So, I've tried to document an absolutely heroic day of tramping with this above picture of the day's beginning. Early. Not too much after dawn, cool damp and overcast. Here we are at the Dart River, about 16-17km from the Dart Hut. At the dart hut, it is an additional 8km up to the Cascade Saddle. So we decided to haul to the hut, drop our stuff and throw together a day pack. And make use of each hour of the long day (9:30pm sunset!) and get from here, up to the saddle and back to the hut (32km!) in one day. The good news is that we made it, and it was spectacular. We made it to the hut around noon, keeping a good clip!. Threw down some tuna&pita sammiches and grabed our daypacks. We wasted no time and hit the trail up to the saddle right away. Despite protests from my legs (muscles & knees!) I made the 8km and ~1500ft climb to the saddle right around 5pm, which was really too late in the day to arrive at such a beautiful spot. Open views of the Dart Glacier (origins of the river above) and W I D E open views of the valley below - the pics really don't do it justice. We were back in the hut around 9ish, basically just in time to throw down some noodles and collapse into our sleeping bags. Tremendous!
