Hike: 23km

Things didn't start too well. It was raining and the wind had picked and was causing waves on the lake making it damn near impossible for you to get water out without getting wet feet. Last night we managed but the temperature had dropped and we were trying to preserve the dryness of our trainers! We both got wet feet trying anyway for a piddly little amount of water so decided to do without and fill up at Luxmore Hut, about two hours away. On a positive note Scott's knee felt great after a sore day yesterday!

As we left lake level and climbed through beech forest to get above the tree line we saw a few light flakes of snow. As we gained altitude the density of flakes thickened and began to settle! The forest looked prettier and prettier and when we popped out of the trees we were rewarded of a lovely view over the lake and small town below us. The mountain tops were totally snow covered but the track was still visible. It really was "magic"!

We were buzzing as we walked on to the Luxmore Hut but knew that a DOC warden might try and stop us from tackling the alpine section in our footwear so we sneaked in to the hut to fill our bottles, stuffed a few snacks down and snuck back out without being caught. (It was a good job we did as we learnt later that she tried to stop two other trampers, Bernadette and Richard, who were in tracksuit bottoms and jeans (although Richard did have alpine boots and loads of experience) and made them sign a disclaimer!)

Moving on from Luxmore Hut we could see that we were about to enter the snow clouds and waved goodbye to our views for the day. We climbed up higher, just below the peak of Mount Luxmore (~1500m) and then across a windy saddle to a first shelter which we reached about 1 1/2 hours later. We stopped in the shelter for a couple of minutes to let our faces thaw but left before we could cool down (the shelter was a wooden hut with an iron roof, all that was inside was an axe and avalanche probe). This shelter had a 'Nordic' pit toilet complete with a slippy, snow covered floor and a frozen toilet roll! We pushed on the next shelter along two really exposed ridges and saddles and taking in our highest point on the climb. The wind whipped over the saddles and the ridges. At one point Scott looked back at me and I had a very red face, ice stuck to my left cheek and frozen eyebrows and eyelashes. Scott did a grand job of using Desmond the stick to probe the route of the track, which was all but lost from view but luckily we were following orange topped snow poles, and to check for holes and ditches in the path. Basically we kept our heads down and trudged along at a steady pace. We reached the second shelter about an hour after the first and met the two Italians whose footprints we'd been following but which were being rapidly filled in with snow.

Once we left this shelter we knew we'd done the hard bit with just one more bit of ridge to go and than a descent into the forest to Iris Burn Hut. We overtook the two Italians (the guy had a bad knee and was really slow getting to the hut - the warden went out to look for them once it fell dark but they were both fine). We were ready to stop after an hour or so of beech forest, although it was really pretty in the snow. The hut looked inviting and the warden offered us an upgrade from camping but we both had a strange, steely determination to camp and found a surprisingly dry pitch...

We weren't the only campers. There was also an American; who was planning to sleep under the leaky shelter (with one wall) on top of the picnic table because he was only carrying a bivvy and thought it would be more comfortable, a funny English man called Richard who was hiking in expensive alpine boots and jeans (he reminded me of Neil from the Young Ones in both his appearance and voice!) and two other Italians. We had a very quick dinner at the picnic table with our fellow campers before I had to get to the tent as I was so desperate to get off my freezing cold and wet trainers. Back in the tent we dried our feet, put on all our clothes, zipped the sleeping bags together and settled down for the night. We could hear light rain falling as we drifted off.