It's not over until it's over

And it's not over yet. 2 more weekends of fun in the snow (and in the sun). Last weekend we went up to Brewster Glacier. The next image is from Google Earth with our approx. route sketched in:
Couldn't get organized in time to start the hike up in the daylight, so right off the trailhead we waded through the icy river waters just before it went completely dark.
4 hours and a bottle of port later we arrive at the hut at 1AM. All the serious mountaineers were in their sleeping bags by then since they had to get up at 3AM (!) to climb Mtn Brewster. We rolled out of our bags at around 9AM and were greeted by this:

After several espressos and some breakfast we took off towards the glacier (the hut is visible in the middle of the next image).
Warm slushy snow and steep mountain slopes made for difficult travel and after sliding around (mostly downhill towards the cliff) on the snowfields I opted for a turn-around while Leigh and Ian braved the elements and continued on to the glacier.

Mtn Brewster is the peak on the right in the next picture and one of the ice falls is visible on the left. They were rewarded with some sweet turns in virgin snow - see movie at the end of this post.

And they returned several hours later pretty spent and ready for more espresso. And freeze-dried dinner. And lots of chocolate.

Next morning we started on the trek back down.

The trail is quite interesting - it goes straight up the hill with no switchbacks or any conveniences like that and has a grade of about 50% - meaning for every 2 meters we did horizontally we climbed one meter in the vertical. Good exercise on the uphill, quite a challenge on the downhill.
The next picture is the first part of the trail following a rather pointy ridge top down to the treeline.
And after 3 hours of hard work, several philosophical discussions and a Kea concert:

.. we ended up back at the river crossing:
And finished the trip off with a nice cold one:
None of us can really walk today and I ended up having to bike to work - walking was NOT an option :)

And here is the movie from Leigh: