The Best Ski Tour in New Zealand? | Ben Ohau Haute Route

I really rate this ski tour. In fact, I'd have to say it's one of the best I've ever done. I know, I know, that's a big call after 35 years of ski touring, but in its category it's just superb. That is the start of the description to the Ben O'How Hoot route, which we skied on Tuesday. I hitched over to Wanaka, met up with my friend Maz. We knew that we wanted to give this ski tour a go, and with a short one-day weather window we thought it was our best option. We met up with our other friend Sarah, drove up to Mount Cook at six in the morning for a nine o'clock flight, got delayed till 10. Then as we were coming in to land, it's always a really important moment because we were flying in as opposed to walking in. We didn't know what the snow condition would be like, and when we saw the helicopter skids sink into the snow, we knew it was going to be good. We hop out and the snow is knee-deep, fresh dry snow, which is perfect for what we needed to ski south-facing aspects. Cool. After a short two-minute skin, we were at our first ski run. We did a slight variation of this run and we skied on the skier's right-hand side of this gully. And it feels well bonded. Okay, dropping. I could see the start of this line from our vantage point on the top of the ridge line, but I couldn't quite see if the end connected, so I stopped here for a second to make sure that the run connects. And then after seeing that I can make it all the way down and the run out is long, I ski through this small choke at the end. Out into this gully where we can see the next stage of our ski tour, which heads further off into the mountains. After crossing the south branch of the whale stream, we were getting close to Dunfernery and we looked up and saw this coola. So right now we're deciding whether we ski this fantastic looking coola or we ski that peak that's Dunfernery. Could be a cool line, but this we're hoping for dry snow. So we're gonna boot up there, see how it feels and then our ski tour continues over this south. The bootpack up this coola ended up taking longer than we thought as the snow was up to my armpits in places as we were bootpacking up. I take a few turns and then stop here to check how much slough is coming down. It would have been nice to ski this coola all together, but getting knocked off your feet by slough in narrow entrances is super possible. I knew that I wanted to ski this in the fall line from here and I took a couple turns and then I waited because I was scared, looked at the line and then got the courage to drop in. Having flown out an hour late already and then spending an hour and a half skiing that coola, we knew we were a little bit behind on the timing for the hoot route so we decided to press on and this was the next stage. After getting to the saddle we looked down and we could see that it was another beautiful run. Happily there were three little slots on this run so we could all get freshies in our own spot. Choosing the right people for a ski tour like this is really important and Maz and Sarah are both legends, super fit, super experienced, super good skiers and it really brought the trip together. The fact that nobody was lagging behind and we could have discussions between each of us on where to go next. Especially as we were still a bit behind schedule, here was the next section and we were boasting at this point we were going super fast. After getting to the next saddle we dropped in to this beautiful powder run that quickly turned into a crust at the end. Right here is the line we skied and then we traversed out and then had a beautiful skin up to the next one. Sarah what would you call this thing that is right here? After whacking this cornice and finding a way over Sarah then Maz dropped in and this is maybe some of the deepest best turns of the day. Then I dropped in, I wanted to hit these two cool drops but when I lined up the second one I didn't notice that there was a rock behind and I almost landed on this rock. It was about 6pm as we started our final skin up to this saddle. Super long days now in October so we weren't in too much of a rush. We knew now that we'd make it just about on time. Our fifth and final run down was some pretty uninspiring skiing as it was an east-facing slope that had heated up in the morning and in the afternoon when we got to it it was shady and re-frozen due to the clear skies. You can see here there's a fat crust that we're skiing on that meant jump turns only all the way down to the valley floor where we ended up skiing over a large avalanche debris field to get as low as we could to save ourselves walking. The last bit of skiing before we walk out down this valley, follow that stream, get to the road and then run 10 kilometres back to the Heli Airport. Then I fell over trying to video Maz but I got back up, got the shot. We had about six kilometres of walking out till we got to the road where we were kindly picked up by Sarah's friend.