Thought I'd knock up this naughty little TR to possibly give some inspiration for ski touring off the beaten track in New Zealand and also a few tips which may help with sniffing out your own missions over there. I absolutely won't profess to being an expert on it, but I ended up fannying about in the mountains a fair bit in NZ, so invariably stumbled across a few choice nuggets of information.
What makes New Zealand a flipping incredible ski touring destination? – The ski fields only cover a minuscule percentage of the insane mountainous terrain that the Southern Alps encompasses. If you’re willing to go off the beaten track, you can easily end up in areas that see only a handful, if any, skiers per year. A lot more planning, effort and type 2 (maybe 3) fun goes into the tours, but that’s part of the appeal. The climate and environment is just so unbelievably varied and changes dramatically in very short distances. Particularly going from East to West. IMHO this all leads to some of the most mind blowing mountain scenery on the planet!
Bit of background... I moved from Chamonix, which had been my base for nearly 4 years, to Wanaka, where I ended up living for 2 years, but now back in the Chamonix area. I mainly spent my first year in NZ getting to grips with how it all worked. The mountains and in particular, the access are utterly different to the European Alps. So that first winter I was predominantly touring from the ski fields with a couple of trips to some of the more popular mountain huts; these being Brewster and Mueller. The following winter I got really stuck into it, with 10 great adventures into cool areas. 9 of which I filmed and made into a cheeky little video series, Ski Tourin' Aotearoa. I'll go through each trip below and link up the episodes.
Scroll down to Post 4 if you just want to read my waffle on trip planning over there.
The TR:
Sentinel Peak
Located above ‘The Neck’, essentially where Lake Wanaka and Lake Hawea almost join, this is a great peak which is rarely visited in Winter. Sporting some lovely south facing little chutes off the summit ridge and simply epic views of both lakes. Access is good, you can either go via the Sawyer Burn track, where the terrain is a lot more complex. Or do as me and Ian did and approach from the West, up a nice farm track, a minimal plod across across some fields and then into the snow. Please note this way does cross private land, so you DO need to get permission from Hunter Valley Station. The skin from there is pretty straightforward. We had to do a bit of terrain management due to the potential instabilities in the snow, so we went the ‘scenic route’ along the top of the ridge. Ski back was sublime, with a small skin in the middle to get back into the correct bowl. Having pushed our bikes up the farm track in the morning, we had great 900m bike descent to finish off the day.
Rob Roy Glacier Track
Located in the West Matukituki valley of the Aspiring National Park, this is a very popular hiking track that winds through the gnarled beech forest, terminating underneath the imposing South East glacial face of Rob Roy Peak. Our objective was actually Homestead Peak and its fun looking West flank. Well this tour was an absolute failure. We, being me, Manu and Jamie, left too late in the morning (9.30am if my memory serves me right) and instead of keeping to the ridges on the ascent through the undergrowth to the snow line, we thought the gully looked like a better option. It wasn’t. Upon reaching the snowline, the snow was unbelievably crap, but nonetheless we soldiered on. However, one pulled Kingpin binding later and we delayed again. With the day getting on we thought ‘sod it’ and decided to cut out losses and head back. What followed was perhaps the worst pitch of skiing I’ve ever experienced. The top bit as shown in the video was ok, but the rest was simply the most horrendous crust known to man. So bad that I was too traumatised to even film it. Regrettable in hindsight. Anyhow, bushwacking down to the valley floor, we bumped into Ryan Taylor and Ryan Marvin who were camping up to attempt a new line on Rob Roy Peak the next day. A couple o’ cups of tea later we plodded back down the track to our cars. A terrible tour for skiing, but amazing scenery and great memories… in hindsight.
Mt St Mary
Arguably the number one tour from my time in New Zealand. Great crew, bit of type 2 adventuring, a summit and a cracking ski down. Due to some work commitments, I ended up one-man wolf packing to the Snow Gorge Hut. Accessed from Ohau ski field, it was about 3 or so hours of skiing, skinning, falling in creeks, more skiing and skinning and then a plod across a river plain in the dark. All good stuff. The hut was more of a shed, but it was great to see the boys and get stuck into a good mug of tea. The next day we went up Mt St Mary. Minus a minor wrong turn, it was a great ascent, with an interesting mix of skinning and boot packing. The summit was ridiculously scenic and the skiing almost sublime. A few patches of OK snow, but mostly velvety fun. All in all, a fantastic 12-hour round. trip Day 3 saw me and Ian bugger off for a home due to more work commitments. The skin and ski back to the car took around 6 hours I think and like the day before, we bathed in grade A scenic delights. Whilst we floundered around on way back, Manu and Joel bounded up Mt Stafford and stayed another night at the hut.
Mt Melina
A spite of unsettled weather, followed by a spike in temperatures on the only weather window that week, saw me, Jussi, Kaz and Sarah sniff out some mellow but still tantalisingly tasty terrain on the lower peaks. This came in the form of Mt Melina, just off the Ahuriri Valley. Gleaning some info from a nice trip report on skitouring.co.nz, we frolicked off on our bikes and up the Avon Burn. An hour or so later, with a few river hops thrown in for good measure, bikes were abandoned for the long stumble up to the snow line. Sidling a steep valley for quite a while, we finally came upon a few sacred tendrils of mushy spring snow. Alas, mighty Thor or whoever the fuck is up there in the sky, had other plans for us. And before we knew it, we were nipple deep in the finest pea soup fog, this side of inner London and the bleeding River Thames. Moral was admittedly rather low at this point, but firmly within the realm of type 2 fun, we soldiered on, using the GPS for guidance. Well shiver me timbers. Upon reaching the summit ridge, the clouds suddenly started to rise and disperse. Blessed were we indeed. Exciting yelps followed and we bounded on up to the top. What followed was, to put it bluntly, a fucking right good ski.
Velvety compressed powder, quickly morphing into corn and finally a wicked wave like ridge of slushy spring sexiness. After this it was a trundle down the valley, a hop on the bikes and wheelie back to the car.
Ohau Peak
With the weather having an unexpected angry fit (an all to common occurrence), our plans for a bigger mountain were shelved in favour of simply finding somewhere with half decent conditions for the day. Spying this tender, but nice looking peak on the drive out from my last tour. I grabbed the lads and off we went with our bikes to the Mackenzie plains and Lake Ohau. Situated South West of the Lake itself, Ohau Peak is relatively modest in height (1911m), but offers fantastic spring skiing on its south eastern flank, with comparatively easy access, along a purpose built mountain bike track (part of the Alps to Ocean trail). After the bike in, push up and short hike to the snow line. We ended up having a bountiful corn harvest, with two laps of the flank. The South Western side of the ridge had some simply delightful looking steepish terrain. But the high winds kept the corn locked up there that day. All in all a great day and a highly recommend, easy going peak to tour. A mid winter mission could be particularly fruitful here, with even easier access and loads of terrain to explore on various aspects.
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