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General Climbing Discussion

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mountaineering courses in NZ 15-Aug-2006 At 3:08:44 PM jonorock

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It is a long walk down the Tasman Glacier at the end of a 10 day trip (for most people anyway). Although it is probably good to do it once then you will never want to do it again. If you have had a week of bad weather and not much climbing you are going to want to be climbing rather than walking down the Tasman Glacier. My guess is that from Kelman Hut a guide would allow 1.5-2 days for a group to get down.

I have done the walk from Kelman Hut (upper Tasman glacier) to Mt Cook Village twice.
THe second time we were stuck in the hut for 8 days straight. Could not see more than 100m outside, had to hang on for your life just to get to the toilet and the hut was struck by lightning almost every night. Almost completely out of food on about the 9th morning the weather cleared slightly and we ran down the Tasman for a few hrs. As soon as we reached the moraine the weather completely closed in again, I fell in a hole, twisted my ankle, climbed back out of hole, slept on a pile of rocks, it rained, got hungry and dragged my sorry self to Mt Cook Village the next morning (actually it took all day).