At about -10 degree’s at 12,500ft, I, together with 4 good friends, stood at the highest point in New Zealand and photographed a panoramic vista of Plateau Hut under a perfectly clear and calm night sky. The day had started in Milford Sound where we had camped overnight. After a relatively lackluster sunrise we packed the tents and ripped out of the park for breakfast in Te Anau. Over a couple of large cappuccinos we called our chartered flight to confirm they could still get us to the summit that afternoon. Apparently landing on the summit once the snow is in shade was a challenging endeavor so they would therefore need to have us in the air by 2:30pm. It was 10:30am, and google maps was giving us a 6hr 30min trip – time to hit the road. After a flying stop over in Queenstown to pick up some wine, beer and food we arrived at the runway at 2:15pm and went about packing our snowshoes and equipment into the plane ready for take off. An hour later the 5 of us stood in an empty snowfield, above the world, and watched as our plane flew off into the mountains on the horizon. After spending a moment to take it all in we clipped into our snowshoes and hiked over the ridge to Plateau Hut. The previous image of this amazing location (http://ift.tt/1rw61iz) shows a beautiful sunrise with perfectly lit clouds. This image is of the night before and is a reminder of just how perfect the conditions were. A clear and perfectly calm night, a starry sky (followed by an aurora and an ideally positioned milky way – photos to come) and then a textbook perfect sunrise. With our images of this night safely captured we returned to our candlelit hut to play cards and drink our wine. via 500px http://ift.tt/1qAICAa
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