It was a cold crisp morning with unbroken blue sky and sunshine. Over breakfast we made a quick change of plans and decided to try our “Haus Berg”, the closest mountain to our Air BnB. It’s not so often that you can do a ski tour without requiring a vehicle, and skinning from your house door to the bottom of the mountain is something quite different. It’s certainly not possible to ski tour like this in NZ! We skinned through fresh powder for a few hundred metres before hanging a left and beginning our ascent through small and sparse birch trees. Johannes D went in front and ploughed steep tracks in the snow. We kick turned our way up through the trees leaving them entirely after a few hundred metres.
The next few hours were spent slowly ascending. Clouds formed on the horizon, blocking the sun briefly but then they vanished again and there was just blue and white. The last section was across a large plateau to the summit.
We swapped into downhill mode and began skiing back down. We were the first group to ascend and the faces were free from tracks. Johannes D went first and skied all the way down to the tree line. The rest of us took it much more slowly, stopping regularly. The snow was very good and we carved wide turns into the mountain, skiing one by one down the steeper sections to keep the avalanche gods happy.
We met Johannes D on his way back up to look for us. The others continued down and him and I went up for a second lap. He went ahead while I got my skins on and I saw him again as he descended from the summit. We had another nice descent and then followed some tracks from a split boarder that went out to the right. We sidled around the mountain and down to the tree line. The snow was even lighter and fluffier there and we had a magic descent through the trees. It felt artistic, painting flowing turns down through the trees. It was probably the nicest descent of the day despite the rest also being excellent.
At the bottom we got our skins back out and skinned back next to the road to our accommodation.
Sørfjelltinden
Moving time: 4:17:29 Distance: 18.22 km Ascent: 2,291 m