Jamieson Saddle – Barron Saddle

It only seems appropriate that my first post in what is intended to be (for the immediate future, at least) a fairly anonymous blog recounting the various trips should just briefly set out where it all began.

Following a deprivation from any stunning and exceptionally challenging climbs recently, I’ve become a bit disenchanted with where my climbing is heading.  Due to a number of factors, I’ve become increasingly eager to just take up climbing full time – to the point that when I graduate – the thing I most want to do is climb, climb and climb – be it overseas or in New Zealand.

Four years of university does begin to leave one rather cynical and disenchanted with the world – and the release which climbing provides is so inherently cathartic that it becomes the one place to truly relax and let the concerns of ‘life’ slip away the further you walk… (I should totally take up life counselling :D)

Anyhow, upon this impetus, with a trip hopefully planned in a weeks time, I decided the way to find a modicum of the experiences of climbing was to relate them to me, myself and I on the internet.  Although there kind of is a second element.  While I don’t really want people I know (or who know me) reading this – I hope that it can one day be a good resource for people who are planning and looking to do trips in an area where not many people have been.  For many years, whenever I begin researching a climb or trip, I’ll do a quick Google search – and it is always those blogs with trip reports and photos which have some of the best information on what to expect and allow you to really inspect a proposed route.  Therefore, I hope that this can do the same for some other people looking at trips 🙂

(The trip which I was looking for and couldn’t find any good photos or reports on was a traverse from Gladiator Col-Crossbow Saddle via Pistol, Bardolph, Nym, The Warrior, Amazon Peaks in the Armoury Range.  There may be a post about it in the next few weeks, all going well!)

So barring my existential ramblings, I do have an actual trip which I did almost a month ago – which didn’t quite turn out as expected…

The planned route was a quick drive down to Mt Cook, and then up to Jamieson Saddle and down into the the top of the Dobson for the first night.  Then on the second day, we were supposed to be heading up the northerly tributary of the Dobson, and going up to Barron Saddle and the hut where we were going to spend the second night.  Then on the third and fourth days, we were going to wander down the Williams, Sladden and Metelille Glaciers and across the Annette Plateau down to Mueller Hut and back to the car at Birch Hill Stream.  We’d even allowed a spare half to a whole day in there that we didn’t really need in case the weather packed in.  Needless to say, the weather didn’t come to the party, and it was somewhat of a different trip!

Jamieson Saddle – What it should have looked like! The photo was taken when we eventually got out on a stunningly clear day.

The long and short of it is that we made it to Mt Cook Village around 12pm on Tuesday, at which point the whole pass was covered in a thick layer of murky cloud, which occasionally saw fit to release it’s contents in a fine precipitation.

The murk which eventually disgorged us onto Jamieson Saddle

After about 1400m vertical ascent, we ended up having to camp in the basin just on the west side of the saddle.  The next morning, the day dawned pretty clear, with some exceptional views up to Mt Hopkins with the aptly named Hour-Glass Glacier, and up to the backside of Mt Sealy (which was the site of a previous climb a few years back .  We’ll see – I may go back and recount old stories at some point in the life of this blog!)  The view up to Sealy reminded me of the climb which had been done the previous year by a couple of my climbing heroes, (cute, right!) called Ice Gangsters.

Mt Hopkins & Mt Spence

South Face of Mt Sealy

Anyway, on with the story.  We knew the forecast was for a front coming through on Thursday, but we hoped to be down at Mueller, or at worst, at Barron Saddle Hut as the front was supposed to have passed by early Friday.  However, we met a hunter in the top of the Dobson just before turning up the North tributary, who mentioned the front which was supposed to be coming in a bit earlier.  Turns out it had accelerated by about a day, and when we came to the bottom of the route, we were running way behind schedule, and the cloud was gathering ominously about the divide.  It was 3pm, and the routes up to the Saddle involved about 600m vertical height gain in about 2.5 hours before nightfall.  Furthermore, the route guide’s route looked rather exciting with the new dusting of snow, and the glacier route was littered with schrunds, which made my fellow stroller rather uncomfortable.

The beginnings of the front

Barron Saddle and the two potential routes

Thus, it was with rather great despondency which I set about setting up camp a little further down the valley, with the intention of assessing the front’s progress in the morning and making final judgment at that point.  However, from the moment we set up the tent the previous night – about 3 hours off where I’d hoped to be tenting – that I knew Barron Saddle had become increasingly unlikely.

In the morning, we woke for a lazy alpine start at 5am, to hear to rain pelting against the tent and the wind attempting to blow us down the Dobson.  In what is one of the more unpleasant memories of my recent climbing escapades, the next 11 or so hours involved a long, wet and entirely dejected walk (in plastics, I might add) out the Dobson down to Station Hut.  We stopped a couple of times and availed ourselves of the hospitality of the hunters who had taken up residence down the length of the Dobson, only to have them shake their heads with a lack of comprehension when they heard we’d just taken all our gear out for a three day walk.

Thursday night saw two hunters return to Station Hut, where they decided to pack up and leave in their 4wd before the rain raised the river levels.  So at 11pm, with a bit of begging, we jumped in, and were carted all the way back to Twizel, in what later seemed like a dream.  Pitching the tent behind the event’s centre necessitated an early departure, which saw us back in Mt Cook Village at 10am.

I’ve now got unfinished business with Barron Saddle, but I have sworn a solemn oath to never set foot in the lower reaches of the Dobson again.