As part of the Bruggers gully on Arrowsmith (B3) adventure, I met up with Rachel and Mike in Langford in the wee hours of November 30 to head up to the Arrowsmith “massif” for some winter adventures. Mike and Rachel wisely had multiple plans in mind, given the uncertainty of winter in the south Island. After navigating the logging road, we parked at the foot of the old access point to the climber’s route and began heading up around 8:30am.
We gained the first cirque in about an hour, with some slippery sections on the trail–in between needing full crampons and trail runners, in classic Island style. A quick look up at Bruggers Gully confirmed a lack of snow in the lower elevations, as well as some potential for sketchiness traversing over the icy rock of the beehive. We decided to cut up to the second cirque and check out the main gully. We put on the crampons at the base of the main gully, which had about 60-80 cm of snow in it. The gully was in good shape, albeit with some wading required in parts due to quite light snow.
We emerged at the top of the gully to the surprise of some folks on the Judges route, and had a quick lunch of miso soup and veggie wraps in what was a surprisingly mild and pleasant day. The sun came out, which turned out to be a rare thing in the following month of December. We decided a rap off the Nose would be in order, and with harnesses and rap gear loaded, Mike descended to the rap station to dig it out.
We rapped on 6mm Rad line, which was a first for me, but with a second (i-beam) biner in the rap setup, it was if anything too sticky. The sketchiest part was the descent from the end of the second rappel to the slightly less steep ridge line, as there was plenty of ice and shallow snow to descend. However, we all made it with no problems, and descended the gully to the west of the ridge and back into the upper cirque.
The descent back down to the car felt like the most dangerous part of the trip, as we removed crampons but probably could have used microspikes given the compacted snow and ice and slippery roots on the main trail. All in all a fun day out in the mountains.
Distance: 6.01 km Ascent: 882 m Total Time: 7h 1m