It was a convincing argument. And a difficult one to counter. How to respond? Waxing lyrical about the great views was no help since we couldn't see a darn thing. Playing the 'it's good to simply be outside today' card would never work either; it was cold, wet, and miserable. I was just debating the merits of using the old 'good for training' ploy when Nick provided reason enough on his own.
"Ah well. I supposed I've got nothing better to do today," and put his head back down to resume plodding upwards along the ridge.
The hoped for weather window didn't materialize on Saturday morning and any hopes of traversing Mount Avalanche were quickly dashed. Instead we hiked up the Avalanche Crest trail and then along the ridge. Calls for a hot soup at the Nomad finally halted our progress at around 2400 meters. There was knee deep snow in places and more coming down by the time we turned around.
At least the snow made the descent somewhat easier on the knees and very quickly we were into the lush forest on the lower part of the trail.
We checked out the log bridge crossing to the Herdman Couloir for another day. I wonder how steep that final snow slope is up to the ridge?
