Total so far: 8,865m
Ahh... a quick morning tour to Husume... thats a good idea... well, it was a good idea, but it turned out to be not so quick. First of all the Showcase T-bar wasn't open, so to make sure we were making lemonade we did a little experiment- is it quicker to skin straight up the Showcase line, or to ride Horstman and then traverse over? Turns out its about the same. Although I then had to traverse from the Blowhole to the Blackcomb Gate with my skins on... which was very time consuming and annoying. After that little delay we headed up to the Spearhead Col, but the weather was quickly deteriorating. There were a few groups at the top, all of whom had more ambitious plans at the start of the day, but most groups were redirecting to Husume given the weather. After skiing down Don't swill, which was pleasantly rock free, we noticed two blokes attempting to boot pack back up one of the other Don't Swill chutes. The explained that they had noticed crevasses on either side of them, and thought it was likely that the crevasse carried on in front, but the light was so bad it was impossible to see it, so they decided to go back up. Unfortunately they were having a nightmare of a time climbing back up, so we stood for a minute and considered our options. By this time several groups had bunched up together, and one dude said that he had a rope. We threw the rope down hill and lay it in the snow to help identify if there were any sudden changes in pitch. There wasn't, so hoping that any snow bridges would support our weight we followed the rope down the hill. This method worked quite well and it re-enforced the importance of having a rope in times of poor visibility, especially on a glacier. There was now about 15 of us heading to Husume, and the two guys who had been trying to climb back up Don't Swill set the final boot pack. The pace at which they did so compared with their speed up Don't Swill suggested that climbing back out of the Spearhead would have posed many many difficulties. We all sat around for a bit at the top and let the guy who had the rope go first- not that it really mattered- the snow was totally wind fucked!
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