Last week Jane, Gary, Noel and I headed up to Avalanche Peak in Arthur’s Pass National Park for a bit of skiing. While this winter has been a bit thin on snow, Avalanche Peak and the ridge towards Lyell Peak has had a good cove of snow up high and with the heavy rain, followed with cold, clear skies, a nice “corn” cycle was under way when we headed up.
With the smooth, consistent spring snow we all decided we could get away with our skinny, short race skis, allowing us to travel light and reach the snow in just after an hour. After about another 45 minutes we were standing on top of Avalanche Peak, with amazing views of Mt Rolleston’s Crow Face and Mt Franklin in the distance behind Temple Col.
We skied as nice SE-E line of the top and then made our way towards Lyell Peak, which was a lot closer than it first look. The NE face of the top of Lyell was in great condition, but was also a lot shorter than it first looked. From there we skied back to Scott’s track and to where we had left our shoes and head down to the Village. We did about 1600meters of climbing and around 1000m of skiing in the 6 hrs we were out.
Still heaps of snow out there if you don’t mind working hard for it! Check out www.softrock.co.nz for weather and mountain conditions in the Arthur's Pass NP.
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