Blisters and my first day on the glaciers.

We arrived at the Pioneer hut with 2 choppers, one being a Squirel.  The other chopper had most of our gear (minus crampons and an ice axe) and it had 2 other members of the mountaineering club that were climbing on their own for the week.  The one guy had just climbed Tasman and Aoraki, which sounds fantastic to me. 

 

Here we have the pilot dropping us off. It's actually quite disheartening to see civilization take off just like that, but nice at the same time.  We could really feel the gale force winds as they blew the top off of some of our food. 

There was no relaxing when we arrived, especially since we caught the first flight in the morning.  We had straight for Pioneer col with plans to climb Grey Peak.  In the picture, we have one member of the party probing for crevases.  notice the large one to the left and right.  I am happy to say that I only ever fell into one at waste level and the rest were at knee level.  We did have one guy fall into his armpits. These experiences helped me realized that crevasses aren't as bad as one may expect, as long as one excercises a little intelligence.

The pictures are in a a strange order.  In the lowest one, we have the group walking to the hut from the landing pad.  Yes, that is a crevasse in front of the hut, hence why we are roped together.  In the picture above it, the weather was turning quickly with the winds.  By the time we reached the col, the wind was nearly blowing us over and the wind chill was horrendous.  So we headed back to the hut, which is fine for a first day, in my opinion.  My loose boots on this day haunted me for the rest of the trip due to the blister I obtained.