I did not want to get out of bed until I heard Paul say "Holy shit it snowed!" I jumped right up! I grabbed my glasses expecting to see a just a dusting. To my surprise there was 5-6 inches on the ground and it was still coming down with a 50 mile an hour wind. I was very nervous, I don't have very much experience with hiking in a storm. I did not know if we should stay in the hut or try and get off the mountain. We had no idea if it was just the top of the mountain or if the whole lake was getting snow as we could not see much ahead of us. Paul walked down the trail and said we could still see the orange triangles on trees that mark the trail. We decided to leave before we would be snowed in for a few days. The hike down was to take 5hr. We figured we could do it faster and it would be down hill. Once our rain gear was on and we had dry clothes to change into once we reach the bottom shelter. The shelter is a waiting area to be picked up by the water taxi or bus.
I was very nervous due to my lack of experience, but felt very safe with my Alaskan husband! The trail started up hill for the first hour. I felt slow, but was very motivated to get the hell off the mountain. There were 3 very sketchy parts that I held my breath walking over. Two were on the rock side to the mountain. Slick rock with narrow trail on sheer cliff. The snow was very built up that if you stepped a few inches to the left you would have no trail and fall off the cliff. We all know how I feel about cliffs, so this was very hard for me to walk over. I just focused on Paul and went for it carefully but not to slow. The other part was a wooden staircase on the rock cliff secured by who knows what, probably Elmers glue, paper clips, and duct tape. There was a sign that said 1 person max. This was crazy, one person max, but would it hold one person with snow? Ugh.. we made it past these awful areas and back into the forest. I would rather deal with dropping branches than cliffs with snow drifts above Paul's knees and mid thigh for me. I need to note that we had gear to deal with this weather, but not shoes. We had our running shoes on! Our feet were very soggy.
We reached the bottom shelter in 2.5 hours. I was very shocked by our time. I felt slow, but the fear made us haul ass! It was snowing at the base but was not sticking, thank goodness. Once in the shelter we stripped down and put on our dry clothes. I had a pair of dry shoes (worth the extra weight!),we took out a sleeping bag and cuddled in the corner to get warm while drinking hot tea. We waited two hours before our water taxi came. We felt so great to make it off the mountain.
Captain Ron picked us up and delivered us to our van. Now would she start..? Yes! She started right up. We got the hell out the lake. Being very exhausted we drove two hours to Napier to Snapper motor camp.
We took a very hot shower, baked a meatlovers pizza!!! Yummy! We met a lovely couple from Sheffield England, and a couple from Capetown South Africa. Spent the rest of the evening drinking beers, and chatting with our new friends in the motorpark kitchen.
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