Day 4 - the return trip

On the day we hiked out, we got up extremely early to hit the snowy parts before the sun was up and melting things. In fact, we got out of bed at 4:30am! So early! We packed, ate and headed out, completely our trek over the scary parts with more ease than the way in. Once past the narrow section, we slid down the snow on our bottoms, rather than hike down. It was fun, although we got a bit wet and cold on our bottoms. In fact, even at 5am, the snow was fairly wet and melty. During our hike across the glacier, my feet got soaked through in no time. Here's Garrett sliding down the snow:
At the bottom, we again roped up and put on our snowshoes to head across the glacier. You can see the glacier lake behind Ian and Joelle.Behind Garrett, you can see the cliff on the top of which resides the Neil Colgan hut.We quickly traversed the glacier, since everything was downhill now. In fact, since it was so warm out, we could almost slide along rather than walk. In the picture below, you can see the pink streaks in the glacier - some sort of algae was growing in the snow! It was cool looking, especially since you wouldn't expect a lot of life up on the snow field.During our hike down, we saw the biggest avalanche of the whole weekend! It was huge!

I showed you this picture the other day, but see that cornice (snow overhang) up there? That's the one that fell.Here it is! It's not as spectacular in photo-form as it was in real life, but it still looks pretty momentous.The sound was impressive too.We didn't take as many pictures on the way down as we did on the way up, since we were trying to hike all the way to the car in one day, rather than the two days on the way in. However, we took a few and here is one of Joelle walking across the snow bridge above the snow melt. Eventually we made it back to Fey hut (photos to come from Garrett's camera) and had lunch, before continuing on our descent. We again reached the part where we had to climb down with the rope.

I made a movie of Joelle climbing down the rope (although I took it sideways, sorry). If you watch it, listen at the end for Ian calling Joelle's name, followed by something flying down the cliff. That's Ian's GPS falling off of his bag and down the slope.


Here's Garrett, waiting with me for Ian and Joelle to descend the rope section.On the way down, the waterfalls and river were all running fast from the snow melt.In fact, several parts of the trail were washed away, along with several bridges.The particular bridge was an unstable log over which the water was rushing. By lengthening our poles, we were able to carefully make it over the river. Joelle didn't quite make it and fell in 2/3rds of the way across. I thought I might go over too, but managed to hang on.
Here's a movie of Garrett making his way across the stream:

We hiked the 10km's back out of the valley, which passed interminably and painfully. Finally we made it back to the car and it was great to take off our hiking boots finally!