Ball Pass Crossing, 24-25/1

Sunday the 24^th, we got up to a rainy morning at a campsite by the side of Lake Pukaki near Mt. Cook Village, but since we only had 3-4 hours of tramping planned that day, we decided to stay dry at the campsite for another hour before driving up to the parking lot near the Tasman Glacier where we started the tramp. Stalling for an hour did the trick – the rain stopped, and we saw nothing but dry weather for the rest of the crossing.

Day one was more or less flat, and took us to Ball Shelter (altitude 950m), a flat area with a longdrop and collected rainwater for drinking. The tour offered views of Tasman Glacier and the lake beneath it, as well as The South Alps all around us. We arrived at Ball Shelter between 3 and 4PM, pitched our tents and relaxed in the sun. Diner was prepared at 6PM, and the evening ended up being quite chilly as the wind had picked up during the afternoon.

Prior to departure, we had been split into different groups doing different tramps on day two of the tour. I made my way to the longest and most difficult tramp, crossing Ball Pass, and looked forward to an expected 12 hour tramp on day two including snow crossings with crampons and ice axes. Only four students (myself included) asked for and were allowed on the crossing, the rest was looking forward to a shorter day two with a few hours tramping without backpacks before taking down our camp and carrying everything back out the same way as on day one. Unfortunately they had a disappointing day for several reasons, which caused a few clashes when we all met up in the evening on day two – some related to the specific tramps, and some “just” related to us being 22 travelling together for three weeks.

The six of us doing Ball Pass Crossing (4 students, 1 teacher and 1 helper) woke up at 4.30AM on day two, had breakfast and got everything packed. During the night, Keas had been checking out our camp, sliding off our tents and knocking on our pots through the tent fabric. We left everything unnecessary behind, thanking the rest of the team for carrying this out later on the day. At 5.30AM we started climbing up the steep slopes towards Caroline Hut (altitude 1830m) and further on to Ball Pass (altitude 2130m). The morning was very cloudy, but when the sun rose above the mountains around 7AM we had made our way up over the clouds, and the most magnificent morning light coloured the snow-clad mountains in different shades of orange. The Tasman Valley was still covered in clouds, and we hoped that the others would not be put off by this as they were getting up around the same time as we were standing above the clouds enjoying the view.

All day long, the path was much harder to find than the other tracks we had been walking previously on the tour around NZ, and the terrain proved to be quite difficult. Not only did we meet a fair bit of snow, requiring ice axes to cross safely (the crampons might not have been essential, but they certainly made it a whole lot easier), the path went through all different sorts of typical alpine terrain including loose rocks, big boulders from rockslides, and sometimes we had to do a bit of scrambling to make our way forward. We did not manage to keep track of the path at all times, and this might of course have made our path a bit more difficult than if we had stayed on the proper path, but we made it to Ball Pass where we arrived at 11.30AM after climbing a total of 1180 meters. On the other side of the pass awaited our descend down to and past Hooker Glacier. Lunch was an ongoing project this day, we had a sandwich every 3 hours or so not to get too full and tired after a long break in the middle of the day. This turned out to be a great solution, none of us got too hungry or too full at any point, and we kept our breaks to a maximum of 15 minutes.

After a long morning climbing up to Ball Pass, it was a relief to get to the high point of the day, and though the descend was longer than when we did the Travers Saddle Crossing in Nelson Lakes, this one turned out to be easier on the knees due to loose sand and rocks that gave in to our steps. All day long we had to watch out for rock falls, caused by our own steps, but we managed to get through the entire day without any injuries and just one minor incident where I had to do a bit of tap dancing to avoid a sliding rock.

The descend to The Playing Fields and further down to the East Hooker Valley was a bit tricky with respect to finding the path, but when we finally got down to the glacier after approx. 10 hours of tramping, we still faced a couple of hours making our way out of the valley to the campsite where the others were waiting. This last bit was quite flat, and it was a huge relief to just be able to walk at a fast pace, not having to consider every single step to avoid slipping on the steep slopes of the mountains.

Around 6PM we met the others at the DOC campsite in Mt. Cook Village after 12½ fantastic hours offering spectacular sceneries as well as a physically demanding trip where you had to pay attention to every single step in order to stay upright. We came down to a well deserved beer, diner, and a weird discussion on whether it would be safe for us to drive to Queenstown that night or not. We ended up staying in Mt. Cook Village overnight; I went to bed at 9PM and the next morning we drove to Queenstown at 6.45AM to be ready for rafting at the Shotover River at 1PM.