Mount Tutoko. King of Fiordland
“A towering mountain lost in the mist, of massive snow domes and cataracts of ice, and of smooth black rock walls rising from deep valleys of lush sodden forest.”
So reads the beginning of Peter Robinson’s essay on the first ascent of the southeast ridge of Tutoko, Monarch of the Darrans, the highest peak in Fiordland at 2723m. It’s named after the last local rangatira (chief), who lived at Martin’s Bay where the Hollyford River meets the Tasman Sea.
The first attempt to climb Mt Tutoko was in 1895. A party led by Malcolm Ross thought they’d succeeded, only to later discover they’d climbed neighbouring peak Mt Madeline (2536m), and only her lower west peak.
It was another quarter century before another serious attempt, this time led by the incorrigible Samuel Turner. With a road and Homer Tunnel more than three decades into the future, Turner’s party took a boat from Bluff to Milford Sound, bush-bashed inland for a day, felled three massive trees to bridge the Cleddau River, and then spent several days ferrying loads up Tutoko River Valley. When they finally made it to the base of the Age Glacier on Tutoko’s southern face, they cut hundreds to steps into the ice – no crampons, only hobnail boots – before retreating in a deluge.
Tutoko eluded Turner again when he returned the following year, but he managed to summit Mt Madeline, and make the first attempt to traverse into the Central Darrans after exploring the jagged line of peaks to Madeline’s south.
“I looked over a chasm, and it revealed the most amazing surprise I have ever had in all my climbing career … a lake about two miles long and three-quarters of a mile wide, out of which a waterfall was flowing. It was the most thrilling sight and prettiest scenery that I have ever seen,” he wrote in his memoir The Conquest of the New Zealand Alps. Today these carry his name – Lake Turner and Turner Falls – though he only admired them from a distance, his efforts to descend to the lake halted by “an overhanging precipice”.
During his third Tutoko expedition, he stumbled on what is now known as Turner’s Bivouac, a random heap of enormous slabs of stone that have since provided a sheltered rock cave for countless climbers. The party spent the following days exploring a pass between Madeline and Tutoko (named Turners Pass, somewhat inevitably), setting up a tent site on the Donne Glacier to attempt the Monarch from its northern slopes. But they eventually turned back 60m from the summit. Continuing would have condemned them to topping out in the cold and the dark, and maybe not coming back.
The attempt still took a turn for the dramatic. They retreated to their tent spot, but a heavy snowstorm ruled out returning to Turner’s Biv the next morning. Instead they headed northeast, down glaciated slopes and thick bush to the confluence of the rivers Hollyford and Pyke, which took two days and all of their remaining food (including an overnight-stewed kea).
Famished the following day and facing “one of the hardest 20 miles” to Martin’s Bay, they happened to stumble into the McKenzie brothers mustering cattle in a paddock. The bedraggled climbers were the first people the brothers had seen in almost two years, other than those dropping off supplies by boat to their home in Martin’s Bay. Soon they were in a hut, devouring food. “There is no telling what would have happened if we had not met the McKenzies,” wrote Turner.
It wasn’t until 1924 that Tutoko’s summit was finally breached. Turner and veteran guide Peter Graham climbed the northwest ridge from the Hollyford valley, maybe using a similar route that Turner had used to descend three years earlier. They summited in a whiteout, and were so uncertain they’d reached the top that they returned the next day, when it was less cloudy, to reassure themselves there was no higher point.
The first ascent from the Tukoto River Valley didn’t happen until 1951, via the southwest ridge. Graham was later asked why he and Turner hadn’t tried this particular way up. “Mr Turner wasn’t a very good climber, you know,” Graham replied.
Today the most popular way up Tutoko is the southeast ridge, which features three spectacular rock buttresses guarding the summit ridge. It was first climbed in 1956, when the Age Glacier was so corpulent that it provided a smooth and stable tongue of snow and ice to the base of the first buttress.
The increasingly warming climate has since seen the glacier not only retreat, but disintegrate in places. Where the tongue now meets the rock, it’s neither smooth nor stable, but a cluster of disfigured blocks of ice that might shift or collapse at any moment. The prospect of being caught under them is unappealing, so we headed up a friendly snow slope to gain the Tutoko-Madeline ridge.
This is quite the detour, probably more than doubling the time to the col at the base of the first rock buttress. But it’s not without rewards. The ridge is full of delightful rock surprises to stem between, scramble up, and even jump across.
Our team of three – myself, Nick and Rachel – traversed our way along the ridge to a bivvy spot under a giant headstone of a rock slab. It was a still evening when we arrived, with sunset colours that wrapped an ever-blending mix of blues, pinks and indigos around the curvature of the horizon.
The next morning, we gingerly made our way to the edge of a precipice, where we rappelled 30m to the col. Here we stashed our overnight gear before plugging steps in the snow to the first buttress, grade 13: a series of mini-corners, plenty of holds, and bountiful exposure.
Higher up we emerged into the morning sun, switched to ice tools and crampons, and traversed snow to the second buttress: a rock face at a friendlier angle. Another snow traverse then took us to the final buttress, grade 14: a steeper section, but featured and with good rock.
A snow arete then led us to the top of a small knob with a crevasse on its western flank, which we had to descend. It was wide, deep, and ugly enough for us to take the rope out and rappel over, rather than down-climb. A series of snow slopes then led to the summit ridge, described by the first ascent party as a “ladder to heaven”.
It was a windless, bluebird day as we arrived on the summit. Serrated slopes of ice and snow dropped away to teal-coloured glacier lakes to the north. To the west, the pointy tip of Mt Pembroke stood out against the endless blue backdrop of the Tasman Sea. We sipped summit single malt, but were mindful of the sun continuing to heat the “ladder to heaven”. We soon started backtracking, crossing crevasses on snow bridges before they melted.
The other uncertainty was the ugly crevasse we’d rappelled past earlier. Thankfully it still had plenty of ice in it for us to climb up. We then made good time down the snow slope to the first of several rappels down the rock buttresses. Once back at the col, we retrieved our overnight gear and took a moment to relax, refuel, and ponder our next move.
Should we go back the way we came, along the Tutoko-Madeline ridge, or try the unknown down the Age Glacier? The latter would be much faster, so long as we could negotiate whatever gnarly blocks of ice lay ahead.
Two factors were persuasive. Firstly, the 30m rock face up to where we’d spent the night looked tricky to protect with the limited climbing gear we had. And secondly, we were tired. This made us more open than usual to hoping the unknown would work out well. This was also a risky way to think, as we had no gauge on the likelihood of this.
The sun was just starting to hit the snow slopes below the col as we started down the glacier. It was easy-going to a rock buttress, which we down-climbed to what we’d been expecting: a section of broken glacier.
We looked for an easy way around it or above it, but in the end we saw a decent-looking path right through it. One by one, we weaved our way over and around slowly-disintegrating snow and ice, holding our breaths in places as if that would make the blocks less likely to wobble, sink, or break off entirely.
After we had all made it through without a hiccup, we relaxed through easier terrain to Turner’s Bivouac. We spent the rest of the evening much as the first ascent party spent their days following their success in 1956: “Enjoying the scenic and sunbathing advantages of Turner[’s Biv] with the six thousand foot ice and rock face of Tutoko as a backdrop and the ice avalanches for entertainment. There is probably no more spectacular sight in New Zealand.”
by Derek Cheng
Photos by Derek Cheng and Nick Flyvbjerg
