Given most South Island trips are minimum 3 day commitments (day walk in, day climb, day out) we decided to use a bit of lateral thinking to successfully nail a near Nelson Lakes top 100 peak in under 2 days. Making a late Wednesday weather decision and spending $270 got us an early Saturday flight to Nelson. Our rental 4WD got us across a 2’ deep river and up 15km of track for a 3 hour walk in to a 1200m basin under Scotts Knob (2260m). Talk about avalanche damage, the basin was chocka with snow and several thousand smashed pine trees! A 6am start the next day saw us take advantage of hard cramponing conditions under a BSD to summit by 9. After several hours lying around in the sun soaking up the majestic expanse of the Nelson Lakes peaks of Travers, Hopeless, Franklin and Kehu on one side, Tappy/Alarm in the distance on the other we slowly descended in the afternoon and exited to return to Wellington just after 8pm. Trip participants Kevin Patterson and Tom Zink. See http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=58249&l=5f23c&id=783826158 for the full story and photo’s.