The winter of 2011 was an unusual season with low snow levels and better quality snow at the lower elevations. Cardrona back bowls are a favourite because of their ease of access. The Cardrona carpark is one of the higher elevated carparks and the skinning up to the summit of Mt Cardrona does not take long and is a pleasant skin along the western edge of the skifield, half of it on quiet cat tracks.
Cardrona can get dealt to by the wind in which case you need to ski west and down from the carparks where there are more sheltered bowls and being south facing the snow can go down quite a way. Take a map with you and explore!
On this particular outing we skinned up along the cattracks then dropped off the side of the cattrack to ski nice snow in the guts of the first bowl. We skinned up the oposite side and then headed down gully and faces all the way to the Golspie valley floor. There was some wind crusty snow and some tussock dodging but some beautiful snow in the shady aspects.
Once at the valley floor we skinned down valley to pick up an initially steep and then very cruisy ridge that took us back to the carpark. See the map for more detail.
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