Excellent weekends snowboarding at temple basin (Dave, Neil, Anthony). Not a huge crowd up there, which certainly made all the difference as I didn’t need to worry about crashing into people (too much). Hopefully a few pics to come sometime, I didn’t bring my camera this time, so no pics of the really scenic lodge we stayed in.. or the off piste skiing we did.

This guy writes about NZ skiing very well.. and explains the infamous nutcrackers. Basically the club fields here have a very simple mechanism for getting up the slopes. There’s a fast moving rope running over metal wheels, you grab onto the rope with one hand (with a leather glove protector to stop your glove melting (they do)), and then once you’re up to speed on the rope, you get what looks like a nutcracker (attached by a foot long rope to a belt harness attached to you) and whip it over the rope so that it grabs on. Then you simply hold on for dear life. lots of fun

I’d learned before on the pummers and t-bars that you should leave your back foot out of the snowboard… however here, it was best to put both feet in. The reason became quite apparent when one of the other people on the ski-field (a snowboarder) managed to fall towards the top of the tow-rope. They tumbled down the quite steep and icy slope, but with only having one foot locked in.. well.. I think they got away with just a broken knee..

Definitly exciting though, I mean those ropes are *fast* and the slopes are damn steep, really do hope I get some pics. So that’s probably the end of the snow season for this year, but am really quite happy with the progress I’ve made..

Productive week at work, mainly ‘cos David has been out sick unfortunatly..Quite quiet with Florian away climbing at Paynes Forde, really looking forward to getting back into the outdoor climbing scene now that the weather is warmer.

Glynn got his visa extension – 2 days before the old one was due to run out, so headed out for pints and pool last night, great fun. Hoping to get up to Temple Basin ski field at the weekend.. $100 for accommodation, 2 days ski-passes and food. At least I think there’s food ;) So hopefully that’ll happen. Mind you, old college friends are having a reunion for..

Ben.. who has just completed two and a half years on Bird Island working for the British Antarctic Survey… so I kinda want to give them a call and say hello. Hopefully there’s a phone in the ski-logde!!

Absolutely fantastic day really… mainly ‘cos Glynn is going to be moving in when Florian leaves..

Florian you see is off to Europe for 4 months.. so had to find a replacement.. Maeve and Andy are leaving to head travelling on Friday – working their way back to Ireland over the next 5 months I think it is. Hope they have an excellent trip – guess it’ll be great, taking in the North Island, then some climbing in Oz, and finally Asia.

So that means Glynn will be getting a new house, and in the interim he’ll move in here until Feb/March ish :) It’s gonna rock. Really super happy about it. Found out today that another college climbing friend John Loane will be in NZ visiting his girlfriend Maeve on the North Island and then hoping to take in a road trip on the South Island too… so hopefully if another climbing friend Domhnall is in town at the same ish maybe kinda time it could be a real trip. Course, if not, it’ll just be an excuse to take two extra weeks of holiday!! :)

Woohoo! a great day – topped off with finding out ACC is going to cover phisio to strengthen my knees (so more totally free phisio) and also doing more rolling of kayaks with Warick and Mhairi.. I’ve got no style at all at rolling.. raw power pulling me into an ungainly roll.. still, making progress.. hoping to get to do some real outdoors stuff next week… (just practice in the surf first of all!)

Friday took the day off work. Nice relaxing start.. up at 05:15 for an 05:40 pick up! Drove (well, was driven) up to the top of the South Island – to hike the Heaphy Track with Mhairi, Marcel and Johan. The Heaphy is one of the Great Walks. Personally I thought it was a good walk! the second day was great, but the first day left a bit to be desired.

At the start – on the left is Johan (Sweedish) and on the right Marcel (German).

Now, DOC says it’s 82km.. but addition says 77km. Either way, quite a hike to do in 48 hours. We started at 2pm on the Friday – and got to Saxons hut about 9pm ish that evening. Quite tired feet. The walk to Saxons was pretty much bush walking all the way – not the most exciting terrain really.

The second day though was far more interesting. There were some quite cool moss-art sculptures that I totally walked by, but one of the others pointed them out. There were loads of these things.

It’s a little scary though, here you can see Mhairis’ leg having a lucky escape from being utterly devoured by a carnivourous snail. Not actually sure if this one is carnivorous, but there are ones which are… grow up to 10cm in diameter. Which is kinda impressive! (to me)

We didn’t hear any Kiwi (one of the few places they still are)

The landscape did change and become much lusher the lower we got.. and far more interesting. The second half definitly was ‘great walk’ material.

In the middle – about 12pm we met Joe and Lachlain, two other (crazily fit) trampers from the CUTC. We swapped car keys – as the Heaphy is not a round trip, so you end up about a 4 hour drive from your car… hence the swapping. Joe and Lachlain did the entire walk (all 77km) between 5am and 9pm on Saturday. Which is kinda impressive. And they were carrying bags. Savage.

AAaaaanyway, so yes, stayed Sat evening in Heaphy hut – which was lovely, right down on the beach…

Did get to make some kinda cool shadows (and you can see the hut in the background too)

And then finally out at the other end.. it was fun all in all. I was pretty happy with how my knee held up – did tape it as per the phisios’ instructions.. and it held up well…

So yes.. a great weekend – we totally lucked out with the weather too, two days of blue skies, but it’d rained on Thursday all day, and also was starting to rain as we drove away at the far end. Rockin’

So, last night, I managed to roll a kayak.