Dances With Sheep: climbing some ice

Hello there my fine friends. I have returned from my adventure from Tonga in one piece and managed to avoid the quaking earth in Christchurch this weekend. That story will come later though, so don't fret! Now, as promised, I will tell you a little bit about ice climbing. A few weeks ago, we embarked on a trip to Fox Glacier. Jareth, J-bo, Megan and myself left Dunedin on a friday evening. On the way to the glacier, we made a pit stop in Wanaka so J-bo could meet up with his family. After a successful drop, the remaining three of us headed towards the glacier. About half an hour into the trip, Jareth, who was driving that leg of the trip, looks over at me and says we don't have very much gas. Crap. I had planned on getting some gas in Wanaka cause we had another three hours after that. Not only was it another three hours, it was another three hours through the middle of nowhere. This could be interesting. We kept on driving, keeping our eyes peeled for a town or something that could hook us up with some gas. We started to approach a little town thingy with a sign that said gas. Alright, we dodged a bullet. But wait, we pull up to the mini mart and gas station to find it closed. Now the trip got even more interesting. A little further down the road, we found another gas station that was closed for the night, so we keep on driving, crossing our fingers. At this point, we were driving through whindey roads and forests and mountains with no civilization anywhere. I then saw a sign that said the nearest town was 62 kms away and we had less than a quarter of a tank of gas. Let me tell you something: that was the most nerve wracking 62 kms I have ever traveled. Jareth milked the gas tank as best he could while we both thought of potential scenarios for if we did run out of gas. Eventually, we made it to the town and found gas with 24 hour card service. Thank god! Oh, and did I mention, Megan was asleep for this entire hour and a half to two hour ordeal of low gas. She woke up completely unaware of what had just happened. Lucky her.

Once we got our car situated with some gas, we set out for the final portion of the drive. A little over an hour later, we rolled into the town of Fox Glacier and looked for somewhere to park and set up a tent for the night. We didn't have to search for too too long cause we ended up finding a little RV and camp site thing. It was perfect cause there were carparks and little patches of grass, ideal for tents, as well as bathrooms. Looks like we made out nicely. So we set up and tent and went to sleep for our early morning. When daylight rolled around, we gathered up our stuff and got in the car to leave. Just then, some dude walks out of the office just as I put the car in reverse and asks us if we have paid yet. I explained that we got there at like 3 in the morning, but he didn't care. Well that sucked. We were about 2 minutes away from that campsite being free-ninety-nine. Oh well, what are ya gonna do? I'll tell you what you do in such a situation, go ice climbing! And thats just what we did.

Megan and I checked into the Fox Glacier Guides place and left Jareth in the car to sleep. Immediately after walking in the door, they hurried us to the back to start getting our schtuff together. The schtuff: boots, crampons, gaiters, gloves, helmets, rain coats, harnesses and ice axes. Lets do it. The drive to the glacier was about 5 minutes and then we started on a 45 minute walk/hike through a river bed where the glacier used to be a couple hundred years ago before it receded to its current location.

Right-o. Once we got to the edge of the glacier, we put our crampons, gaiters, harnesses and helmets on and got axes in hand. Let the maneuvering over ice commence. In our group, it was me, Megan, 2 other dudes and our guide Sam. Sam was a pretty cool dude. He led us over the glacier and we found this dope wall where we could do some good climbing for the day. He ventured up a slanted part to set up some anchors for the ropes and sent them down. The four newbies then learned how to use crampons properly and did a little practice standing on the vertical wall with just our toes sticking into it. So, basically, we stood on the side of a vertical ice wall with just our toes in the ice. Those crampons were pretty serious business. We then started to do a little climbing. I started up the wall first with Megan belaying me. Basically, my life was in her hands because she could save me if I slipped off the wall. Anywho, I trusted her and made my way up the ice. Pretty tuff stuff at first. You have an ice axe in each hand and use those and your crampons to maneuver up the wall. I worked my way towards the top with minimal slips and

then got to a bit of an overhang that I had to get up and over in order to get to the anchor. This involved a little bit of sketchiness and some slipping of the feet and not so solid axe plants. I was successful though and made it over the lip and to the top. Making it up there on the first try was a pretty solid feeling. You could see a long way on the glacier cause the wall was like 30-40 feet high. Once at the top, it was time to have Megan belay me down. That started out a little shaky. Its kind of weird to have someone hold all your weight as you are suspended in the air surrounded by ice and such. I made it down and later found out that at one point, Megan got

pulled off her feet and Sam had to grab her as I was coming down. Way to go Megan. I trusted her for the remainder of the day though and she did not fail me. Obviously, seeing as I am telling the tale. Right, next was Megan. She hustled up the wall as well and made it to the top. We were naturals. One of the other dudes who was with us, I think it was Pete, I'm not sure though cause they were named Pete and Paul, hard to keep them straight. Pete was shaky to say the least. He just wasn't confident in his climbing abilities and at one point, his boot actually fell off, which was pretty ridiculous. Sam had never seen such a thing so it was pretty funny. When lunch time rolled around, Megan and I got some water straight from the glacier. Thats right, water running off the glacier was sipped that day and it was very delicious. I managed to save a little bit of it for the entire weekend. After lunch, everyone did a few more climbs and then we started to pack things up and start to wander around some more of the glacier. It started to rain but not too bad at all.

The glacier was very beautiful and it was awesome to see all the crevices and such and apparently, we only saw a "small" portion of the glacier. Sam told us that there is a huge collection of glacier up further from where we were. And where we were was pretty gigantic anyway. We then started to make our way down off the glacier because it was getting to be late afternoon. The entire time on the glacier was very cool because it was definitely unlike any place I have been before. Megan and I decided it was a schweet and unique experience, and we were glad we had the opportunity t give it a try. Upon returning to the town, we rendezvoused with Jareth and headed back towards Wanaka.

The drive back to Wanaka was much better than the drive from there to Fox Glacier. We didn't have to worry about running out of gas, we got to see the West Coast and the sun set over the ocean. A lot of the coast line was on cliffs and such, but when we got to sea level we pulled over and mozied around a beach to take some pictures and see the sun lower itself on the horizon. After that, we finished up the drive to Wanaka and met up with J-bo once again. His parents, who we had actually met earlier that week, ate dinner with and really liked, were kind enough to let we three vagabonds sleep on the floor of their condo type deal. Awesome news. There's nothing like sleeping on a nice warm floor after sleeping in a cold tent the night before. In the morning, we arose and chatted with Mrs. J-bo for a while and then departed to get some breakfast. Breakfast was followed by some wandering about Lake Wanaka and Lake Hawea, both are very pretty and very scenic lakes. Then, we got back in the car once again and started our return trip to Dunedin. One of the pluses about the return drive was that it was daylight the entire time. It is so nice to drive through New Zealand during the day and see everything, even if you've been there before, it is worth seeing again. Overall, it was a great weekend and I was super pumped about the ice climbing. I might have to give it another go once I get back to VT cause apparently there is some world class ice climbing in Smuggler's Notch. We'll see what this winter brings.

Well, thats it for now. I'll be writing another novel within the next few days about my trip to Tonga, so keep your eyes peeled. Peace out my brethren.

Lake Wanaka on top and Lake Hawea below.