South Island Ski Trip

September 17-24 1999 (Me & Brendan)

Friday

The plane was due to leave at 11.20, but was delayed 10 minutes, and then didn't end up taking off until about 12.00. We didn't have window seats :-( The Auckland Blues rugby team was on the plane too. I didn't know any of them except Michael Jones though, but they definitely looked like a rugby team. The weather was very nice in Christchurch. We (eventually) caught a Maui shuttle bus, which drove us to the Maui depot about 2 minutes from the airport. There was a free email terminal there so I took the opportunity to send a cyber postcard. We waited for a short time, then we got called over to be told all about our campervan, pay the insurance and bond etc. We were then introduced to our campervan. The driving part looked quite old. It was a converted work van (Mitsubishi LC300 or something like that) and had a column gear stick. Definitely nothing flash. The camper part looked quite nice though - well pretty much as expected anyway. We piled our gear into it and set off for the ski hire place (which I found on the Internet the day before - it was very close to the airport and the hire was quite reasonable). It was very easy to find. We hired our skis - $88 for 7 days. We were asked if we wanted carving skis, but just stuck with the normal kind, as carving skis were $123. We then headed to KFC for lunch, then to Pack 'n Save to do some shopping. At last we got on the road (at about 4.30 I think). We were headed for Twizel. This was meant to be about 3 or 4 hours away. It was a really nice day so we got a good look at the scenery - until it got dark that is. The roads were very very straight as we headed through the Canterbury Plains. We tried to plug the CD player into the tape deck, but it wouldn't play - spent ages trying to figure out how to get it to go, but gave up. Even a normal tape wouldn't play. Luckily I had brought the speakers for the CD player, so we used those. Not too good quality though as the sound of the van drowned out most of the CD sound. Oh well it was better than nothing. We arrived in Twizel around 8pm and found the camping ground. There was only one other campervan there, so we were able to pick our spot. For dinner we had mince pies - there was a microwave in the campervan, which was very handy indeed! The sky was completely clear and we could see lots of stars. Promising, we thought, for the day's skiing ahead.

Saturday

After a very restless night (stupid campervan beds) we awoke to look at the window and find ... fog. Hmmm, not necessarily bad for skiing, just very depressing. Brendan got up at 6.30 and made our lunches, I woke up at about 7am. We were ready to leave at about 8am. Stopped at the petrol station and read the ski report which wasn't too bad. The ski field we were going to was Ohau, which is a small commercial field. The drive there was quite nice, past some nice lakes that reminded us of American summer camp type lakes (lots of pine trees). The road up to the field was unsealed (of course - every road up to ski fields in the Sth Island are unsealed - except for Coronet Peak in Queenstown I think) and very narrow. It was a bit scary, but we didn't go off the side of the mountain luckily. When we got to the top there were about 5 cars in the car park. Wow they weren't kidding when they said uncrowded! This ski field is pretty small all right - 1 rope tow, 1 platter lift and 1 T bar. The weather was overcast, but not too bad. The price was $39 - very cheap for a Sth Island ski field. We put our skis on, and I felt pretty unstable on them - had it only been 2 weeks since I had skied last? We did the platter lift a few times - this was a nice slope. Then went up the T bar and did the green run down. Green run? I wouldn't really call it that. The snow quality wasn't the best either which didn't help. I fell down heaps of times! Must have fallen about 10 times the whole day. It was hard work. For lunch we went back to the campervan - it was nice to have somewhere to have lunch. By the end of the day we were quite tired, though I managed to make it down the whole run twice without falling over! Maybe my skiing was improving. We left at about 3pm as we had another drive ahead of us to get to Wanaka. This took about 3 hours I think. The weather turned crap on us and it was absolutely pouring down by the time we got into Wanaka. That's really depressing for a ski holiday! We had a choice of 3 camping grounds, and chose the one with a view and a spa pool (it was a good choice too). It was 11 kms out of town though, at a place called Glendhu Bay. It was on the way to Treble Cone ski field though. We checked in and booked a spa, had a hurried dinner (hot dogs - yummy) and rushed to our spa. Bliss! The spa was fantastic. It was one of those portable ones, was very big and had all sorts of therapeutic massage jets in it. It was the best spa I've ever been in.

