This is one of the spots we hike to out the back of Cardrona…

From here we rode about 15 minutes down in to the valley, getting fresh tracks all the way down.

But what goes down must come back up and the only way out is to hike again…

Unlike Europe, this is the best chance of powder around here, plus its damn good exercise…

I thought our 1 and half hour steep snow hike out was tough but was put to shame when we went to listen to Stephen Venables do a talk in Wanaka. He was the first Brit to climb Everest without oxygen, and on one of the days he climbed for 16 hours without stopping…epic.