Mt Earnslaw

Doug and I teamed up with our mate (and all round hard core Kiwi) Jamie Anderson to climb Mt Earnslaw via Kea Basin rock bivvy.

Day 1: We drove our rental car up the Rees Valley (with multiple river crossings!) to the base of the Kea Basin track. We then hiked up and spent the night in the rock bivvy overlooking the Reese Valley

Day 2: A classic alpine start (4am) to get to the wright col and base of the Mt Earnslaw climb by 9am. The weather had turned with a complete white-out by the time we reached Esquilant bivvy, so we had a (very cold) nap in the bunk beds to wait it out. It calmed a bit by 11ish, so we decided to give the summit a go. We put on our crampons and harnesses and took out our ice axes and started up the crumbly scree slope. It was drizzly and wet, so navigating the scree in crampons was a bit of a task for me. We got through the crux which was a sort of exposed climb around called “the key hole”. By this stage i was quite scared and nervous of the rain, so we decided to turn around - very grateful to be with a crew that didn’t mind not making the summit! We ran all the way back down to the car and started our river-crossing drive out at 8pm.