gillespie pass

I'm now in Franz Josef, one day removed from the Gillespie Pass, and man, that is a great place to be.

The past few days were amazing and filled with some great stories (far too many to recount here), but they were also some of my most physically difficult days ever.

We began Saturday morning rather than Friday as planned because we woke up to a downpour on Friday and decided to delay our start by a day. So on Saturday rather than risk a river crossing after heavy rain and start a four-day trek with wet shoes, we took a jet boat to the start of the track. The first few hours were easy enough, but as we got further in the track kept getting steeper. After about seven hours and 20 kilometers, we finally reached Young Hut and discovered that there weren't enough beds left for us. So we spent the night on the "kitchen" floor; there were about 12 of us total strewn all over the place, and one guy even slept under the sink.

The next day was only 12 kilometers, but they were an incredibly difficult 12 kilometers. After reaching the bushline, we had to find our way across the flats to the base of the mountain we were supposed to cross. After a few wrong turns we stopped at the river to fill our water bottles for the last time and headed straight up the mountain. There was no gradual incline, no warm-up. We just went straight up, in the hot sun, for three hours.

When we finally reached the top, hot, grumpy, sore and exhausted, we stopped for lunch and enjoyed the view of Mt. Alba, then turned the other direction to head back down the other way (not before the boys had a snowball fight though). I still can't decide which is worse, going up or coming back down. After another three hours heading down and only falling a couple of times, we made it to a stream and another nice long break before the final two hours to Siberia Hut.

That night we all had bunks and slept amazingly well, which is good because the next day was another difficult one.

After waiting for the clouds to clear we headed back through the flats and crossed about three rivers to reach another mountain. This one was just as steep as the one we'd gone up the day before, but it at least was in the bush so we had some shade. After another long four hours we finally reached our destination: Lake Crucible. When I finally reached the rim of the lake, which is nestled about halfway up Mt. Alba, I looked down and caught my breath. The water was a clear pale blue and filled with hundreds of icebergs.

Amy and I immediately went down to the water's edge to join the others who had arrived before us and decided that we wanted a picture on top of an iceberg. So we jumped into the water (1.7 degrees Celsius) and swam out to the nearest piece of floating ice. The water was so cold that it burned, and as I scrambled onto the iceberg I began dreading the jump back into the water. As Amy and I screamed and shivered , our photographers took several pictures and we dove back in to return to shore.

After drying off in the sun and eating our lunch we headed back to the hut for our last night. The next morning we crossed our final river and walked to the "runway" in the grass and waited for the four-seater plane to come pick us up. The flight out was gorgeous, but the best part was flying over the track that we didn't have to walk out on.

Now that I've put my shoes outside to dry, eaten a good meal, had a nice long shower and done a load of laundry, I can say I'm glad I did the Gillespie Pass. But I don't think I'll be climbing anymore mountains any time soon - just Franz Josef Glacier tomorrow.