KEY POINTS:
When Guy McKinnon climbs steep, frozen mountains, all that separates him from death is the sharpened metal blades of his ice-axes and crampons - and his nerve.
He climbs alone. If he slips, there is no one at the other end of a rope to save him. There is no rope.
"It gets a little bit exciting at times," the single 32-year-old from Christchurch admits with a mountaineering understatement reminiscent of Sir Edmund Hillary.
Last July he made the first winter ascent of a steep ice face on Mt Whitcombe, a remote, 2644m-tall mountain deep in the Southern Alps at the head of Canterbury's Rakaia River. Climbing in winter generally adds to the risks, with extreme cold and short days.
After the route's first summer ascent, in 1962, one of the climbers said that as they gained height, "One's gaze swam about in the dizzy void opening below."
Three-quarters of the way up the 1500m Ramsay Face, which is nearly vertical at its steepest, McKinnon had a crisis. The firm ice, into which he could bash his ice-axes and the front points of the crampons clipped on to his boots, gave way to snow, which can be even more precarious.
"I take half a step down and left," he says in the New Zealand Alpine Journal, "and, feeling very off balance, I sink a tool wide out. Ice at least. But my hands and feet skate across the ice, leaving me hanging from my left arm [leashed to an axe]. This is the kind of climbing I vowed never to do again - everything is up for grabs and control is an illusion."
"My hands are gripping the [axe] shafts like a baby grips a rattle. Shit, I'm pumped!"
While trying to find the best route, his left crampon "pops" out of the slope without warning, but he recovers. "I open and close my hands. Seeing my left crampon bite in, I move up and stand on my feet."
The worst is now over and he can see the route for 200m ahead to a small ridge which takes him to Whitcombe's Low Peak. The climb over, he shoots a picture of himself, climbs to the High Peak and descends westwards to the Wanganui River, from where he completes his three-day trip as it began, with a helicopter ride, this time to civilisation.
The route had become an obsession for McKinnon. It was his third attempt. But he loves the region at the head of the Rakaia and Rangitata river systems - part of the newly designated Adams Wilderness Area to the north of New Zealand's highest peaks, Aoraki-Mt Cook and its neighbours.
"A lot of other climbers just climb at Mt Cook and on the West Coast, but I have an affinity with the Whitcombe area," he tells the Weekend Herald. "I wanted to re-ignite interest in climbing there. To me, it's the spiritual heart of Canterbury mountaineering. It's part of trying to encourage people in there because there are new routes worth doing."
Novelty and the thrill of exposure, feeling you have controlled something dangerous, "cheated death": these are what motivate serious climbers like McKinnon.
"You don't really come alive until you risk something. What you stand to gain from doing a climb like that [the Ramsay Face] hopefully outweighs the risk. It's a completely transformative experience. It's like being reincarnated. All your troubles completely melt away. You get peace. You get serenity."
The feeling is fleeting, but it is what keeps drawing him back.
However, it seems to be drawing fewer people to Aoraki-Mt Cook National Park today - 50 years after Hillary took part in the first ascent of Aoraki's South Ridge and, in 1953, inspired a generation of mountain enthusiasts by being the first to stand on the summit of Mt Everest (8850m).
In New Zealand, commercially guided climbing is holding its own, with about 40 active climbing guides, but recreational amateur climbing in the national park, traditionally the country's mountaineering mecca, appears to be in long-term decline.
Department of Conservation ranger Ray Bellringer says overnight stays in the park's huts have declined to about 5000 "bed-nights" a year, from 7000 to 8000 in the early 1990s.
"It's been a slow decline over 20 years. There's a wider range of recreational opportunities that people have now. There was no mountain-biking 20 years ago."
Guiding organisations have noticed the decline in amateur climbing in the park too.
Bryan Carter, managing director of Alpine Guides Aoraki, says that on January 1 - the day on which guide Anton Wopereis tragically died in a fall on the mountain - only five groups were based in Plateau Hut, on the eastern side of Aoraki-Mt Cook, despite the sunny weather. All were guided parties.
"In prior years Plateau Hut would have been crawling with people, and 20 to 25 people making the ascent because the weather was beautiful, conditions were good."
Guiding is static in New Zealand, following a boom five years ago then a dip, but he reckons amateur climbing is declining internationally.
"The generation now coming through is very much into instant gratification. It's a generation with less physical training in their backgrounds. They get driven to school rather than biking.
"It's a general softening of the population. That makes something fairly hard-edged like climbing less popular than it has been in the past."
