Wēta Prowl

Ruataniwha Conservation Area ● 30 – 31 Jan 2025

Taking advantage of a few buffer days, and somewhat geographically limited by weather, we identified Wēta prowl as the perfect climb to tick off the bucket list. Ideally we would have stayed in the area for another day to do Butterfly Buttrerss as well, but alas flights had to be boarded on time.

Route information

We walked in via the North Temple, camped at an established bivvy spot that night (on the 1700m contour; shown as a star on the route diagrams below). The next day we climbed Wēta Prowl, and walked out via the South Temple in the afternoon. Everyone seems to recommend doing the loop that direction, and I would agree. Climbing up to Gunsight pass from the North was fine, but would feel fairly sketchy going down.

For gear we had a single rack (#0 to #3), a bunch of wires, 12 extendable draws (more than enough), and a 60m single rope.

On the climb we soloed the first “pitch” (40m?), as seems to be common, which took us to a nice ledge where it was easy to rope up. From there it was 4 pitches up the face, essentially following the line of least resistance until building an anchor as close to a full rope length as possible. The first three pitches were nice and easy and I placed 3 pieces of gear on each. Mostly this was because I felt comfortable, although I also found there wasn’t as much of an abundance of good gear as I had been led to believe – and a few large features that moved! The fourth pitch had some crux 14 moves near the end, so I placed a little more. This took us to a nice little belay alcove. The remaining four pitches were essentially following the ridge, and mostly limited by rope drag. There were a few options and I made some choices which made it harder than it needed to be. On a couple of pitchecs I placed more gear to avoid big swings for me and my seconder. In the end the pitches probably ended up about (40m solo, 55m, 55m, 50m, 60m, 25m, 30m, 50m, 30m).

In terms of timings, it took us

• 5 hours from the carpark to bivvy spot (1:45 to bushline, 4:45 overall to the pass)
• 7 hours from camp-to-camp
  • 40 minutes approach to the climb
  • 4 hours 45 minutes climbing, then some time appreciating the view
  • 1 hour to descend
• 5 hours 10 minutes to walk out via the South Temple

Photos

Approaching up the North Temple valley

Climbing up to Gunsight Pass from the North Temple

Descending from Gunsight Pass

Our "9/10" camping spot

Approaching the bottom of Wēta Prowl

On the prowl – pitch two

On the prowl – pitch five

On the prowl – pitch seven

Tags