(unless otherwise credited)
It all began with Caroline. Once one of the last great mountaineering challenges in New Zealand’s Kā Tiritiri-o-te-Moana/Southern Alps, the Caroline Face of Aoraki/Mt Cook had haunted me for a decade. Despite eighteen years travelling the world’s mountains, Aoraki the cloud piercer, Aoraki the god, Aoraki the architecturally sculpted massif had become the centre of my universe. Years had been spent upskilling and new partnerships forged, all towards a goal I could barely admit out loud.
Then on October 21, 2021, William Rowntree, Joe Collinson and I climbed Aoraki’s East Ridge and completed the second ever ski descent of the Caroline. In twelve pulsing hours, it was all over, yet this self-proclaimed highwater mark set a precedential tremor through my life. This is an attempt to examine those ongoing effects.
The day had gone almost perfectly, yet our vulnerability to death from above gnawed at me, like a rat with a bone. The upper seracs had thrown a brutal warning shot; a 300m wide broom that swept a section of the face clean while we watched, grim faced, from the relative safety of the East Ridge. An honest and protracted discussion from the drop point resulted in a unanimous decision to rappel in. We had a detailed plan with distinct roles, but once in the firing line, all we could control was our movement and pace.
Two long and profound hours later, my reaction at the bottom startled me. As the boys hooted and hollered, a regular response to such an occasion, quiet tears slid down my cheeks. Relief it was over ran through me, a knee-trembling relief to simply be alive. This sharp contrast to the largely joyous climbing and skiing we had experienced increased my confusion. This mythic line I had worked towards for years had been skied, and skied well, so why was I crying?
and fled to the
