Words and photos Grant Christian After a long period of unsettled weather in the South Island the outlook for the following week looked good and I had a call from Malcolm Leary about heading south to do some climbing. A plan was made to fly to Christchurch on 13 January and drive to Mount Cook Village with the intention of climbing Mt Sealy or The Nun’s Veil, perhaps both if time permitted. Bags were packed and we both squeezed just inside the weight limits, me by wearing my climbing boots on the plane. We stayed at Unwin Lodge on Monday night. Next morning was a relaxed start. We got a boat across the Tasman Glacier lake then walked 12 kilometres to our bivvy site via Gorilla Stream, with a height gain of 900 metres. It had been a while since I had carried a heavy pack with all the climbing and camping gear and I found it a struggle under the load. I noticed on the way that my feet were feeling a bit tender in my stiff climbing boots. We had been advised to avoid the stream bed and climb up through the scrubby bush to the tussock for the first part of the route. This was probably the hardest part of the trip. Once we reached the top of the valley we found a nicely cleared bivvy site next to a big rock. It took about seven hours to get to this point. I took off my boots and, as I suspected, had left the insoles out of my boots, hence the sore soles on my feet. I put blister pads on the ball of each foot to help the next day. We set up our beds, rested and had dinner before heading to bed in the daylight. It wasn’t dark until after ten and it was a calm and starry night. It was a great feeling lying in my bed and staring straight up at the stars with the mountains surrounding us. At 3:45 a.m. Malcolm told me it was time to get up. We packed up our spare
