After Pow and I made it to Queenstown we took the bus back to Christchurch. From there I hitched a ride with Ryan Nicols to Lewis Pass then hitched to Motueka met up with Manu Greer. We made a plan to Ski tour around the Angelus Hut in Nelson Lakes National Park.
Day 1 Heading out to the Angelus Hut
For the past three weeks this had been my living arrangement.
and soon enough we were hiking the 8 hour trail out to the Angelus hut.
Before long done with the switchbacks and up onto the high ridge.
The terrain surrounding us was a ski resort at one time where people had to hike almost 3 hours just to get to the rope tows. They abandoned the resort in the late 90’s
The rest of the afternoon we just kept trekking along the ridge finally making our way to the Angelus hut in the dark.
Day 2 Ski Touring around Angelus Hut
The next morning we woke up and I got my first look at the terrain, it looked like we were in a crater so we worked the aspects and followed the sun hoping to find good corn conditions.
We would climb an aspect.
Take in the views
Then we would ski back down to the lake.
Then we would chill inside the hut for a little bit
Then get back out there putting in ski tracks
We did this routine until sunset getting in a total of seven runs of awesome corn.
Day 3 Ski Touring Mount Angelus
The next morning it was cool to wake up to our tracks from the day before
We decided that we would use the same sun chasing technique in the next cirque over leading up to Mount Angelus.
This terrain was our goal for the day
We found conditions once again to be great corn.
We took our time and enjoyed a short break at a smaller lake
Finally we summited Mount Angelus
That night we took in the view of our tracks and prepared for the brutal slog out. Weather was coming in and if we didn’t want to be stuck we had to go.
Day 4 Exiting Nelson Lake National Park
The next day we started after a fine breakfast and cleaning up. Another group of people were kind enough to snap this shot of us before leaving.
When we were about 3/4 the way out the weather hit but we carefully followed the trail and made our way to a shelter where we relaxed for a few minutes.
It was almost as if I didn’t remember the hike up but on the way down I took in the views of the old growth beech forest and the lake. I guess I was in too much pain on the way up.
After we got back to the trailhead Manu was nice enough to drive us to Nelson where we enjoyed a few microbrews before we split ways. It was a fun trip ski touring around Angelus Hut but it was time to move south. That night I stayed in the only hostel of my trip and took the bus back to Christchurch the following day.
Thank you for reading and If you enjoyed reading this and want to see more ski tours within New Zealand check out this link