Hi Guys,

A quick 3 minute video of me being guided up Aoraki - Mt Cook 3,778 m late November 2010. Except for one small clip of me on the top, all the clips and pics shot with a Nikon D7000. I believe the week after we climbed, the approach was effectively closed as the crevasses had opened up too much. (Normal route via Linda Glacier)

Feel free to ask any questions.

Beautiful! Very jealous now

Did you climb anything else? I'm always dreaming of climbing some things in Fiordland (the weather will be an issue though)

Howdy Rick B. No was just a flying visit. Flew to ChCH, first night in Tekapo, second night bivying at Bowie Ridge, summited, back to the bivy and then following monring back to Christchurch and flew out the next morning. I was fairly shattered by the time I got home.

Great stuff radson. Holy cow that's a helluva schedule. Just curious though. It looks like you took off from Mt Cook airfield. Did you enquire if you can fly in to Plateau Hut direct from Lake Tekapo? Would've been a time saver on such a tight schedule.

Oh, one more question, if you don't mind. Did you see (or use) a feature called "Jacobs Ladder" in the summit rocks area? I read about it in Harry Ayres biography (I think he may have discovered it, not sure). Anyway he apparently thought of it as a short cut. Just wondering if it's still there?

Thanks dadndave. Originally we had planned to hump it into Plateau but by the time I got to ChCH, there appeared to be a storm brewing on the Tuesday , so we decided to fly in to save some time.

Sorry, I dont recall any mention of a 'Jacobs Ladder' in the summit rocks. Most of the talk while we were descending the summit rocks was centered around the terrible death of one of the guides Anton a couple years back and a consequent talk about the fragility of some of the fixed anchors through the summit rock area. Apparently several years a go, a Japanese party lost 2 persons when the wire cable sling attached to one of the rocks managed to part from the rock (or the rock broke off - not sure)

Really nice film, radson, thanks! What did you use lens-wise, and how do you find it worked with the D7000's resolution? I'm seriously considering picking it up, but I'm nervous about my lenses being up to the task.

Thanks jfrishman. I only took the nikkor 16-85 mm. In sunlight, I also used a circ-polarizing filter. The pics were touched up in Lightroom 3.0 and the vids auto-corrected in iMovie 11.

Thanks for the reply Radson.

I can't find any reference to this feature other than in Harry Ayres bio. (There's a photo opp page 49 if you can find a copy). He describes it as a shortcut from the upper Linda Glacier to the icecap. I have a suspicion it's on the big right hand buttress connecting the lower end of the Linda iceshelf to the Z Ridge. The photo is cropped too much to get a fix on where exactly it is. Looks near vertical at bottom with angle easing towards the top. Steep and airy but blocky.

Maybe it hasn't been climbed in 60 years!

dadndave, once the forum on mountainz.co.nz is working again, you might get an answer there.