The annual Don French Easter trip to the mountainous south again was a great success. After an overnight stay at the Rakaia Hilton a party of six assembled at Erewhon for PlanB: an assault on Mt Tyndall (2565m) in the Garden of Eden. On Friday we raced by the Clyde river only to be beaten to McCoy hut by helicopter hunters!! A couple of poor weather days then passed with not much prospect. The call then came at 3am on Monday, we’re on! Away by 4.20am we wound our way up the Wee McGregor glacier, through Perth Col, and across the Garden of Eden ice neve. Due to a recent 20cm fall snow conditions were semi-soft/calf deep, although as we progressed up past the ice cliffs above the Garden there were some small patches of bulletproof ice. We went through into crevasses half a dozen times each although usually no more than thigh deep. 2 pitches up a rock buttress and along the ridge saw us summit at 2.20pm on a blue sky windless day. Mt Cook was clearly visible some 50km away to the south. We returned in the dark (8pm) nearly a 16 hour day all up. And walked out the next day. After the compulsory feed-up at Mt Somers we departed our separate ways. Although one of us (Cowboy) took advantage of his at the time jobless status and the prevailing settled weather to complete a solo crossing of Copland pass, summitting Lean and Madonna Peaks along the way. Don French (leader), Oli Helm, Dave Chittenden, Kevin Patterson (scribe), Steve Hart, Scott Campbell)