An iconic line in New Zealand mountaineering history – described as ‘the last great problem of New Zealand mountaineering’ when first climbed, it took another 40 years for its first ski descent in 2017.
This 2000m monster of a face is not to be undertaken lightly. Fickle conditions, complex route finding, objective hazard and sustained 45-50 degree skiing above serious exposure combined with a serious mountaineering route just to get to the starting gates, means you need to bring your A game for this line. For the majority of the line, a fall is likely to be fatal.
It took several years of planning, preparation and patient waiting for myself, Will and Sam to get the second descent in 2021. Without a doubt one of the most incredible lines I have ever skied, and the euphoric feeling stayed with me for a long time afterwards. But I don’t think I would ever skin the line again; the objective hazard from the constant serac threat is on the wrong side of that line separating acceptable and unacceptable risk. Even moving as fast and efficiently as possible, 2 hours spent under those ice cliffs is a roll of the dice and balancing the reward against that risk is a very personal decision.
Conditions
Really this is the crux of the route, and can be broken down into the condition of the ice cliffs and the condition of the snow.
Ice cliffs – the state of the face changes significantly year on year, and also throughout the year. While the basic line that Ben Briggs and co took in 2017 is the same as our line, we crossed the 2 main serac bands in different places, and the next descent is likely to cross somewhere else again. Regularly following the state of the face through the year is key, and thankfully climbers and skiers are constantly flying past the face generating a beta stream. Once it looks like it’s in, the pilots will give you a really good fly by on the way to plateau. Multiple photos from multiple angles is crucial to get the line dialled, choose rap spots and make an assessment of coverage. We spent an hour or so zooming in on different spots on the face trying to find tell tale grey / blue shine that might suggest bare ice.
Snow – we wanted to ski the face in powder. Corn is the other option, but your time window between the top section softening, which is steep and super exposed, and the bottom section becoming dangerous is going to be pretty narrow given the complexity and length of the route. The biggest concerns here are avalanche risk, and hitting a section of hidden ice just beneath the surface which would knock you off your feet and you’d be gone. For a line like this I would normally climb the ski line and get a good look at conditions and identify any ice patches on the way up. Given the serac threat this isn’t an option of the Caroline so you have to ski the line top down, and back yourself that you’ve assessed correctly and can deal with the conditions you encounter. Our approach was to wait until late spring and generally stable conditions, and then wait for a system that was going to bring in warm precip turning cold during the storm, hopefully providing well bonded right way up snow sticking to the underlying ice. We wanted at least 24-36 hours of cold still weather for settlement and then another day of the same to ski the line. This is not common in New Zealand but in November 2021 everything seemed to be lining up so we flew in to take a look.
Approach
Plateau hut is incredible – the majority of New Zealand 3000m peaks within a 30 minute skin. The best approach to the Caroline is to head towards the East face and traverse high, climbing the snow gullies to reach the East ridge. This means you miss the first 400m or so of the East ridge, significantly speeding the climb. Once on the ridge, the soft confidence inspiring snow meant we made pretty fast progress by soloing the majority of the route. It also gives the opportunity to sidle onto the Caroline and assess the stability for the first time.
With everything looking good we continued up the East ridge. Once we hit the last couple of hundred metres it turned from soft to bare glacier ice so we put in 4 pitches up to middle peak. The climbing was super fun, easy WI2 , mostly 50ish degree ice with short steps up to WI3 over outrageous exposure. Halfway up the climb we saw a massive 500m wide avalanche rip down the face to our left reaching all the way down to the Ball Glacier. From the ridge you don’t get a full view of the face and it was impossible to see exactly where this had started – if it was on our line then either it was a slab avalanche and we had totally misjudged the avalanche risk, or if a serac collapse (the most likely thing) it would have cleared all the snow off the line leaving bare ice. Either way not good. We decided to carry on to the top of the east ridge and asses and discuss – if we were not happy then the bail out options from there would be the Grand Traverse and down the Linda, or down the NW couloir to Empress.
From the top of the East ridge, Porter Col is just a short distance South West. We took particular care here – the ice was totally bulletproof and a slip would mean a fall all the way down to the Empress Shelf. This was the spot that Magnus Kastengren tragically died in 2013 attempting this line, and that thought was in the forefront of our minds while crossing this section. From Porter Col for the first time we got a full view of the top section of the line – it was clear the avalanche we had witnessed earlier had come from serac collapse on the far lookers left side of the face, and had not affected any part of our line. The snow looked incredible from the top and after a long final discussion we decided to rap in and commit to the line.
The Line
Routefinding is key – have photos of the face on standby on your phone to reference, and have a mental image of the major landmarks on the face. Climbing back up under those seracs is not a position you want to be in!
Rap entry – I can’t imagine there would ever be a time when this top section would be skiable. A stretch of blue ice just below the ridge where it has been blasted by high winds, leading to the snow. We rapped around 80m in 2 raps, leaving a snow steak on the summit and a V thread half way down.
This is fairly committing – be ready for some WI4 ice to reverse this if the snow isn’t what you expected when getting to the face. Once at the snow we built another anchor for another stability assessment – while everything looked perfect we decided the first person down would ski 50m on the rope as a final assessment. Will took one for the team and dropped in first – a test of belaying skill to let slack out fast enough! With everything looking primo the rope went away and it was on.
The first pitch is the steepest, around 55 degrees for a couple 100 metres. We then cut hard left for a long traverse to the feature we called ‘The Nose’. The traverse is pretty critical – from the photos we had some concern about ice on this section. A tool in each hand and screws ready to go to make an anchor and switch back to crampons if needed. The traverse takes you to the top of the nose.
This section wasn’t how it looked from the photos – was a lot wider and less sketchy than we were worried it might be, and the angle eases off to be similar to there E face at around 45 degrees. But it does mark the start of the serious overhead hazard which just gets worse from here on down. There are also a couple of bail out options here. If you can’t get through the nose, you can climb back up and right towards middle peak following the top part of the Clit Route. Or if you get through the nose but its looking bad underneath that, you can cut hard skiers left and could traverse back to the East ridge.
The skiing from the nose to the middle serac band was really incredible – shin to knee deepcold powder on consistent 45 degree slopes. Be sure to cut right at the bottom – finding the correct spot to rap the middle serac band is critical. Too for to skiers left and the cliff is 100s of meters of overhanging ice, too far right and you under the much more active and dangerous seracs.
2 V thread raps from here got us down to the lower snowfield. Speed is really of the essence from here on in, as you’re now under the maximum serac exposure. We managed to get our rope stuck on the final rap – knowing this was the last rap we just left one of our ropes behind in the interest of reducing time spent under the seracs. A momento left on the face and a good talking point for the scenic flights for the next few weeks! The last section involves cutting left to the major rib and then cutting down through the final cliff band. There are a few options to get through this and is another point to ID before starting down the line. Then straight-line down through the debris field across the Caroline Glacier and out of the firing line! It took us 2 hours from the summit to the bottom, and then a cruisey skin back up to ANZAC col and across to Plateau Hut, and some celebration beers.
Peak Exposure 