A very special day out amongst the mighty maunga of the Southern Alps. Having just summited Mt Douglas 2 days prior, our bodies were still recovering and we still had some outstanding sleep debt. We had one more good day of weather before a storm was due to come in. If we attempted Mt Tasman, we would have to return early enough to catch a heli out or commit to being stuck in the hut for a few days to sit out the storm.
It wasn’t too hard a decision – we weren’t sure if we’d get a chance to come back this season so we settled in for another early night and early start to give it a go.
Initially, we wanted to go via the Stevenson-Dick couloir and down via the N shoulder which would make for a nice loop. We had recce’d the access a few days earlier, as theres a schrund at the base of the couloir that can cut the route off, but it looked negotiable. This route was going to be more committing however, as reversing the rockfall prone NE facing gully after the sun was up didnt sound particularly enticing if we needed to bail for whatever reason, and in the interest of getting a flight out before the storm we opted to try the N shoulder via Lendenfeld.
- Grade : IV, 3+
- Equipment : 1x 60m rope, 10 screws with long runners, 2 x snow stakes. Tat.
- Time : 12.5h return (from turn around point) ; 1340m elevation gain, 12.6km
- Season : Late spring/early summer – late summer may see access cut off
- Team : Joe and Maria, 21/11/2023
approach
Leaving the hut around 2am, we found a decent freeze overnight made the walk across the Albert glacier cruisey. Towards Marcel col, you need to navigate a bit of a maze of crevasses and seracs – worth taking a photo of from the heli in as figuring this out in the dark would be hard. Luckily for us a party had climbed Lendenfeld the day before so we could just follow their tracks.
Easy ground on supportive neve made fast progress to Marcel col, which steepens to around 40-45 degrees to the summit of Lendenfeld. It took 2.5 hours from the hut to the summit. Heading up to Lendenfeld, we were treated with a gorgeous alpine sunrise, illuminating the entirety of the southern alps and the ocean on the horizon too, with Plateau hut a tiny dot 1000 vertical meters below you to the south.
On leaving Lendenfeld the climbing gets considerably more technical and progress slowed down. You’re onto the kind of ridge travel that is typical for this area – big undercut cornices hanging over the south faces and wind stripped ice on the north. The ice makes for solid tool placements, and the angle is not very steep, but you are constantly above serious exposure so full focus is required for the traversing the downclimb to Engineer col. We ran a running belay between us for this section – the ice was taking bomber screws and we crossed in 2x blocks. If you’re planning on using a rope for this section, I personally think bringing a full rack of screws is well worth the small extra weight in your pack to allow extra long simul pitches.
The section from Engineer col is often the crux of the route as it can be cut off by a large schrund, requiring some shenanigans to traverse onto the East face of Tasman to gain Syme ridge. Luckily we found it completely filled in and we could stick to the North side of the ridge which connects the col to the top of Syme ridge. Easy but exposed 45ish degree climbing, we simulclimbed with good screws and a couple of microtraxions taking around 90 minutes to get to point 3300m, the flat spot just below the summit. If pitching this whole section it would have taken significantly longer.
Joining Syme ridge however gave us our first taste of the conditions on the East face: 5 days earlier there had been 25cm new snow that was well into a melt freeze cycle, and the E face was still plastered. While there had been a solid freeze overnight, the sun was absolutely blasting and by 7am when we were leaving Engineer col it was already starting to soften. Along the ridge itself where the wind had stripped everything back, there was a strip of good ice so we could avoid touching it all the way to the 3300m flat spot.
From here, there is another short (roughly 200m) traverse to the final snow ridge to the summit. More classic Aoraki ridge travel – hard ice on the north side with 1000m of air under your feet down to the Janszoon glacier. Except this time covered in large, fragile lumps of sastrugi and rime ice. We started simul climbing again, but the sastrugi made this impossible with the rope constantly getting snagged and tugging at the leader doing more harm than good, so the rope went away and we soloed to the the final snow slope. This was slow going and mentally taxing, and we got to the base of the final ridge at 0900. From here the north side of the ridge is plastered with with monstrous rime blobs and so the standard approach is to traverse onto the east face for the final section to the summit. If conditions are good this is an exposed but fairly straightforward section of the route to the summit. Reaching over the icy safety of the ridge and punching into the snow on the east face it was clear this wasn’t happening – even by 9am it was totally cooked, with my arm disappearing almost to the elbow. Setting off any size of loose wet from the summit of the east face of Tasman would definitely be the end of you, so the decision to turn around was easy – even though we were only 100m or so from the top.
We retraced our steps, following the strip of ice down Syme ridge to avoid the increasingly scary looking snow. We had originally planned to make threads and rap this section above Engineer col, but even this ice was starting to soften by the time we got there just after 1030, so we downclimbed the whole thing. Once past Lendenfeld the progress was really fast and we got back to the hut by 1430. It was hotter than forecast, and the heat crossing the Albert glacier back to the hut was hard to handle – we got back and immediately downed a litre of water each. We got back to the hut in time for one of the last heli flights of the day – with only 20 minutes notice, this was the fastest turn around we’ve achieved for packing up!
Reflecting on this day, we were caught out by higher temps than expected. We had 9.30/10am in our heads as a turnaround / summit time, on a forecast of 3000m FAFL in mid November with a solid overnight freeze, but we were a few hours late. It was also the first time we had done one of these ridge routes together, with sections of easy but unprotectable (due to the amount of rime) terrain with terminal consequences for any small mistake. We talked a lot about whether the risk to enjoyment ratio is worth it, especially compared to a route like S face Douglas which we had done a few days earlier and while technically much harder, is well protected the entire way, especially for the second. Ultimately, the summit is not everything and being able to bail even when you’re just half an hour away if it’s not safe is the key to avoiding accidents in the mountains.
Peak Exposure 