Butterfly Effect, A new route on Mt Chaos
- Mason Gardener
- Mar 24
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 30
Back in March of 2025, during our ascent of 'Gods of Chaos', Jacob Kuchler and I stumbled upon what we believe to be some of the highest quality alpine schist in New Zealand. At the time we noted an extraordinary golden buttress down below us which was screaming out to be climbed.
A month later, I managed to wrangle Liam Pyott into joining me on the first exploratory look at this new buttress. What stood out was a significant chimney system at about a third height. Separating us from there was an immense 1-2m horizontal roof, plus 60m of ever steepening slabs. We made good progress on that first trip in, managing to establish the first 3 pitches to the base of the chimney. The roof was aided on a series of bat hook moves and small cams, brilliant fun was had. Unfortunately, rain buggered our plans to push the route any higher in 2025.
January of 2026, I called back upon Jacob Kuchler and new mentee Reon Morrison. Over the next two days we pushed the route higher still, managing to get it to within 15m of where the climbing relented. I was on pitch 10 of the route, climbing up from the party ledge. Starting out on tenuous gear placements I made it 20m up into the head wall before it finally blanked out. Putting in a bolt I then continued but knowing I only had two left caused for some doubt if I would be able to piece together the next 30m. It was not meant to be, we bailed back down knowing we needed to come back. We also knew some adjustments had to be done to the climbing line to improve the overall experience for people in the future.
March 2026, I returned, and this time the cavalry came. Jacob and Reon came back in, plus Henry Booker & Tim Pringle wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Five of us got to work. Reon and I raced ahead to adjust the climbing line and install the final pitch. Meanwhile the other three had the goal of trying to free the roof pitch. Without much surprise, Henry on his onsight attempt blew through the crux and shrugged and said, ‘yea not to bad’. I was pretty stoked that our route would now go free.
Reon and I blazed ahead throwing a handful more bolts in to improve the climbing experience. Then we reached pitch 7 the second crux. Fortunatley, I managed to keep it together on the intricate slabbing on glacial polished rock. Jacob Kuchler led bolt this pitch back in January and back then it looked spicy. No bat hooks were placed on this pitch, so big kudos to Jacob, something else! This pitch is absolutely exceptional and well worth the trip, enjoy.
Finally, we reached the upper headwall. I started up again, this time without a drill slowing me down. I had envisioned that I should be able to climb it, even if relatively runout because I don’t have a drill weighing me down. Well, the pitch didn’t disappoint, +5m runouts, climbing on holds which all sloped the wrong direction. Exhilarating stuff. I managed to top out the pitch on dusk and brought Reon up to drill the anchor. We fixed the line and the other fellas jugged up to meet us. Reon then went into the darkness up some wandering blocky terrain, to bring us to the top of the buttress.
From the top it’s a 50m ropeless wander to a small creek and our bivvy. The bivvy is nothing flash, roughly scraped out flat spots, but suitable for 5. There is a large bivvy cave just behind, but this will need some work to make it comfortable.
Overall, Butterfly Effect has been a significant combined effort from many people over 3 separate trips totalling 6 days. Although everyone will say that their route is the best, I can honestly say that you will not find better schist anywhere in NZ - you may even find yourself saying ‘I can’t believe its not granite’.
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