Sunday

Weather wasn't too great in the morning (still overcast) but at least the rain had stopped. The ski report seemed ok, if not great. We decided we would go to Treble Cone, and save Cardrona for a really nice day, since we had unlimited skiing at Treble Cone and only 1 free day for Cardrona. We headed up the mountain, again unsealed. The road was a bit better though - it was wider, so not quite so scary. It took about 30 minutes I think to get there. We didn't see any other cars going up and found the car park to be quite empty (although not quite as empty as at Ohau!). We parked quite close to the main building, next to a few other Maui campervans (when the Treble Cone car park gets full it resembles a Maui Depot). From where we were there looked to be hardly any snow! The bottom part was devoid of snow except for one track (which has lots of snowmakers on it). We had heard that Treble Cone didn't have a lot of snow on it - it was still a bit of a shock though! While we got our ski gear on it started snowing! Probably not good news for skiing, but it was quite fun. It kept on snowing too. Since the visibility was quite bad was just stuck to the main run - 'Triple Treat' - a road like track right from the top of the main chairlift, right to the bottom. This is a very nice green run. BTW, Treble Cone has a six seater express chairlift - very roomy! At 10.30 we stopped for morning tea. As we were sitting in the Cafeteria the snow seemed to be getting heavier and heavier outside and the visibility worse and worse. Well with 5 days of skiing ahead of us there didn't seem to be that much point in skiing in that, so we decided to call it a day and instead go to 'Puzzling World' which we had passed on the way into Wanaka the day before. We went back to the campervan and found lots of Keas about. They are a very common sight at Treble Cone - thanks to people like Brendan who feed them when you're not meant to! They are very cute birds though. We took a few photos of them (5 actually). We then headed off to puzzling world. Puzzling World has a 3d maze (it was the first in the world apparently though not anymore as there is at least one at Rainbows End and one at Rotorua too), a tilting house, a hologram hall and a puzzle centre. The puzzle centre is free; it's just a whole lot of those IQ type puzzles on tables. You can just sit down and play with them. They have a whole lot of them for sale too of course. We played with the puzzles for a while. When I was at Darryn's place the week before he had a puzzle there that had a piece of string in a loop that you had to get off these rings. I spent ages fiddling with it and couldn't see how it could be done, and was unsure that the string was actually in the right place. So when I saw a puzzle like that here (not quite the same, but the same kind of thing), I discovered that indeed the string had been in the wrong place! So I sat down and fiddled with it trying to get the string off - no luck, but at least this time I knew the string was in the right place. Brendan was getting a bit bored because he doesn't have the patience for those puzzles - 'This is impossible, you can't get this ring off - it just doesn't fit!' (after trying to force it off). Then we went into the hologram hall and tilted house. The tilted house is this room that's made on a severe lean. It is really disorientating, and makes you a little dizzy. It distorts your sense of gravity and things seem to go uphill. Quite fun really. After that I had another go at the ring/string thing (this time a giant version) and my persistence paid off - I did it! Yay!

After puzzling world we went into town to buy a pillow (the campervan pillows were crap), then back to the camping ground. The funniest thing happened then, the tape deck started to work! Amazing. It wouldn't work with the CD player though. Also the van made a brief beeping noise as if we were being warned about something. It went away though, so we forgot about it, even though it was puzzling.

When we got back to the campground we took a walk down the lake front (did I mention that camping ground was right on the edge of Lake Wanaka - just beautiful!) and admired the beautiful scenery of snow-capped mountains (even if they were obscured by a bit of cloud). We saw some tuis and wood pigeons too.

Dinner was steak and pasta. We then had another lovely spa, did some laundry and went to bed.

Monday

Weather today looked a little bit improved, though cloud was still hanging threateningly around the mountains. Report was about the same as the day before, although the good news was that they'd had 2 cm of new snow. Up to Treble Cone again. The beeping noise came back on the way up. It seemed to beep only when we turned to the right. It was a very high-pitched irritating noise and we didn't have a clue what was causing it.

