Avalanche Peak

Dale and I were planning on "raging" between October 15th and October 26th which meant we'd go down to Fiordlands and try to do three of the Great Walks. Because of the weather we found ourselves stuck in Christchurch for the first few days of that. The weather looked O.K. in Arthur's Pass so we booked a shuttle and headed out to hike up Avalanche Peak via Scott's Track.

Dale put this together:

Here's the start of the track. The sign says 4 hours to the top.

Above photo by Dale Statler

The trail went up through bush for about 45 minutes before putting us in the snow. We were pushing pretty hard because we had to get down in time to catch the shuttle back to Christchurch. As a result, I have no pictures from this part of the walk.

Getting up into the snow was very exciting for me. I'd only done it once before (Tongariro Crossing). Here it was actually important at times to use the axe properly and place my feet well.

Above photo by Dale Statler



This video is horribly washed out but gives an idea of some of the steeper terrain encountered.

We made it to the top in 2 hours and were both surprised and pleased.

above photo by Dale Statler

There was a skiier and a snowboarder at the top of the peak when we got there. They were checking the snow pack to assess the avalanche risk before skiing down. Dale and I found this very interesting as we had been to a lecture with the Tramping Club on avalanche safety that described this process. We watched for about 15 minutes.


Then we headed down.

above photo by Dale Statler

Most of the walk was not suitible for glissading but there was one spot where I got my first proper glissade in.

above photo by Dale Statler

We got down in only an hour and thirty minutes putting us at a total of 3.5 hours to tramp up and down (quite different from the sign that said 4 hours to the top). We can go pretty fast when we're pushed for time.

We got back into Arthur's Pass village and waited for the shuttle to come back through from Greymouth. While we waited some Kea managed to grab my scroggin. Many of the tourists took photos of the event and one agreed to email me a photo. Here it is:

above photograph by Tanja Lenz (Thanks!!)

I managed to get the scroggin back before the kea had feasted too much, but I had to discard it as they'd torn many holes in the bag. Darn alpine parrots. Get your own food!