Bike testing and leg testing time - another mission at the Nelson Lakes with Sergio and my friend Carl! The bike got its first snow ride and I managed to get a few good meters in after several attempts and face plants. Gale force winds all day made it a long one , over 12 hours for what normally done in 9 making the final training mission a real tester. The winds turned the snow into rime ice and the gale had us skating around everywhere. With a big storm on Angelus Carl decided to be Base camp and Sergio and I headed up. Fortunately the same wind producing the white out had bared the snow away from most of the rock leaving a reasonable route up the icy west face. The way back was even more viscous and we ended up pinned to the ridge tops several times crawling on hands and knees to safer ground. Great day had by all - even the bike!!
Got the bike ! my unique machine for Broad peak was built by Dean Rainbow in Bright water. The machine has 3 key components , light weight , extremely compact and very importantly its extremely simple , ie nothing to go wrong Regards plans on the mountain ,Zendo is going to take a normal bike and I am going to take this radical lightweight and easy to carry machine. we will attempt to carry both as high as we can. My bike can be carried almost fully built up which saves trying to put it together etc which maybe very difficult in the cold and on steep slopes. getting a normal bike up will be a great deal more complicated . The difficulty remains in trying to ride this machine - especially with mountaineering boots , crampons etc in the snow. On Sunday 21st , mid winters day got the first chance to test just how easy it is to carry the bike in perfect conditions on Mt Arthur , a blizzard with gale force winds. My new pack , a Kathmandu Incite 60 liters provided the base to carry the machine and I hooked it on with no modifications what so ever. Once again Sergio accompanied me and we had a great time and a great test. I had the pack loaded with gear as though on the mountain and despite gale force winds and fresh snow covering blue ice on top of Winter peak and Mt Arthur found the going good and only had a few minor slips. It was 5 hours before the load became uncomfortable but nothing dramatic and arrived back at car park after more than 6 and a 1/2 hours with only 2 crampon fitting stops. The only failure was to actually take the bike off and try it - in conditions were it was difficult to stand up on the 2 summits I decided to leave this to another day!! On another angle a good friend of mine set up a Go fund me page for this mission a link to which can be found on my front page if anyone is interested in helping contribute to the costs of this adventure.
"Nothing can be less like a mountain at one time than the same mountain at another" so Leslie Stephen wrote over a century ago. Its rather fortunate for me with such limited time available to go out its very much the reality. There's only a few training peaks within in a day of where I live but as conditions vary so much it means I often seem to be on very different ones. This Sunday I had the added fortune of some company - Sergio from Chile who's brother is a mountaineer so he already had a good idea about it all and moreover he is a former Chilean National team athlete in the steeple chase and is used to hard physical work. Much of his athletic career was spent at training camps at altitude in the mountains of Chile!! And the mountain , Mt Angelus again , another 10 plus hour day but with rather different snow conditions than last time and by traversing the ridges from South to North rather different than the West face climb!!
(Leslie Stephen was father of Virginia Wolff and Vanessa Bell)