Visibility was a bit better today. Most of the time it was quite clear although the light flattened out a bit at times. We skied a blue run off to the side of the chairlift called 'Main Street'. Actually we did a run called 'camel' to start with. It was filled with powder, which caused quite a few falls for me. I didn't like it, as it was hard to ski (bumpy, as you would gather from its name). So from then on we stuck to the main 'main street' trail, which was nice and wide. The snow was mostly quite nice too. There was a huge jump right at the top. That was really fun! You can get up really high with it. Brendan managed to stay on his feet once out of 3 I think. I fell down both times I did it - but it was really fun anyway to jump so high. We watched a few people go down it really fast - they got super high - they looked pretty good. We also went over to do another trail on a T bar on the other side of the chairlift. It looked quite steep, and we had a bit of a problem deciding which was the easiest way to go. In the end it was actually quite nice. We never did get to do that run again though - a bit of a shame. We had booked a lesson for 1.30, so we had to rush our lunch, which was pasta (we had run out of rolls). There were only 3 of us in the group for the lesson (the other was a girl called Katherine from the South of England who was quite nice). 3 is a good number for a lesson because then you get a 2 hour lesson (if there are only 2 you only get 1 hour). Our instructor was called Terry (that's what it sounded like, but perhaps it's spelt differently than that) who was French (although we found out he's been in NZ for over 10 years, so I'm pretty sure he was putting a lot of that accent on just for effect!) The main thing he told us to do was to keep our shoulders to the front. This is quite different to what I had been doing, so it was quite difficult to achieve. He also told us we had to look down the mountain, not at the snow in front of us. Again, it goes against what comes naturally. It gave us quite a bit to practice anyway. By the time the lesson finished it was nearly 4pm (and I had to go to the toilet), so we called it a day. The beeping noise was still there on the way down, getting worse. We went into Wanaka to see if someone could tell us the cause. We discovered it was the warning for the radiator water, which we filled up and it went away. There must have been a leak in the engine somewhere though because we had to fill the radiator up about another 5 times during the rest of the holiday. The weather had turned pretty crap; raining heavily and it started sleeting too on the way back to the campground. It cleared up a little bit though after that.

Another spa that night!

Tuesday

We were going to go to Cardrona today but the ski report sounded a bit better for Treble Cone so we decided to delay Cardrona for one more day (it was still snowing at Cardrona). There had been a big snowfall overnight, which was evident from the snow on the hills that used to be bare, just above us. Driving up to the ski field the snow was down to heaps lower than it had been the previous day. The weather was quite clear when we got up to the top - a bit of high cloud, but the visibility was good. We must have had a really early start today because we were in the queue for the chairlift before it even opened! . Brendan had hired some carving skis because we had heard reports about how they are meant to make it heaps easier to turn. He decided they were quite good, but didn't rave about them as much as some people we had heard. We skied all day, practicing what we'd learnt the day before. Because of the new snow there was quite a bit of deep powder - this was actually quite a bit of a pain at times because your skis get stuck in it. It didn't pay to venture somewhere where the groomers hadn't been. I fell over a number of times in this way. However the falls are very soft, and quite fun. Brendan went over a little jump that had very deep powder the other side and fell over face first. I didn't see the fall but I did see the results - he was covered head to foot with snow. Quite amusing really. We decided to be a little daring in the afternoon and ski somewhere we hadn't been before that looked quite difficult. The problem was we didn't know exactly where the trail was meant to go. We had to end up following other people who didn't really seem to know where they were going either. We ended up somewhere we didn't really want to be - a very steep pipe type thing. Well we negotiated ourselves out of it ok, and it was quite nice further on. But after that experience we were too stuffed to get the nerve up to try it again and find the right route. We were really stuffed by the end of the day. When we came down from the mountain that afternoon we went for a drive up Mount Aspiring road (which is on the way back from Treble Cone but you turn left instead of right). It was an unsealed road that went up to Mount Aspiring National Park. We didn't get all the way up it because the road got a bit rough. But we got a nice view of Mt Aspiring (the photo didn't come out too good unfortunately). It was very pretty, a nice river, trees and surrounded by snowy mountains. The weather had improved drastically and when we got back to the campsite it was the finest it had been since we got there - no clouds at all so at last we had a complete view of the mountains surrounding us. We could see mountains we didn't even know were there. It was very inspiring for the next day's skiing. That night we - had another spa of course!

