First ski descent of Jones Route on Aoraki / Mt Cook in New Zealand

The rarely climbed Jones Route is found in the centre of the massive East Face of Aoraki / Mt Cook. Its characteristics lie in series of spines; a 500 m spine leads up the edge of the entry snowfield to the rocky headwall, where an exposed ramp leads left over a triple set of spines. Here the route steepens and corkscrews to the right then back left before 2 more spines lead the exit gully the summit ridge.

This spring New Zealand was lashed by weeks of near continuous bad weather which hampered our ability to ski. When we get out, it was often in very strong winds that forced us to turn around without achieving the objective of the day. On October 23rd the rain metre at Mount Cook Village had recorded a 7 day total of 487.5 mm and 250 kph winds had been recorded at only 2000 meters. After failing on this route last year due to 120 kph wind gusts, it was awesome to be back to attempt this incredible line with my best friends, albeit with massive feeling of trepidation for the wind.

We left Plateau Hut at 1 am and headed into the shadow cast by the mountain, reaching and crossing the Bergschrund roped around 2 am. After transitioning to crampons and plates, the first 500 meters went quickly to the headwall. From there everything gets steeper and more exposed and we removed the plates. Dawn arrived as we entered the exit gully where black ice required us to pre-rig and abseil for the descent. The remainder of the gully had us wallowing in exhausting knee to thigh deep snow until we reached the summit ridge.

With the face coated in powder we transitioned on the ridge quickly to keep to our planned schedule and be down before it heated up, just taking a few moments to take in the mind-blowing views over Mt Tasman and La Persouse out over the jungle to the Tasman Sea. It felt so good to transition from the relative insecurity of crampons in powder to skis and the anxiety of the climb faded as a building excitement started to flow through my body.

A couple of relatively easy turns built confidence before things got steep, technical and exposed. The guys were excited and feeling confident too with the team making high precision turns. The spines offered us passage on soft snow, albeit skiing their steeper sides. The easy terrain was 50º and everything else steeper with the maritime snow in NZ sticking to angles that aren’t possible in the European Alps. The triple spine feature on the ramp was always going to be heart in your mouth stuff and as we excited that to the final 500 m spine we could breath and relax a little – from hyper stimulated to just over stimulated!

Regrouping on the glacier below the energy was incredible, but as the adrenaline wore off, a deep mental and physical fatigue set in and the short uphill skin back to Plateau Hut was quite the grind. It’s hard to imagine better snow conditions shared with these guys on a rare windless day, altogether the perfect day. Plateau Hut

- Ross Hewitt, New Zealand

Info: rosshewittguiding.com

Aoraki / Mt Cook 3724m
Jones Route 1000m 5.5 E4
!st ski descent Ross Hewitt, Will Rowntree, Sam Smoothy 1st November 2025
1 x 60m rappel over black ice in the exit gully

 

 

 

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