Pope's Peak

 

Nothing but goodness today. This time I left home at 4:30am to meet Stefan and his college friend James at the Lake Louise Overflow Parking where they were camping for the last few nights.. We prep our gear and drove to Lake Ohara parking lot. Went up the road for about 2kms and made a hard left up the hill. We found some tracks and stayed on them for a while, near the top we veered left around the rocky top and down to the valley. Once we were on the valley and could clearly see our objective (12o'clock of the above picture) we could then start navigating towards it.

To negotiate the climb we had to boot packed a Gully that wasn't that long, but steep. 

Once at the top of the gully we put on the skis again and continue to climb to the right side of the triangle mountain. 

From there we zigzag for at least an hour, with very poor visibility James and Stef had to keep an eye on me and let me know when to make the next turn. It is quite amazing what the glare of the white snow can make to you, you can't see anything in front, you don't know whether you are on top of the wind lip or no..

Once at the top of our objective the snow felt great, we then decided to ski down the same wat we went up since we already new the path. There were some overhanging on the skiers right, but we descended quick to a safe spot. 

Awesome skiing snow. At the bottom, we had to climb back down the gully, at that point we pass the skis down to the next person to have the hands free to scramble. 

From there is basically skiing down to the valley, and then up for a bit until we started bushwhacking to car. What a nice finish when you get to ski down all the way to the car.... 18km, almost 2,000mts vertical ascend and 8 hours.