Mixing it up

Rupert on the way up( pitch 3)

Rupert at the summit


Aaron and Rupert have done a new mixed line on the West face of Double cone, Remarkables: to the Left of their line Ikon from last year.
They described it as "hard, scary, and awesome"

8 pitches, M6 340m (100m of which is M6)
Name not quite decided yet

I'll get him to edit this but by all accounts lots of M6 ground( pitches 2, 3, and 4), and run out in some places.( I'm glad I wasn't there)
Body chimneys, offwidths and that's only pitch 2!
New snow made the approach and descent slow going and they left the house at 7 and returned at 11pm. I think about 7 hrs only were on the route however. Either way Aaron was extremely tired when he finally made it in the door, and hardly left the couch for 24hrs

Coronet Peak opens

Sally on Coronet taken by Nigel Burtwell
Opening day we went up Coronet Peak with Nigel who had come down from Auckland and Tony
Tony was on his first day since '92 and Nigel was back on ski's after 12 years boarding. They did really well and after a couple of runs we were whipping along. The queues were quite long so Aaron and I took off at lunch time and left the boys to it