I took a few days off work this week to attempt the Dasler Pinnacles with a friend. It was supposed to be an easy climbing/mountaineering trip, but turned out to be a bit of an epic, with me drowning my camera during a hair-raising river crossing, and us taking almost 16 hours to complete the climb. Actually, I suppose this qualifies as ‘easy’ in mountaineering terms.
I drove up to Christchurch on wednesday to see my parents off (they’d been on holiday in NZ), and to pick up my partner in crime. On our way up the Lake Ohau access road, we drew the scorn of a group of 4WDers who looked at my AWD wagon with disgust, but we made it to within 20 minutes walk of Monument Hut without any difficulty. We hit the trail at 7pm, expecting an easy 90 minute walk through to Red Hut, and then up to camp above the tree line.
The Hopkins river, however, had other ideas; it was running high and swift due to some heavy rain earlier in the day, and we had difficulty finding safe points to cross. We waded halfway through one of the main braids before deciding to turn back, as it was deeper and faster than had first appeared. This turned out to be a bad choice; as we turned around, we were pushed over by the current, and had a frightening experience trying to regain our footing and make it back to the shore.
No casualties in the end, except for my camera, which had been clipped to my chest. It behaved erratically when I turned it on the next morning, and failed completely a few hours later. We finally made it to Red Hut around 9:30pm and, wet and cold, decided against continuing up to camp; instead, we opted to stay in comfort on the valley floor and crank the fire all night.
As forecast, the poor weather cleared overnight, and we woke to beautiful blue skies. We arrived at Dasler Biv at 10:30am, as we had been too lazy to make an early start. After dumping the camping gear, we started off for the pinnacles. It is a steep but enjoyable climb up to the North ridge, through open tussock and an impressive scree field, with stunning views of the Hopkins valley all the way.
The Pinnacles themselves are an impressive sight, with the steep West face towering over the approach. The 400 metre scramble to the summit took us nearly 3 hours; it consists of fairly easy rock climbing, but comes with a bit of exposure. We climbed unroped for most of the ascent until coming to a steep, exposed section. After climbing through this, we abruptly found ourselves on the top at 4:50pm. We considered this good time, as we hadn’t been rushing, and had nearly 5 hours of sunlight to make it back down.
It turned out, however, that climbing down took longer than climbing up, despite a couple of abseils down the steeper bits. We charged down the scree slope, and had a ridiculous amount of fun bum-sliding most of the way down the tussock in the 10pm twilight (the backs of my thighs are currently paying for this indulgence). With what little sunlight remained, we wandered down in the general direction of the biv and, a little after 11pm, were fortunate to stumble across the track. A few minutes later, we were back at the biv, enjoying hot chicken soup. So a few lessons learned about river crossings, and another camera bites the dust; this will certainly be one of my more memorable trips.