Wednesday

We woke up to find the fantastic weather was still with us! We set off for Cardrona, which was a 45 min drive away. The road going up the mountain was terrible! Far worse than the Treble Cone road, lots of wash boarding. It was a bumpy ride. Cardrona looked a bit busier than Treble Cone had been, but we still were able to park reasonably close to the chairlift - close enough to go to the camper for lunch (which is what we had been doing, much easier than carrying it with us). There was lots of snow at Cardrona (which is what we had heard). We started off with the main chairlift and skied to the bottom, which was a green run. There were green runs all over the mountain and I wanted to do these first, but Brendan had other ideas, he grew impatient with me trying to work from the map where to go and said we should just go down. So we ended up just skiing down the blue runs. The first one we did was really cool. It was a bit steeper than what we had been doing at TC, but it was nice and wide with fantastic snow and was really nice to ski. It was good to use to practice our newfound techniques. We did this run a few times, then decided to head over to what people were referring to as 'The Captain's Basin' which is a chairlift on the far side of the mountain (there are only chairlifts at Cardrona - 3 of them, 2 quads and one double). This was really nice! Nice snow and it wasn't so cold on that side. Nice wide trails. When we decided to go back for lunch we took a route called 'Queenstown Return' which has a view of Queenstown from it. It is a narrowish trail right around the boundary of the field. It is not steep at all, in fact some parts have no gradient at all and you have to push yourself along. It was really nice and relaxing though with a nice view. After lunch we decided to demo some carving skis (they had some that you could take out for a few runs to see what they were like). Brendan had already tried them the day before, but thought he'd have another go. Brendan got some but they didn't have any small enough for me!!! You're meant to use them 10cm shorter than you usually use. The shortest they had were one pair of 160 (I use 160 so am meant to use 150) but they were out, the guy said to come back in half an hour. We went skiing around for Brendan to try them out (up the chairlift, down to the other chairlift, up that one, down to the other one, up that one then back around the edge). Then Brendan returned them, but even though it was 30 mins later, the 160's still weren't there (I wasn't very happy) and he said to come back 15 or 20 mins later. I grumbled a little about why they didn't have any for short people and how it just wasn't fair ... Anyway we came back in a little while and they had the 160's there, so I was happy to try them even though the guy said they were packing up in 20 mins which should give me a chance to do about 2 runs (actually the chairlifts are so slow 2 runs took about 30 minutes). I was quite sold on them - they really did make turning easier for me. Brendan didn't think there was a great difference but I noticed quite a bit of difference. It just took less effort. By the time I returned them it was 3.30pm so we decided to leave, as we wanted to head into Queenstown and see some of it in the light (we would probably have skied the rest of the 30 minutes, but Brendan needed to go the toilet so we thought we might as well stop). Cardrona is on the way to Queenstown from Wanaka, which is why we picked today to go there. First stop though was Cardrona Pub. We had been informed by Darryn that it was a famous pub (in a Speights ad or something) and indeed on the map it was marked as a historic building, so we stopped to take a photo and look inside. It was really quite nice inside; it had lots of atmosphere and the yummy smell of mulled wine. There was an outside part too, it was just lovely really. Would have been nice to stay for a drink but we wanted to head into Queenstown so didn't stop for long. The road to Queenstown was unsealed most of the way - and it's a secondary highway! Unbelievable really - we spent a while wondering why they don't seal it. It's also the highest main road in the country. It goes up to the top of a hill and winds down again. I think it's meant to be quite a scenic route as I found a postcard of it (called the Crown Pass or something like that), which I sent to Darryn (as it had the Cardrona Pub on it). Anyway we got to Queenstown while it was still light and found the Gondola, which we proceeded to go up. What a lovely view! We went on the luge 5 times too. It was pretty cold, but fun. The weather was just fantastic. Then we looked in the gift shop (which is where I got the postcard for Darryn) and went back down. Next we tried to find somewhere for dinner. I wanted to have a donner kebab, but we wandered the streets of Queenstown and couldn't find anywhere that sold them. Strange, very strange. Brendan wanted KFC, but I insisted on something a little bit more original so we ended up inside a shopping centre at the food hall eating Mexican. Quite nice, very filling. It's amazing that all the shops stay open so late in Queenstown. There are so many touristy shops selling polar fleeces and woollen things. We then tried to find some stamps so I could send Darryn's postcard, however this proved to be a problem also. We ended up buying some 'Kiwi Mail' stamps and posting it in a Kiwi Mail box. It was dark all the way back and our tape deck and radio had stopped working all together (would you believe it) so we had to sing songs to amuse ourselves. The trip back seemed pretty fast (the map book said 1.50 hours, but we were back in about 1 hour, so not quite sure what the story is there). We decided that Queenstown was an ok place, but too touristy and that Wanaka is a much nicer place.

