Left Christchurch around 4 pm arrived at the lake heron car park by 6, took us roughly 1 1/2 hours to double hut (1 river crossing). dinner, bedtime.
we left the hut at 4 am the next morning making good progress up the river as there is very little snow yet. we followed the right/ southern branch of the swim river when we reached the ridge up to a big boulder on the true right of the river. there we hid our trail runners and warmed our feet before putting the boots on. gaining the ridge is pretty straightforward and a bit slippery, after about 200m the veggie patches lighten up and we had more and more snow patches so we decided to put on our crampons. the forecasted clouds weren't around yet. first stop was at point 1766 to welcome the sunset and negotiate the route. as the south facing slope shows signs of avalanche danger we decide to sidle up the north facing aspect of the ridge making good progress to point 2062. from there the way to the summit was quite straightforward. at the summit we were greeted with sunshine and very little wind.
the hike out was long and quite stretchy as the snow got slushy at around 11am. once we got back to the riverbed we decided to stick to our boots instead of the now frozen (lol) trail runners. back at the hut we collected our gear, cleaned up and headed towards the car park. it is safe to say that the last two hours of this hike were some of the longest ones in my life. also the forecasted clouds finally rolled in, #blessed.
the last "1.5k" to the carpark which easily took 30 minutes.
back at the car jono and i decided to eliminate the remaining oreos and cheese crackers. no one was spared that day. back in christchurch at 9pm, asleep by 9:15.

great trip to mt taylor, i hope i'll never go there again ^^