Just Walk Away: Caroline Gleich's summit bid on New Zealand's Mount Dixon and Mount Cook

A few hours before dawn in early November 2016, Caroline Gleich adjusted her gear inside the long bunkroom of the Plateau Hut in Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park in New Zealand. Nearby, Seth Orton and Cody Hughes, Gleich’s friends from Salt Lake, and Anna Keeling, a veteran New Zealand mountain guide, and Rob Lea, Gleich’s boyfriend, did the same. The sky was clear and the summit of Cook loomed in the distance.

Anticipating a two-day weather window, the team was preparing to posthole up Mount Dixon’s East Ridge to its summit. From there, they would ski down the Dixon’s southeast face, a steep, hanging snow ramp with 500-foot ice falls on either side.

New Zealand’s Southern Alps are legendary for their scale and spring weather. Strong winds gust over Mount Dixon and Mount Cook from the Tasman Sea, a few miles to the west, bringing in rainclouds and wrapping the mountains in fog, and this October was especially wet. “It was mind-blowing how much precipitation Cook was getting,” says Gleich. “And I knew the snowpack might be transitional and have way too many layers.”

Gleich and Lea had landed in Christchurch a week or so before, intent on summiting and skiing the east face of Mount Cook. “We chose to do Dixon first, because it would help us assess the conditions on Cook,” says Gleich, “but Dixon isn’t a warm-up at all. It’s a gnarly line in its own right.”

The team ascends Mount Dixon. [Photo] Anna Keeling

Within a few hours, the party was breaking trail up Dixon’s East Ridge in crampons; the snow reaching to Gleich’s waist. “It was cold, tedious and difficult,” she says, “and once we got to the exposed, steep knife-edge ridge, I could see the effects of the wind. It wasn’t safe at all.” The team knew they could turn back but decided to push for the summit instead. They topped out around 10:00 a.m. “It was amazing,” says Gleich. “Being up near the glaciers, the panorama; Dixon was one of the most stunning climbs I’ve ever done.”

The descent was the tricky half. The team skied off the summit, across a ridge and cut across the Southeast Face, following the massive snow ramp. Gleich stayed to the center of the slope, away from the 500-foot ice falls spilling down the mountain on either side of her. “The descent only took seven or ten minutes,” says Gleich, “but you’re right in the belly of the beast; it was one of the scariest lines I’ve ever skied in my life.”

Warmed up from Dixon, the team spent the day planning their Mount Cook ascent at the Plateau Hut. Though only standing at 12,218 feet, Cook rises directly up from sea level and dominates the landscape beneath it. Cook’s prominence not only matches its height, it also surpasses the elevation gain of Annapurna, Manaslu, and Dhalugheri, as well as other Himalayan giants.

The team downclimbs Mount Cook. [Photo] Anna Keeling

The team woke at 1:00 a.m. and set off an hour later. “Rob wasn’t feeling well, so he stayed back,” says Gleich, “but Seth, Cody, Anna and I went for it. We knew there was a storm coming the next day.” The team skied across the glacier, towards Cook’s East Face. After navigating through an icefall at the base of Cook, they started up the mountain’s 50-degree slope. “We were picking our way up this super steep face in the dark,” says Gleich. “It was a full-on, in-the-shit kind of climb.”

The team moved up the face, roping up for bergschrund crossings and climbing carefully. Gleich studied the snow as they ascended. “I didn’t like the look of the pack,” she says, “Dixon had been variable and Cook was the same.” Unable to see well in the dim light, the team trudged through sections of waist-deep snow before scrambling back onto sheets of firm alpine ice. “I couldn’t tell where the ice began or ended,” says Gleich. “But we had to keep moving or we’d freeze.” They continued upward, repeating the cycle every few minutes.

A third of the way up, the team huddled and discussed their options. Gleich, Hughes and Seth had flown 7,500 miles for the summit bid, but the conditions were increasingly dangerous for climbing and skiing. After a few minutes they called off the ascent. “We made the call to turn around together,” Gleich says. “It was disappointing, but you can’t question those types of decisions. It was heartbreaking for sure, but you’re not going to sit there and cry about it. We put in a great effort and went higher than any other team.”

A few hours later, Gleich watched the sunrise over Cook. “I was satisfied,” she says. “The mountain will always be there. I can always go back.”