During the winter we headed up to Lake Mavis for a winter camping trip, an experience that I recommend for all hardy trampers with a sense of adventure.We tramped up the Mingha Track heading to Goat Pass hut. About 500m from the hut you head up to the right. There were a lot of suggestions to the way that we should go but this scribe suggests that you go up the shingle chute especially if it is full of well packed snow. It takes around 1.5hrs to reach the lake.

When we got there the lake was frozen and around a foot of snow lay on the ground. We camped below the Mt Oates side only because it offered the best camping in these conditions, there was also a large rock that we could use as a kitchen table.

Because the conditions were perfect for some good crampon work we headed up to the saddle that allowed us access to Mt Oates but arriving here we discovered that the avalanche danger was too great so we took a pleasant detour and looked over onto Fallen Mountain.

The whole trip took us two days of reasonably easy tramping. The snow was hard and easy to walk on -- it would have been a harder trip if snow was soft. I highly recommend this trip.