Malte Brun in New Zealand, first ski descent of South Face

A few days after the outrageous first ski descent of the fearsome Caroline Face, i.e. the difficult and dangerous SE Face Aoraki / Mt Cook (3724 m) in New Zealand, Italian alpinist Enrico Mosetti and his British counterparts Ben Briggs and Tom Grant have come up trumps once again.

Following their first raid Mosetti told planetmountain.com that they were heading straight back up into the mountains to make the most of good conditions, and now it’s clear that the trio have scored another major first descent in the National Park, namely down the South Face of Malte Brun, the 8th highest mountain in the country.

After Friday’s achievement Mosetti, Briggs and Grant headed across to the other side of the Tasman Glacier and ascended the complex 3198 peak. The descent was carried out down the Malte route, established in 1981 by Nigel Perry and Richard Mortenson also referred to as the Zig Zag route as it winds its way along the righthand side of the South Face. One abseil was needed down the 600m line, graded 5.4 E4, which, in Mosetti’s words, equates to 'probably the most technical ski descent in New Zealand.”

Questing up a classic grade 4- climb in search of some fun skiing. Not entirely sure whether this line would go clean, we skied 600m with one 20m rap over this section. 96.6666666% skiing @benbriggs1 calculates, we’ll take that. Photo @sonilmose #maltebrunnotmatlebrun #firstdescent #scarpa_uk @blackcrows_skis @plum_officiel @conceptchamonix @we_are_sungod @jottnar

A post shared by Tom Grant (@tom_grant_) on Nov 2, 2017 at 7:46pm PDT