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Warm up

But no matter how beautiful the scenery, how great the waves were, Mt Cook loomed over us like an ever-present ghost that we knew at some point we would to confront. The weather was checked numerous times daily as we waited for our shot at the top. The pressure mounted as the days passed by in a haze of salt water and endless clouds. Access is one of New Zealand’s quintessential issues. The glacier gouged valleys sit around 600m, the snowline around 1200m with the whole Alp culminating in Mt Cook’s 3724m. With only a brief morning weather window between fronts we decide a warm up, remote couloir mission was the go. Pushing our Q7 to its limits we bounced our way across rugged farm tracks and fluvial plains before parking up beside the Dobson river . Nadine had figuratively coughed up both lungs on the drive and sadly was in no state

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for the rugged 1600 vertical metres to the summit. She wisely decided to sleep the day away, hoping to recover in time for Cook, thus leaving Xavier and I contemplating the first obstacle. There’s nothing like six bone chilling river crossings to cool you down before sweating up the access creek to the snowline. The dense, mossy forest halfway up provided a lovely contrast before we are forced back to falling into the creek as we scrambled higher. At least we weren’t the ones carrying the cameras. The couloir, nestled between tall rock walls, curved right and out of sight a further 800m vertical to this reclusive citadels summit. Step after step we slowly gained height, the top forever out of hidden out of sight. The weather was delightfully deteriorating as rapidly as our legs, cutting the banter to a discreet minimum.