Despite a lack of overnight freeze at road level, we decided to give Hector a try anyway.

It was a 'challenging' slog up to the waterfalls pitch in near-isothermal snow. There isn't much left to avalanche overhead, and the waterfalls are certainly filled with water and not snow. We hiked the summer access trail to circumvent them.

Once into the hanging valley, travel improved substantially with skis-on travel all the way to the summit col. Glacier HS is surprisingly good with 230+ cm probed in most spots. The glacier has better coverage than it did when I was last up there five weeks ago.

We were back at the car at 13:00 and that certainly wasn't too early today.