Thursday

A bit of a sleep in today as it was our last day in Wanaka so we weren't going skiing (we had to drive up to Mt Hutt which is a 5 hour drive). In the morning we took a jet boat (for hire from the camping ground) out for a ride around the lake. It was a very fast boat. The weather was absolutely fantastic, no clouds at all. It was just lovely zooming around the lake in a boat. We landed at an island and walked to the top to see a lake within a lake (the only one in NZ if what I read was right). That was 2 hours. Then we went for a drive up to Treble Cone (not to ski though it was tempting - it was such a fantastic day) to buy a souvenir polar fleece. I had meant to buy it the last time we were here but the gift shop closed at 4pm (stupid time to close if you ask me), then I was going to buy something at Cardrona but they didn't have what I wanted, so Brendan agreed to drive up especially to buy it. Then we drove into Wanaka to eat lunch (wedges) and have one last look at the lake. Then we drove off. Two hours later we stopped in Twizel to have a go on the water bikes that were in the camping ground we stayed at when we were there. That was hard work. The lake (Lake Ruataniwha) was almost an electric blue colour. The water was very cloudy which made the sky reflect off it slightly differently, which gave it a very sharp blue colour. It was a very pretty colour actually, but quite strange. Brendan asked the campground guy and he said it was from the snow, though we didn't really see how that explained it. As we drove on we saw that all the lakes in that area were the same colour. We stopped again at a Mt Cook lookout to take a picture and have a read of the info board. Then we stopped in Tekapo to take a photo of a nice stone church. Did I mention the weather was fantastic? There wasn't a cloud in the sky except for some clouds along the top of a range in the distance. As we drove and drove the range and the clouds got closer and closer, and then we drove under them and it wasn't such a nice day anymore. In fact it was very dull :-( Although once I took my sunglasses off it didn't look quite so bad :-) This was a bit depressing as we had been hoping for a fantastic last day skiing at Mt Hutt and now it looked as if this cloud was thwarting those plans. Our destination was finally reached at about 7pm. It was a camping ground a little bit out of Methven, which is a town at the foot of Mt Hutt. That night we had a spa, but it wasn't nearly as nice as the spa at the camping ground in Wanaka.

Friday

Woke up to a fantastic day! Yay, we would have a sunny last day skiing after all. Drove up to Mt Hutt up yet another windy unsealed road. Found that it was quite busy, but again we were quite early so we were parked quite close. Mt Hutt was very icy. A real contrast to Cardrona. It softened up a bit as the day went on but there was still an occasional very icy patch. The track in the part that we skied for most of the day was very wide, mostly good snow and steep, though nothing we couldn't handle. One part right at the top was extremely icy though! Steep too. That wasn't pleasant, so we only did that bit once. In the afternoon we got a bit lazy and stuck with just skiing the main chairlift which was quite fun as it had a variety of things like tunnels, paths, jumps, drops and a nice valley with high sides to have fun on. For our last run we went right to the top and skied right to the bottom. I had only fallen over twice the whole day, maybe I was improving. It was a bit depressing taking our skis off. No more skiing until next year :-( Then we had a drive into Christchurch ahead of us, which took 1.5 hours. In Christchurch we stopped to feed the ducks on the Avon and had a look at Cathedral Square. We searched for a Burger King for dinner, which we found in the centre of town, but there was nowhere to park. We thought that there must be another one somewhere until Brendan remembered there are only 8 of them in the whole Sth Island. The chances of finding one seemed pretty low, but I navigated Brendan towards a suburb and - what do you know a Burger King with a car park. Stuffed ourselves with BK, zoomed back to the Maui Terminal and spent an hour or so packing our stuff up, trying to fit it in our bags. We then had a problem because the Maui terminal was closed, meaning no airport shuttle bus. Brendan had to drop me & the luggage off at the airport, then drive back to the terminal and walk back. Luckily it was only 900 metres, so not much of a drama. Plane left on time (9.20pm), though the meal was the worst I've ever had on an airplane. It was a bread roll with chicken stuff, but it was really dry. The only other thing was a tiny picnic bar - no cheese or anything!

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