Mt Buttle

Skied Mt Buttle from north ridge. Went up Marguerite Main and had horrible time going through alders from 700-900m. Very low winds all day, with on and off snow fall. Could feel a crust formed from Sunday’s warm snow up to ~1200m, but it still skied nicely. We did some ski cuts on small convex features and could only get the 5cm of fresh snow that had fallen yesterday/today to let go in small size 0.25 slides, little propagation but with pronounced crown lines. Heard some small wumphs. We managed risk by managing terrain, stuck to low angle or very short steeper sections making sure we weren’t over any terrain traps. Overall a long slog (9 hours) but had my best descent on the South Island: 400m vertical from summit to mainline