A really fun zone just out the back of the Remarkables in Queenstown. Wasn’t really on my radar, but in Sept 2021 Alex Bewick and I had a week off work and wanted to get some skiing done. We had been planning on going up high somewhere but the forecast looked pretty terrible everywhere apart from Queenstown so we looked a bit closer to home. Lake Hope offers a large safe easy campsite with a ton of easy to moderate terrain of every aspect in the immediate vicinity offering 200-300m faces and couloirs. Also gives easy access to the biggest peaks in the range, Mt Tuwhakaroria and Ben Nevis
Approach
We went for fly in hike out and split a heli in from Frankton airport. For this kind of trip this makes it a lot more comfortable as you dont have to skimp on gas, food, beers and can make your campsite extra comfy. We split the heli 2 ways for $170 bucks each, would be even cheaeper with more people. If you skin in, start up Curvey chair and up to Wye Saddle. On a subsequently trip I’ve skinned to the base of Tuwhakaroria from Remarks (GPX attached). Follow the Wye Creek route down to the lakes then stick left aiing for the col between point 2115 and 2122. Drop down towards Doolans Left Branch then head up aiming at the col between 2130 and 1964. You drop down the other side of this col into the valley just one over from Lake Hope (my GPX track goes from here to Tuwhakaroria). Aim up towards point 2087 and cruise down to Lake Hope. This is 11km and 1000m of vert, and would be pretty savage with a weeks camping supplies – I reckon the flight is a no brainer! The other options would be to stay in the Wye Creek valley and stay high and sidle the whole way along to Lake Hope. Ive never done this route and think it looks pretty tough the further along you get.
We were expecting some NW winds so found a sheltered spot to the south of Lake Hope behind a big boulder, pretty much where the two tiny lakes on the map are, and dug the tent in. By staying south of the lake your also comfortably out of avalanche paths for the surrounding peaks.
Skiing
So many options! Is quite similar to the area around Lake Alta, but less steep, with excellent skiing on all sides. We had a good freeze overnight and were skiing in corn and so chased the sun all day. We started with the east and north facing slopes from 2090, and once that was getting too warm worked clockwise around the slopes surrounding the lake. There were some excellent south facing couloirs down from 2071 and 2087 that were still holding good powder. Then to finish of we headed back across lake hope heading south east and up towards the col south west of 2096. We traversed along the ridge heading towards point 2071 to access the top of a west facing couloir that dropped all the way down to the Wye Creek South Branch underneath our campsite. It was afternoon by this point and the west facing slopes and nicely softened up for a 500m corn descent down to the river. It was shady and cold down in the valley and the snow was starting to lock up so we cruised back up south branch back to the campsite to get dinner on the go and celbrate with some beers.
The next day with skiied N face Tuwhakaroria which Ive written up seperately. It gave us a view of the south faces in the next valley, esp of 1986, which looked super sick – ones for the next trip! Things were getting pretty dangerously soft on the north faces by the time were coming back up towards camp, but we were able to find a line up to the ridge between 2087 and 2080 which was entirely on rock and kept us safe from the afternoon loose wet.
Sadly the weather window was closing at this point and we had to hike out the next day. But theres easily enough skiing to keep a mixed ability group occupied for a week, especially if you venture into the Nevis Burn or Stewarts Creek. Will definitely be back!
On hike out day it was bluebird and scorching (before the afternoon storm came in), and having recently re watched game of GNAR we saw a perfect oppurtunity to fulfil a life goal. We skiined up the east facing low angle slopes above lake hope and smashed out a few butt naked laps in some creamy corn. Cant recommend it enough! The stoke was at an all time high at this point (thankfully nobody took a nut busting bail) and put us in a good mental state for the hike out
The Hike Out
From the lake we skinned west up to the col halfway between 2090 and 2103, which was a bit of a grunt with heavy packs. From here your above Wye creek and need to descend down to the valley floor to hit the well marked DOC track that takes you down to the carpark. It seems to make sense from here to try and traverse skiiers left as far as you can to save yourself some distance. We ended up regretting this approach because we got bluffed out at the west end of the valley. Thankfully we did find a way down through a gully but it was pretty heinous, with steep muddy slippy tussock and we both stacked it repeatedly and the gear took a bit of a thrashing. If I was doing it again I would head right from the high point and keep trending right. From where we turned left theres an easy scree slope going right and down to the valley floor. While it adds a few kms too the walk out on the DOC track Im sure it would have been way faster than the sketchy traverse and down climb we ended up doing.
Peak Exposure 