It’s quiet now, as the last of the days light fades across the crater plateau. I carefully step through the notch and gaze at the slopes stretching far below now empty of the maddening crowds. I glance back briefly and observe Graham half a kilometre behind doing the final adjustments to his touring ski’s. He will be past me soon. I proceed down the slopes, my crampons biting into the hardening snow as the last warmth of the day slips away. Far in the distance a black puff of smoke rises, followed a few seconds later by the faint roar of an engine as the first of the snowploughs begins its nightly patrol. A few hours earlier we had been penduluming madly 70m up the Corner Route of Cathedral Rocks in the Crater, one of the hardest recognised routes of waterfall ice on Ruapehu (WI4). Connecting the various discontinuous ice lines together. Crying out intermittently calls of “Slack on Blue”, “Tight”, “Take in Hard” as we traversed blank rock faces and sought purchase on thin smears of brittle ice stuck to the rock beneath. We alternated leads as a 2 man team – pitch/belay/pitch/belay – emerging 3 hours and 4 pitches later on the snow slopes above the face. The focus, the movement, filled the mind – there was no room for anything else – no mortgage, no work worries, nothing but the next move. And then the alpine hut afterwards, and a bottle of red with friends, as we talk about our day and plans for the future. What a way to cap off a day in the mountains – Awesome. Climbers: Graham Johnson and Kevin Patterson.
