West Coast – Centenial
Whilst still exceedingly early in the season – the recent storms have produced some very nice snowfalls on the NZ mountains and Glaciers. This means that some good ski touring conditions exist!
The early season conditions do also pose some interesting situations regarding crevasses and thin bridges. Dugald Peters and I were recently up on the West Coast, Franz Neve's to do some training for our upcoming expedition to Shishapangma next year - Speedfly 8000. This meant we were using our skis to get up peaks and speedwings to get down – most of the time. Conditions on the Neve were nice for a few days before a gale force southerly wind produced a breakable crust which made skiing conditions basically impossible.
With a winter snowpack in evidence and about 1.5 m of new snow were were able to get about on the glacier for 4 days – getting some nice turns in whilst covering a fair bit of ground on the Franz.
In general conditions on the lower sections of the glacier are still very open whilst on the tops the larger crevasses can still be seen but are already well filled. Picking a careful line through easy terrain made for good touring conditions whilst the cold temperatures gave us some great turns!
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