French Haig Robertson Circuit

I've wanted to do this circuit for a while, but lack of glacier knowledge prevented me from going until now.

Greg was organizing this trip and assured me that all crevasses were either filled in or could be avoided. Aki and I had been planning on taking some glacier and mountaineering courses, so this trip would also give us a taste of that sort of environment.

First view of Mount Robertson, from French Creek

Our path went a bit away from the normal route up French Creek, so we had to spend a bit of time conferring and making our way back down to the creek.
 

Reassessing our route

Once on French Glacier, it was a long trudge up to the Haig Glacier. Coverage was pretty much complete aside from one chunk of ice sticking out randomly. This part of the route felt very sluggish as we were also fighting winds coming from seemingly every direction.

Heading up French Glacier to Haig Glacier

Once on top of Haig Glacier, the views were fantastic, both the way we came and the sheer expanse of the glacier itself.

Looking down French glacier (Mount Burstall to the right)

Here we stopped for lunch, although there wasn't much shelter. Even though the temperature wasn't that low, the winds were relentless and we almost lost a few gloves and skin savers as a result.

I'm sure everyone takes a photo of this perspective

Crossing the Haig Glacier was fairly short and uneventful, although there were some threatening slopes to our right as we made our way to the base of the col between Mount Robertson and Mount Sir Douglas (the most difficult part of the trip).

Crossing the Haig Glacier, there was a permanent window in the clouds toward Mount Maude

The snow here was the best of the entire trip. Too bad we had to go up!

Heading towards the crux

The wind below the col was calm, due to being protected by the peaks nearby. It took us a long time as a group to gain the col, and there were some logistical issues due to the deep snow and large number of people. Eventually, we all made it to the top.

Mount Jellicoe on the left, Mount Maude on the right

It was great to get a perspective of the Robertson Glacier valley from up top. I had seen it from below many times while heading to Burstall Pass, and always wondered what it was like up here.
 

Aki getting ready to ski down

Snow conditions on the Robertson Glacier were similar to the French Glacier - bulletproof windslab with hard sastrugi everywhere making for difficult turns. Most people did a lot of traversing in order to lose elevation slowly. I managed to find some pockets of softer snow which I milked as much as I could.

Heading down to Burstall Creek

The ski out along the Burstall Pass road was a pain in the ass, as always. We got back to the car about 9 hours after leaving, which given our troubles was not bad.

The route was about 20 km. My GPS battery died as we were descending the Robertson Glacier, so the data is not complete, but it has all the interesting bits.

http://www.endomondo.com/workouts/156179183/3101909