A high quality 350m WI3/4 ice route with easy access from Baron Saddle hut. Unfortunately a large rockfall has affected the South face of Vampire since we were there and I havent heard of anyone going up there since so I have no idea how stable the rock is or if the line is even still there. Hopefully it will be climbable again as the whole zone is awesome
Approach
Base yourself at Baron Saddle hut. Access either via the Sealy Tarns track and Mueller hut then across the Metelline, Sladden and Williams glaciers, or a 5 min heli ridge from Glentanner. We flew in an hiked out as we only had a couple of days off work to get the trip done. I would avoid access via the Mueller glacier – the access around the Mueller terminal lake looks terrible, and then the glacier itself gets unrelentingly pounded by rockfall from above.
Barron saddle hut is a compact little barrel with bunks, but no gas or cooking equipment so bring everything.
From the hut we headed to Barron Saddle and then across to the Bannie glacier. From here its a simple 3-400 vertical metre plod to the start of the route. We went up the night before to figure out the route in daylight, and left a bunch of gear at the base of the route. Skis would speed things up significantly but Sean was between skis at that point so we were booting it.
Climb
Crossing the shrund was a bit tricky and involved so traversing out to the west before sidling back in under the route.
Pitch 1 : 2x 25m sections joined by a short low angle snow ramp. The first was WI3 but the second was near vertical for the second half, at WI4. Tubbs led this first pitch and did both sections in one long pitch. We ran out of rope and so had to simul a few metres to get him up to the snow ramp above to build a belay. To avoid the simul you could turn this into 2 pitches
Pitch 2 : Snow ramp into WI3 ice traversing right up to a screw belay and the start of the next section of steep ice
Pitch 3 : Steepens up for the next WI4 pitch. The ice was a little thinner here with a few mixed moves thrown in. Culminated in a near vertical 2m pillar to get onto the low angle snow field
Pitch 4 : Another 40m of WI3 to another good screw belay
Pitch 5 : 20m of WI3 into a steep snow gully up to the summit
Descent
There were excellent screw anchors the whole way up, and a team of 3 is ideal for prepping the V threads on the ascent to maximise efficiency on the descent. However when you reach the very top anchor options are slim. The unconsolidated loose snow meant a picket was no good and the ice runs out so threads arent an option. There is a big rock at the top which has a thin crack in it that can fit a knifeblade piton, but the direction of pull for the rap was straight out of the crack. We had spoken to a group that had climbed the route a few days earlier and told us about the top anchor situation and we decided to do a bit of a public service and bring a power drill up and install a nice shiny new DBA with rap rings. We were hoping this was going to becoming something of a classic ice route and would get a lot of traffic – after the big rockfall I dont know if these bolts are even still there. Im sure they are still securely in the rock, but the rock may now be at the bottom of the valley…..
From the hut it took us around 5 hours to get to the car on foot – would be significantly faster on skis. The section getting to the Sladden glacier (passing under the Williams glacier) was quite thing and over some big exposure – take extra care if crossing this late in the day and a small wet loose could cause a big fall down to the Mueller. The same is true (but to a lesser extent) between the Annette and Mueller hut.
Peak Exposure 