Of Wild and Wonder

8/3/20 - 12/3/20 Party: Thomas Hadley, Maddy Whittaker, Torea Scott-Fyfe Maddy and I had “done uni” for an utterly excessive period of about 8 days and both had an itching for an epic. The plan was devised by looking at the expanses of wavy blue contours of the snowdrift range, a series of epic glaciers nestled in the inhospitable olivine wilderness. We created the route the best way possible, drawing an ambitious line on the map with lots of big question marks and hoping for the best. We planned to traverse the entire snowdrift range, a route which had a lot of unknowns for us. Particularly, a steep face of blue contours required to get over Mt Lydia's North shoulder. We knew one party had ascended it in early season conditions, but other than that, we were unsure. We set off at 6.30pm on Sunday evening up the Matukituki valley to Liverpool Hut, accompanied by Torea who planned to stay the night with us then return to Wanaka for work that week. After a few wet dark hours ...