Snow city cafe is our place of choice for breakfast each morning for the next 3 days. Large portions of hash browns, home-made biscuits, 20 ounce coffees. Our expedition stomachs can swallow it all!

We do our final shopping at REI and AMH, the specialised mountaineering & climbing store. We climb Flattop mountain, a beautiful trail-run / hike in the Chugach mountains surrounding Anchorage, we grab lunch at the Moose’s tooth pizza, and we have a blast at the Alaska Climbing gym where we meet up with Kai for a 2-hour bouldering session.

Dinner at the Brewpub, a few last local beers, some excellent conversation with Kai and dreams about future expeditions in Alaska and Nepal.

31 May afternoon, after dropping by the Anchorage museum and learning about the local population, fascinating history and emotional discoveries about the life, habits, beliefs of the local people of Alaska, we hop on our Alaskan Airlines / Delta flights to return to our homes in Hong Kong for me and Zurich for Xavier.

Our heads and our hearts are filled once more with beautiful images, feelings and experiences, our hands and muscles are packed with new skills, new techniques that will certainly be used on future expeditions or multi-day climbs.