Sunshine Gully

Ali and I could only manage a short day today. We waited behind a pair on Green Eyes but then moved over to Sunshine Gully, and can thoroughly recommend it.

Sunshine Gully follows the ice up and left in the above photo. It's given grade III but the party we passed and both of us felt it more a IV today.

The winds were strong with plenty of spindrift causing problems on some of the routes to our left but it was ok on S.G.

We caught up with another party roping up at the botom of S.G. and they kindly allowed us to climb alongside them and, as we were moving well, we were soon ahead and out of their way.

The route has a nice bulge on pitch one that we all felt deserved IV, and above it is a magnificent "thread" where you could go caveing behind a great thick column of ice, creating a natural runner (I didn't, not a caver). I got a good belay on the ridge on the right of the gully using nuts and threads. Ali led through to summit out on pitch 2.

Beware - you probably won't be able to hear the leader as they top out, and don't expect any obvious belays on the gently sloping summit.