Cook

This was my introduction to New Zealand. Matt Porter and I planned a summit trip of Cook, but failed. This was my first and only to date
(8-03) summit failure. We turned the trip into a rock climbing mission instead of the Remarkables, Queenstown and even a farmer’s
back 40 (it was in the book!). The trouble with climbing in NZ is mostly weather related. We reached the Grand Plateau and set out for
our summit attempt at 1: AM. There had not been a successful summit party in weeks. Four separate parties set out this day for the
summit, but soon found difficulty. Actually the negative weather we faced related to "soft" conditions, in other words, it was too warm. We
almost post holed from the start. By the time we booked through a treacherous ice and rock fall area and made it onto firm ice, we were
truly exhausted. Two parties had already turned back. We led, followed by another two man team, through debris fields that covered up
any resemblance of previous routes. Matt even fell into a crevasse at one point. We too, eventually made the heart wrenching decision
to turn around. We did get the opportunity to meet some great European and Australian climbers. We waited another day, but conditions
did not improve. We proceeded to travel to the base of Aspiring, but that mountain was soaked in fog and rain. Then we made the smart
decision to get something out of our trip, and rock climbed until it hurt. Overall, it was a great trip.

I visited the entire south island, north to south, and east to west with my daughter in 2003. We rock climbed at Doc's Point on the Pacific,
caved on the west coast; ice climbed on the Fox Glacier, sea kayaked in Doubtful Sound and just really did it all. I can't get enough of this
country. Look forward to bagging a kiwi peak soon!