Headed away for a weekend in the hills with friends. The first day was at Cheeseman where the coverage was pretty average (35-70cm!)… seems to be the way of the future though.  Paddy and I stayed on the field, while Ian and David and Mark went backcountry (touring). I think they found the better snow (and had to work pretty hard for it!)

We stayed the night in a proper bach in Castle Hill… quite strange to back in what used to be the more common way of staying in holiday houses in NZ (cheap place, basic furniture, clean up after yourselves) – rather than the more polished (and expensive) AirBnB’s… it was nice.

The second day we headed up to Broken River. It was an absolute cracker of a day. The conditions were good, the sun was out, the saxophonist from The Black Seeds was playing away over lunch.. it was just great.

Skied all the way out down Alan’s Basin and out towards the road. I was pretty tired by the end of it. Managed to get stuck getting out of my boot (that has never happened before!), but, Ian sorted me out without needing to chop my foot off ;)

Brilliant weekend – Thanks for organising Mark!

The ski season has been slow to arrive in NZ. July 2023 is the hottest month on record, and that’s not great for ski fields. I think it’s almost certain in my lifetime, if not the next 10 years, that all of the club fields will be closed (and perhaps all of the ski-fields).

Anyway, we took a sneaky midweek day and headed up to Mt Hutt with Ian and Paddy. We left around 7am, maybe a little after, and the top carpark was already full by the time we got there. Now, with that said, they’ve really upped their organisation – there were frequent shuttles up the hill, there were about 10 ticket booths, and queuing for the lifts never took more than about 5 mins… it really was pretty good.

Legs were just screaming by the end of the day!