess (with cards and maps). Lizzies’ cards she gave Andy are awesome.

Dart hut also have an awesome ranger in the form of a short ginger bearded dude. He made us cookies and told us tales; I already have in mind my next summer tramping trip, a 10 day trip through the Olivine and Marion plateaus. If you do pass by say hi from us. We have since found out that his name is Blair, it somewhat destroys his mystical allure. Therefore we will keep calling him the Dart Ranger or Paddy for short.


Post cascade saddle the track continues to climb and sidle to the pylon, though snow was quite deep through here. Our destination was the main tributary of the cascade stream, where there is a DOC campsite and toilet. On arrival the toilet looked like this:

That is, it was buried up to the roof in snow with only the chimney really showing. We decided the toilet was non-operational.


The next plan was to sort out Andys’ feet, we hiked up the ridge to try and get cell phone coverage – nada. So we set up the mountain radio and called Andys’ mum, the clarity of the call was quite good and the orthotics were to be sent down. Just so everyone knows, if we call the conversation can be heard from Port Pegasus to Papa New Guinea. (Love you too mum, says Andy).

We set up camp in this idyllic valley chowed down on some dehy goodness (they are going well) & tucked ourselves in. Unfortunatly a trio of kea decided this valley would be a good place to shelter from the sou-wester too. At 10.30 I was awoken with the kea sound outside the tent, I then spent half the night chasing them around the camp. We discovered in the morning that the pack (three more had joined them overnight) scored about 4 and us none.

They had managed to:

Rip out one peg
Poke their noses under the fly and stab a hole in my bladder.
Drag my crampons out from under the fly into the river where they attacked the rubber.
We found my crampons and bag in the morning, fortunately they did not float away and the damage is only cosmetic.

Due to the nights antics we made a slow start up Tyndal. It was a long plod in which we only used our axes for the last 50m vertical. Great views, I would recommend you take axes and crampons through. Unfortunately could not see Lochnegar L. When we returned to our camp, our gear which we had buried in avalanche debris had not been further attacked J. We climbed up to the pylon and that is where the real fun started.


The climb down the east side of the cascade was/is very steep and made somewhat nerve racking by the presence of 300ish meters of soft snow. It was slow progress and I would not recommend it to anyone for at least a fortnight. The rest of the descent was also very steep and hard on the knees. It is probably the steepest saddle I have descended to date. We made Aspiring hut in good time, where we were greeted with a box of supplies from Whiti (Ben Dare) – Thanks Ben, hope the trip up Aspiring was good. The pumpkin soup from the warden was awesome, so here is a challenge to all the wardens out there, try to beat the effort of the Aspiring and Dart wardens.


We counted on Andys’ orthotics arriving by Wednesday at the earliest so today we are heading to Liverpool Biv with the aim of climbing Barff tomorrow. This has been aborted as they arrive at the carpark at 10.15 tomorrow, bit of a bummer as we will have to climb back down, and I had been trying to convince Andy to cross the Arawhata saddle to the famous Arawhata rock biv, to make an attempt on Mt Athene. The new plan is to head up to French ridge hut.


Goodnight I’m off to take a dump in a room with an amazing view.

p.s when we were at Rockburn hut the rockburn looked an easy cross.

p.p.s Big thanks to the folks for sending those orthotics down on what must have been a rocket! Picking em up this morning, hopefully I can make them work in these boots.


Rion & Andy