Rolleston

Mountain
Personal
Group: Me and Kieran
Conditions: Fine
Route: Coral track, Rome Ridge, Low Peak, Otira Slide
Time: 10 hrs 30mins

Started walking at 5am up the Coral track, above 1450m by daylight. Met another party who were just behind us at the bush line, five climbers from Christchurch, sort of climbed with them the whole way. First little gnarly bit at about 1600m, took us a bit by surprise, was kinda wishing I had my second tool out. First proper climby bit at 1800ish then along the flat part of the ridge to the main climb. Nicely consolidated snow, front pointing most of the way. Got to the Low Peak at 11.30am, spent about 15mins on the top and then made our way down the Otira Slide, snow was fairly deep and slushy, so pretty much just walked down. Out to the road by 3.30pm.

Quite a successful day considering the organisational hiccups leading up to it. Kieran forgot his transceiver and we didn't have a map. But we decided that the snow conditions were nicely consolidated and we had lots of information on the route and tracks to follow from people that had done the climb the day before. So considering this we decided that we'd give it a shot.

Thoughts for next time; keep eating! Amazing what an instant difference food makes. I probably should have learnt this by now. Drank heaps the day before though and that definitely helped.