But if amateur climbing is declining - and its popularity has fluctuated in the past - how does that fit with the dramatic expansion of New Zealand's national mountaineering organisation, the NZ Alpine Club? Membership has doubled in 10 years to around 3000.
Some are purely rock-climbers, possibly 10 per cent, but many may join, be active mountaineers for a few years, then become largely armchair climbers, enjoying the club's glossy publications.
"A recent survey indicated a lot of members were interested more in family activities," says club president Phil Doole. "They're still interested in the alpine world but not taking part in it as much as they might have in the past."
He suggests the downturn may be only at Aoraki-Mt Cook National Park, partly due to the shrinking of glaciers like the Tasman and the Hooker, which flank the Mt Cook Range, making foot access more difficult up and down the bouldery walls beside glaciers. The alternative is to charter a ski-plane or maybe a helicopter, at a cost of hundreds of dollars.
On the West Coast, flights to climbing areas like Pioneer Hut at the head of the Fox Glacier are generally shorter and cheaper than those from the Hermitage, east of the Divide.
"It's been quite a lot busier over on the West Coast side," says Doole, "and there are other pockets of interest, like the Darrans."
The Darran Mountains are in Fiordland. It is possibly New Zealand's most serious rock-climbing area, offering the country's best multi-pitch - multiple lengths of a 50-60m rope - rock routes.
Last summer Derek Thatcher and Mayan Smith-Gobat completed a new route established by two colleagues that rates highly among climbers - and with Government sport funders.
"Clocking in at 10 pitches," the Alpine Journal comments, "with three of those pitches graded 27 [31 is the hardest] and two at 26, this is the most sustained long rock route in the country."
In 2006/07, Sport & Recreation New Zealand (SPARC) shared an $80,000 grant among five "SPARC Hillary expeditions", including the Darrans foursome's "Rock Solid Progression Project" to make first ascents of major rock walls. The others were expeditions to Greenland, Patagonia, the Karakoram mountains of northern Pakistan and to Changabang (6864m) in the Indian Himalayas.
The Karakoram expedition by two of New Zealand's leading female mountaineers, Lydia Bradey and Pat Deavoll - joined by two Italians - made the first ascent of a 5820m peak. They named it Wahine.
SPARC began the programme to acknowledge Ed Hillary's inspiration of New Zealand outdoor education and adventure, and to inspire new adventures and new role models.
"It's about extreme adventure, world-class challenges, mastering the outdoor environment and encouraging New Zealanders to embark on a lifetime of physical activity," the agency says.
Overseas climbing now rarely makes it beyond New Zealand's alpine publications. The exception is tragedy, like the 1996 death on Mt Everest of New Zealander Rob Hall, who was at the forefront of commercial guiding on the mountain and founded Adventure Consultants, now run by Guy Cotter, a climber who has accumulated an impressive record of guiding on the world's highest summits. But climbing and guiding overseas is still a powerful lure for top New Zealand climbers.
Guiding in the Himalayas is a "hard game", says Dave Crow, executive officer of the NZ Mountain Guides Association. "The potential to climb in the Himalayas as a guide, which makes things a lot cheaper, is likely to be the drawcard for new guides coming into the system. Up to a third of New Zealand climbing guides are working in the Himalayas on a regular basis as well as going over to Europe."
While the Alpine Club has grown "spectacularly", tramping club memberships are generally static and ageing, according to Federated Mountain Clubs president Brian Stephenson.
People are still tramping - a SPARC survey found 13 per cent of adults went tramping in 2001 - but not necessarily with a club.
That's adults. Are our young people losing interest in outdoor pursuits as we come to see ourselves as a mainly-urban nation, not the Good Keen Men of the rural pioneer self-image?
Hillary's achievements inspired Stephenson and generations of other trampers and climbers. He vividly recalls attending, when he was 7, the 1953 civic reception in Auckland for Hillary and his Everest expedition colleague George Lowe.
But Stephenson suspects schools' shying away from the risks of outdoor education is quelling the spirit of adventure they once fostered.
Secondary Principals' Association president Peter Gall says some schools still own mountain huts and others send pupils to places like the Sir Edmund Hillary Outdoor Pursuits Centre adjacent to Tongariro National Park. But costs and red tape around health and safety have reduced the opportunities that schools can offer.
Stephenson takes the cultural pulse from newspaper headlines: "The thinking seems to be shifting to, 'It's everybody else's fault', rather than the self-sufficiency and careful planning and personal responsibility that characterise all tramping and mountaineering."
Martin Johnson is a keen climber
