03/11/2022
This was my first ‘solo’ summit with an alpine start. The route was quite easy, being a grade 1, but at one point I almost turned back because I thought I got lost 😅 Yes…It is a little funny as to how I could get lost just sidling on the right side of Hinapouri Tarn towards Sunset Saddle, but it was more to do with my headtorch dying at the time and so everything felt steeper than it actually was. I then ended up going way too high when trying to get around an obstacle, and I actually reached a saddle that went over to the other side - I think this is where a lot of backcountry skiers go. But my dying headtorch made it look like I was about to plunge into darkness, which was semi spooky. Once I finally realised I needed to change the batteries, everything started to feel better.
As I mentioned in my highlights about this trip, one of the lessons I learned was to feel comfortable going down as opposed to trying to keep my altitude and then unnecessarily sidling on steeper terrain (which may also just inevitably take longer as well).
I bumped into a guy called Howard who you can see in the second image. He took a more direct and less snowy route up the rocks on the left side of sunset saddle if looking from Angelus Hut. But it was sort of reassuring at the very start that I generally knew I had to head towards his headtorch. He actually forgot about daylight saving and started an hour earlier so he ended up sitting on a rock halfway up to try and wait for a bit more light!
It was awesome soaking in the sunset together and be able to see Angelus Hut from the top. However, I realised that I had left my camera on the whole night and the battery had effectively died so a few of these shots are from my iPhone (can you tell 😉)!
