A cool line with a few possible variations. A worthwhile climb in its own right with a spectacular summit. From the summit there’s 400m or so of 40-45 degree skiing down to the plateau below divers col, followed by very cool and exposed skiing along the ridge heading south towards point 2258 before dropping back down to the Tasman glacier. I flew in for a week back in September 2018 with Pete Deytrick, Loz Luscombe, Fraser Cambell and Ari Hanna during a period of excellent weather and stability and tick off a few classic lines and drink a whole lot of goon.
Approach
We based ourselves at Kelman hut – some people whinge about Kelman (aka the fridge on the ridge) but I think it’s got some advantages over Tasman Saddle. Firstly it has plumbed in gas and cookers so you don’t need to bring as much gear and melting as much snow as you need is no issue. Secondly it has seperate rooms from the sleeping area – in Tasman saddle your bed is right next to the cooking bench and so any climbers getting alpine starts will be firing up their jetboil half a metre from your head at 2am.
But it is colder up at Kelman and getting progressively leakier….
It’s a no brainer to fly in – for Tas saddle you get dropped right by the hut so can be lax with your packing / bring cardboard boxes, but for Kelman you need to skin up a steep slope for 30 min so need to pack properly.
Climb
From Kelman or Tas Saddle blast down the Tasman towards point 2258. Your two options are:
1) Cut south around the bottom of point 2258 and into the bowl under climbers col / Mt Green South face. From here skin up the glacier to the West of the ridge, delivering you onto the Divers Col plateau. This gets steep towards the top and you might have to bootpack the top section. This way is slightly longer and gets cut off later in the season.
2) Stay high on the Tasman and go above point 2258, skinning across up onto the ridge joining 2258 to the plateau. You then climb up ridge to the plateau, which is a low angle exposed snow arete. You may have to climb down onto the East face to bypass some of the rock bands.
This way is faster but more exposed to serac fall.
We chose option 1 as we could see the route went from the plane, and the ice cliffs over option 2 were particualy active. Either way the area at the base of 2258 has some massive crevasses so take care.
From the plateau, just boost straight up the snowfields to the summit ridge. There is a large schrund at the bottom, and the spot you cross will be determined by this. The further East you go, the less serious the exposure is and the less steep the route is, funnelling down onto the plateau. To the west it steepens up and also funnels down onto the south face and major cliffs so a fall would likely be fatal.
We had to cross the schrund on the far West of the face as it opened up significantly to the East. But the West side was bare ice so we traversed across the rock band to hit the good snow on the East side. We hit the summit ridge about 50m East of the summit, then cruised up the low angle slopes to the top.
The views from the summit are pretty incredible, with a panorama of the whole of the Tasman but also into the West side of Ellie and down to the West coast
Ski
Cruise down the summit ridge to your chosen drop in point. Scope out where the best snow is on the climb to decide where your going to ski. As above, the line is more serious and consequential on the West side of the face. Send the shrund and cruise down to the plateau. From here its a fun ski down the apex of the ridge – its easy ground but tres exposed.
Again the best way down will depend on the conditions at the time, but we cruised down about half way down the ridge and then dropped down the face to the East just by the ice fall to take us down onto the Tasman. Then enjoy the skin back to the hut and some well earned goon!
We left the hut at 08:00 and had finished the skiing by 16:30. It was another hour and a half to skin back up to Kelman.
Peak Exposure 