Well actually it was hardly climbing…. but climbing of sorts, the Crampons and Ice Axe came out and they were of some use so I guess you could call it climbing. We hardly had an alpine start on the Saturday morning we heading into the hills, after camping out on the cold plains at Mesopotamia, it took us quite a while to warm up and get ready.

Due to our late start we had to stop pretty soon after starting for lunch! Emily allowed us longer than Chris would have to stop but even then it wasn’t a super lazy or long stop in the sun. over the next hour we climbed pretty steadily to a saddle just above a frozen lake where the snow became slippery enough to put crampons on! I was pretty excited about this given that I had geared up for Godzone and due to the weather in the race the climbing section had been cancelled… Supprisingly above the lake we spotted another group of people which we werent all too sure of what they were up to. There was  a lot of hunters about which woke us up driving past our tents in the morning and we had heard a few gunshots the whole morning, so we hoped we didn’t look too much like Thar!

At the summit in the wind!

Eventually we reached the summit of Mt Sinclair about 3pm in the afternoon. With very high winds, and limited daylight left to complete our 5km traverse of the ridge we pressed on. We were treated with a pretty nice sunset from the tops, and as the sun went down we descended into the valley arriving about two hours after dark at Stone Hut.

Consulting the map at the drop in point on the ridge

Sunset on the ridge!

By all accounts Em had a bit of a disaster with her dinner, but luckily there was some plain rice stored in a cupboard in the hut. It was a bit of a saviour really! After a not so cold night it was time to get moving again just as the sun hit the hut, and we were met with a very pleasant morning. Only once more on the way out did we get to use the Ice Axes again, and we deliberated altered our route just to keep me happy too! It was quite a long walk out in the fading daylight as we arrived at back at the car it was all but dark, so pretty good timing really!

Leaving Stone hut in the sunshine

Plugging some steps up the last bit of Snow on the way out

The high point on Day Two