“On a Mish” #17 The Big Thumbs Up (Part Two). Mt Xenicus(1912m). Mt Aspiring National Park. 13.1.2011. The Iconic view of Lake Harris on the Routeburn Track is dominated by a huge mountain which to me looks like a huge thumb sticking up, like the peak is trying to hitchhike. Steep sides with a rounded top, Mt Xenicus has a shape that looks both challenging but also not the most difficult hill to head up. With all of this constantly on my mind while working on the Routeburn Track it was really only a matter of time before I took on the peak that looks like a big thumbs up…
Crossing the icy water of the lake’s outlet was a great way to wake us up and clear our heads before the climb really started. The scramble up Mt Xenicus began with us following rocky gullies, until small snow patches took us to a point where we climbed out onto the mountain’s broad shoulder. Route finding was reasonably easy on the shoulder / west ridge, with the drop either side increasing dramatically the higher we got.
Almost immediately we got amazing views of Lake Harris and the beauty that surrounds it. The line of the Routeburn Track had little dots (people) that got smaller and smaller as we scrambled higher. At one point Fiordland and the Darran Mountains came into view, and the burst of motivation was enough to help us climb a peak ten times the size of this one!
Alpine scrambling led to a narrow rock chimney, and to fit in the chimney we had to lean back so our packs wouldn’t get caught on the tight gap in the rock. With a drop of around 400m to the rock rubble in the south face basin below, leaning back really played tricks with the mind. Moves like this are always going against your own instincts which tell you to lean towards the safety of the mountain. And they get you to think about what challenges await higher up the mountain.
We were close to the top but couldn’t celebrate yet as we still had to surmount the last section of our route. This was a mixture of the west ridge route and the south face. The rock was awesome to scramble over and offered really good grip where needed. Josh let me take the lead for the last section of the climb, and as I write this many years later, I still clearly remember the view that greeted us as we topped out on Mt Xenicus(1916m).
There are certain moments engraved into our minds that make something not just a hobby you do sometimes, but something you have to keep doing for the rest of your life! One look at the panorama from the summit of Mt Xenicus(1916m) is enough to turn anyone into a wilderness addict, and the view was enough to keep any existing alpine addict very satisfied…
