This was my 2nd visit to this area. On my first trip, which was about 10 days before this one, the weather had been against us. We left the car to begin the 4 hour walk to Lake Angelus in sunshine. As we followed Robert Ridge the sun soon went behind the cloud and the wind became quite gusty in exposed places on the ridge. Arriving at the hut the visibility was only around 50 metrers. Basically I had no idea what was around me or what it looked like. Even before I arrived back home from this disaster of a first trip I had already planned on making a 2nd trip. I just needed to wait until the weather was better. 10 days later I set off on a slightly different route which included returning to Lake Angelus from another direction and going back out the way we originally came in.
On the morning that I took this photo it was cold. I had slept in the kitchen area of the hut so that I could sneak out early without waking too many people up. The water tap outside the hut had frozen overnight and quite a bit of Ice had formed on the bigger of the 2 lakes, the previous night you could watch the ice forming on it. The smaller one was already frozen. I really like this time of day, just before sunrise where the sun has started to light up the sky but no light is hitting the ground yet, not even on the higher peaks. By the time I finished shooting 2 panoramas I had to head back inside the hut. I had forgotten to grab my gloves on the way out and between the wind and the cold it felt like my hands were about to fall off. Today was going to be an easy day, I’d be back home by early afternoon.