Well, after some fun time enjoying the southern hemisphere spring ski season in New Zealand, I arrived back in Jackson Saturday night, slept wicked hard for 10 hours, then jumped right into the northern hemisphere winter with some pretty darn good skiing on Teton Pass for Halloween. Soft powder snow never felt so good and it seems as though conditions might warrant pushing things a little bit higher the next time I put on the boards. Ummm…that would be today mind you.
View from the heli flight to the Centennial Hut with the Franz Josef Glacier
just a little broken up below the neve fields.
Besides just skiing, I’ve got tons of things to do in order to catch up from being gone for just over a month, but I thought for a few days at least, I would share some pictures from the recent trip down under. Here’s a collection a both and A and B-list photos:
View of Centennial Hut in front of Mount Aurora.
I may have over saturated the photo a little, but you can see how icy some of
the higher elevations were (with Aurora not really being that high), along with
evidence of recent avalanche activity…yikes!
More sick views on the flight in.
Zoomed in view of Centennial Hut.
You can see how rimed up the right side of the outhouse is, as southwest facing
towards the Tasman Sea. The skin track back to the hut was usually right under the
ski tracks and would ice up as is got in the shade. Skinning “shit-house corner” late in the day
was always exciting and I saw a few folk bite it and go for a little slide during our stay.
Cleaning ice off the hut’s solar panels. (Photo Scott Fennell.)
When we first arrived at Centennial, the another party had dug out the door, but the water tank was buried and frozen solid, and the solar panels were coated with about 4″ of rime on them. Over time, some extra digging and solar radiation fixed both problems over time.
Randosteve and Scott check out the cloud over Meteor Peak. (Photo Ben Starkey.)
We had perfect weather with little wind for the next four days. Sweet as!!!
Ben and Randosteve get ready to ski. (Photo Scott Fennell.)
It kinda looked like there may have been some really old tracks
on Meteor, but in the end I think it was just some wind drifts, as it looked
wicked icy…to say the least.
Ben rides above the clouds. (Photo Scott Fennell.)
A common occurrence while skiing on the Franz Josef Glacier, as it rains
about 400cm (that’s over 180″) down in town.
Another cool shoot of Ben. (Photo Scott Fennell.)
More cloud shots…too hard to pass up!
And sunsets…there were lots of those too!
Stay tuned for more!!
Great pictures, these are really cool.
Awesome. Would have to say I’m dying to get back there again myself. Should be on every ski-mountaineer’s life list. Lucky Kiwis!
Awesome! That sunset picture is amazing.
glad you like them!!!