Day 13: The descent…

Had an awesome meal last night, veggies, beef, pasta…what could go wrong. We watched the sun go down behind Mt Aoraki. Played cards, lots of laughs, a really happy team. Lights out at 8:30. Woke up today at 6 AM coffee, porridge, and toast. Cleaned the hut up and started our descent.

Straight out of the gates we had crampons and snow and then rock and overall 800m of descent. Crazy, crazy descent. At one point Dale was laughing because Suneet fell (climbing humour), and then he promptly fell in exactly the same spot….and right under Suneet. Elke stopped them from a long bum slide down the snow.

We came to what was once the road that went all along the glacier. It was awesome to walk on for a change. Unfortunately, because of climate change and glacial recession, the morraine has collapsed, and as a result, we had a lot of walking on rock. There was also a large avalanche that we had to traverse which included big (like Volkswagen) chunky rocks. Finally, when we thought we were almost there, we had to do 200 m steep ascent (who put up in my down???) with rope and carabiners. This was because an underground river had washed out the trail completely. Take a look at the photos and see if you can figure out where the trail goes???

Got to the other side and then walked down on chunky rock and finally caught back up with the road and we were done!!!

Tim and Perry had gone ahead, which was great because it meant the cars had been ferried to the trailhead. Seeing them was doubly awesome because they greeted us all with ice cold Diet Coke. We jumped in the vehicles and made our way back to the lodge. SHOWERS!!!!!!! WOW

P.S. A 200m ascent is about 67 flights of stairs!!!