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occasionally snow like this. If I were leading a group back in Norway in such conditions, there would be no question of going further, especially with so many ill-equipped, inexperienced people. When Ralph becomes lost and we make a full circle, I tramp back to locate Ruth. She stands immobile, almost impossible to see through the advancing snowstorm, still optimistically waiting for the eleven others to come up the path. I shout into her ear, my voice loud in the eerie silence of the snowstorm: ‘Even if we find the shelter, we will never find the way down the other side. Visibility is almost down to zero, the storm is getting worse and several trampers do not have proper equipment for these kinds of conditions. We still have time to turn around now and find our way down.’
    ‘What do I do?’ she asks.
    ‘Call them back. They trust you as the leader.’
    Blusters of snow engulf us, swirling around Ruth’s small face, which is almost hidden under the hood of her jacket. Her lips are drawn tight, blue with cold. ‘Can you get them all to come back?’ she asks. Her eyes betray fear.
    I follow my own trail back to the others. Removing my insulated leather gloves, I shove four fingers under my tongue and whistle loudly. I call out to the group, telling them we are heading down. Amazon Woman relays the message with a lot more
authority. She takes one-handed photographs of herself with her other hand cupped around her mouth, calling to the others: ‘Come back! Come back!’
    Two bearded Swiss men in Gore-Tex, hi-tech walking sticks in both hands probing the snow, head off in the rough direction of the shelter, as does Ralph. They take one direction; he takes another. The rest of us retrace our steps to the monument where Ruth waits. Already the tracks from our ascent have filled with fresh drifts. Within fifteen minutes Ralph and the two Swiss men descend as well. They could barely find their own footsteps; the blowing snow filled in their trail almost immediately.
    As we traverse an avalanche area, the steep mountainsides exposed and without tree cover, we meet stragglers from the guided group also returning from an abandoned ascent up to Mackinnon Pass. Together we descend into the protective custody of the dense forest. All of us end up back at Mintaro Hut. Eleven of our group – the ones Ruth kept waiting for – hadn’t even bothered to leave. Two Germans are still wrapped up snugly in their sleeping-bags.
    It is high season and now there are forty unhappy, name-tagged members of the guided tour sheltering in the hut, in addition to our own group of forty frustrated and tired freedom walkers. Like a factory line, the first arrivals from the next group of freedom walkers arrive up the path from Clinton Forks Hut. Soon there will be one hundred and twenty cold and miserable trampers packed into a hut designed to hold only forty. Yesterday it was crowded and a little claustrophobic. Now it is mayhem.
    One of our ill-equipped trampers, a young German, has hypothermia. He is allocated a corner of the hut and two medical students hold his hands. There is a hush, everyone subdued by the seriousness of his condition. Using the hut radio, Ruth calls for two helicopters – an air ambulance and another to haul the rest of us over the pass.
    Some hours later, we hear the unmistakable thumping of helicopter blades amplified by the steep-sided mountains. The ferry helicopter nestles onto a raised wooden platform beside the hut;
it flits backwards and forwards until evening, evacuating six passengers at a time, starting with the guided walkers. On one flight, the helicopter carries backpacks below it in a swaying sling. Because it is fully loaded, the pilot must execute figures of eight in the narrow valley before gaining enough height to fly over the pass. Between the ferry runs, the medivac chopper arrives with a doctor and a senior DOC staff member from Te Anau. The hypothermic German is transferred to the air ambulance where