Walking like a duck wearing a nappy, and other hints on how to survive in the mountains by Phillip Melchior (also published in NZ Wilderness magazine Feb 2006)

Visibility was down to the murky shape of the next man on the rope. To know whether the next step was up, down or flat, the leader kicked snow with every step to see how it rolled.

Three of us, roped together for glacier travel, were making our way through West Hoe Pass between the Davis Snowfield above the Franz Josef Glacier and the Explorer Glacier which feeds the Fox.

It was our classroom, and we were learning fast.

The night before, we had sat around the table at Centennial Hut while a two-day blizzard blew itself out, plotting a course to Pioneer. We worked out bearings, distances and waypoints and noted them carefully in a waterproof notebook.

The next morning was clear and calm. We left early to minimise sinking into soft snow, and made good progress towards the pass. Navigation was forgotten. Who needs a compass when you can see for miles?

And then everything disappeared.

It was one of many valuable lessons learned on a week-long mountaineering course run by Wanaka’s Aspiring Guides. As Pete James says in his excellent technical mountaineering course handbook: “..a comprehensive and well thought-out navigation plan is essential prior to undertaking travel. If you find yourself wrestling with a map in the midst of a storm, you’ve probably left it until a bit late!”

With the leader kicking snow and the back man watching the compass to make sure we didn’t go circular, we made every pre-planned way point and found the hut without difficulty.

Most of the major guiding companies run mountaineering courses of various levels. I had signed up as much to improve my alpine tramping skills as to learn the difference between “frenching” and “low-daggering”.

Four days earlier, our guide and instructor Abel Roche, Mark Bedd, a Hong Kong-based Brit who was scared of heights, and I had been whisked by helicopter from Fox township to the shoulder above Centennial Hut. The weather was perfect and we were alive with anticipation.

Early the next morning we stood in nervous awe under what seemed like the near-vertical face of Matenga Peak, a 2685m spike in a spur off the Minarets. Slashed horizontally by two major bergschrunds, it looked like the sort of thing we should be tackling at the end of the week – not the beginning.

But as we were to discover over and over, there’s no better way of learning than getting out and doing it. And by the time we sat in early sun at the top, we had front-pointed (toe-points only on the crampons) and low-daggered (holding ice tools just below the head and whacking them into the ice at shoulder level) up the steep bits, and rolling our ankles to get all 10-points in (frenching) on the only moderately steep sections. With Abel scurrying around as if he was on flat terrain, even while leading I felt secure and felt my confidence grow from minimal to moderate.

While the weather closed in the next day, we stayed close to the hut, throwing ourselves down steep snow faces – backwards, sideways, rolling over to get weight above the ice-axe and self-arrest; Mark overcoming his fear to allow himself to “fall” into a crevasse so we could haul him out using rescue brakes and alpine pulleys. It’s amazing what you can do with a climbing rope and a few karabiners, if you know the knots.

As the blizzard struck we stayed inside, practicing figure-eights, alpine butterflies, Italian hitches, Klemheist prussicks, and the rest of the knots and hitches essential to safety in the mountains. When it got too cold to sit around, we’d simulate crevasse escape by tying ropes to the rafters and prussicking up – a feat of sufficient difficulty to represent another good reason to try and stay out of crevasses!

Finally, the morning dawned clear and we were off, using one of the most counter-intuitive cramponing techniques to go downhill – feet flat on the surface so all 10 points bite, knees bent, feet wide apart to avoid catching your crampons in clothing, walking, as Pete James puts it, “like a duck wearing a nappy”.

By the time Pioneer Hut loomed up through the falling snow, we had abseiled over bergschrunds, placed snow anchors “for real” and picked our way carefully round crevasses, close enough to see into their vast blue depths.

Walking out on the last day, the weather was perfect and the helicopters were back, buzzing around like buses in Auckland, ferrying tourists to land on the Neve and take pictures of the three odd figures, making their steady, roped-together way down the edge of the Fox Glacier.

They break the silence, there’s no denying that. But in the grandeur of the southern Alps and the huge ice jumble of the Fox, they’re no more than specks in the landscape. And it’s nice to know they’re close at hand if one of those holes my feet keep creating swallowed my whole body and not just a single leg.

Leaving the ice above Chancellor Hut, it seemed odd to take off crampons and untie ropes. We had had a lot of fun, and if you can never learn enough in the mountains, we had certainly made a start.

If he hadn’t lost his fear of heights, Mark had certainly gained confidence. And my thoughts were turning dangerously to summits. Would cols and passes be enough in the future?

ends