This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
O: first thought was for ourselves — can we dig ourselves out of the shelter? The second thought was for Marilyn in the minivan. A concerted effort produced a tunnel to the top of the snow and then we slipped our way over to where the minivans were and dug down to Marilyn. She was alright as she’d left a window slightly open for fresh air during the night. With everybody reunited we had breakfast then the Mediums drove off to the start of the track while we, the Easys, swam through the snow to the start of our track, marvelling at the 3 metres of snow that had fallen after we arrived the night before. Life was desperate for a while. Thunder and lightning was crashing overhead while snow pelted down like cats and dogs. We had to take turns breaking trail, swapping the lead every 10 minutes. The sidestreams were a nightmare to cross, but with the help of the guideline from the flys we had no major difficulties. The minutes ticked by into hours and then
days, but finally a slight slope in the snow indicated the roof of the hut. In a howling blizzard we dug down to the door and escaped into peace and quiet. After lunch three explorers braved the typhoon and carried on swimming through the snow heading up the valley for a while. Through the driving snow they saw the outline of a Moa dropping gingernut biscuits so they could find their way back to the hut. Two other intrepid explorers practised their rock climbing skills in preparation for the following day. Dinner was a chilly affair huddled around the stove with snow dripping through the roof. After one torrent we agreed a snowcave or igloo was a better bet, so we quickly cut out blocks of ice from the snow with our knives and made a giant igloo. During the night the storm abated, the moon shone and the snow froze to a hard icy surface. When we got up, the first thing we did
Sue Walsh was slip over. The only thing we could do to keep our balance was to tie our forks and spoons to the underside of our boots. These worked really well until we started on our ice sculptures. We had to balance on one foot while sculpturing with the other. Once we finished the sculptures we decided it was time to move on as a tropical cyclone had arrived and all the snow was melting. We managed to cross the river before the tidal wave of snow came down the valley, however we still got wet as we found ourselves chest deep in water as the level of the lake had risen well above the track with all the melting snow. In the end we escaped up a slip following a trail of tim tams that a friendly kea had left for us. At the top of the slip we hauled our packs up using our shoe laces all tied together. The local Bellbirds gave us a resounding chorus as we bashed our way down to the vans just ahead of the Fits and Mediums who skied down from Mt Robert.