Garden of Allah Ice Plateau

The Garden of Allah, and its continuation in the Lambert Snowfields extends for 8km. They overlap north and south of each other, and access between them is via Adams and Angel cols. Five rivers drain to the west from them and mountains on their fringes. Newton Pk at 2543m is highest in the area, followed by Mt Tyndall at 2517m and Mt Kensington at 2444m. Rock is generally greywacke grading into schist of variable quality.
Travel on the Garden of Allah snowfield is generally straight forward, though crevassed areas reduce easy travel to obvious lines. The neve at the head, connecting easily with the Lambert over two wide saddles, is more extensive than it first appears from lower down. The Lambert neve itself remains a major snowfield, bounded by the Main Divide on one side and Mt Lambert on the other, split in the head by a ridge of reasonable greywacke rock. Travel down from Satans Saddle to pt 1967m is normally fine, but expect crevasses. The other branch, south of pt 2220m, also offers good travel and an alternative that can be linked back under the pt 2220m ridge to the Satans Saddle branch. To continue down the small icefall between 1700m and 1800m, the least crevassed slopes are over on the true right hand side of the main Lambert Glacier. Direct approaches to Lambert Col from here are normally easy. Continuing on down, the O'Neil Glacier can usually be approached from the lower Lambert below here without too much trouble, but it is seasonally variable.

The ridge north of the Garden of Allah leading up to Mt Lambert has informally been referred to as Tenzing Ridge since the 1950s. Significant ice flanks the southern slopes, particularly under Mt Lambert itself. On the northern side of this ridge, there are some significant buttresses and, in places, promising rock at the head of Aciphylla Creek. Across the Lambert Glacier, slabs lead up to Mt Stoddart. The east face of Mt Stoddart is unclimbed as far as i know, but broken rock doesnt make it a particularly attractive looking proposition

For over 70 years the area has been the focus of transalpine climbing parties, and it was an early one of these that provided the name. 'This neve area on part of the Adams Range was named the Garden of Eden', wrote John Pascoe in the 1935 New Zealand Alpine Journal (page 143) acknowledging in the The Canterbury Mountaineer 1934/1935 that AP Thomson in their party inspired the name. Routes through the area have often been as important as the climbing objectives, and this guide provides information on those routes as well as the climbing. Many of the climbs from the plateaus are relatively easy, but more challenging routes such as the buttresses on Newton Peak from the Garden of Allah exist