So… I ended my job at Egressive and had 3 weeks off before starting at Resolve Digital. I spent a couple of the weeks migrating snowpool to the latest version of Rails. There was also some time for a quick tramp and trip to the N. Island.
Off to Cameron Hut (Aerosmith range) was the order of the day. It was quite the walk in.
It’s funny, usually while tramping in New Zealand you’d be (un?)lucky to see anyone else, but we saw 3? people walking out, and we met another two (Father and Son) at the hut itself. We made a slight … tactical error and perhaps didn’t read the guide as closely as we should have. The approach to the hut is on the True Right (which means the right hand side of the river as it flows downhill). Unfortunately we took a more … direct… line… and had some pretty scratched up legs to show for it as the direct route was covered in spaniard grass (v. v. spikey) and other scratchy plants.
We have had some wonderfully rubbish weather over the last few weeks. Fortunately, while it’s raining in Christchurch, it is still cold enough to be snowing in the hills. So… with some encouragement from friends – I decided to leave the snowboard at home and see if I could manage to ski on powder.
I managed! Nice to have 60cm or so of fresh powder to learn in. It made the inevitable face-plants a lot less painful than they might otherwise have been.
So yes, headed up with Mark Adams (right above) and two of his friends Jack and Kerry. It was simply a spectacular day – definitely the best this season and quite possibly the best ever.
I also brought up some snowpool stickers and they’d mostly disappeared by the end of the day… which was nice. A couple of videos.. no GoPro this time unfortunately.
As you can see in the difference of styles… I’ve a *long* way to go – but, without wanting to blow ones trumpet too much, I’m *very happy* with progress so far.
Finally… a picture of the inclinator which Broken River installed two years ago. It saves you a 30 minute walk up the hill.. however, when we got there this morning there was a massive queue so we decided to walk up anyway. Definitely didn’t need a warm up by the time we got to ski!
So much fun. Looking forward to next year already.
So.. seeing as I’ve just learned to ski.. I was a little scared of
Wasting a powder day.
Getting wiped out.
in the 8cm or so of fresh powder that Broken River just got. So… ditching my skis I headed up with Paddy, Mark & Kate and had a great time boarding about. I think I might have bought shoes that are just a bit too small… as, oddly enough, my ski boots are *more* comfortable than my boarding boots.
It was just lovely boarding about though… Paddy and I had a couple of great runs in one of the back basins (Allans Basin). Here are two video’s – one of me boarding, the other (taken by me using Paddy’s Go-Pro video camera) of him. Good times.
So.. the other day we headed out to visit our friends Mike & Heather who live towards Mt. Oxford. Mike suggested heading for a quick walk up Mt. Oxford.
Generally, when living so close to the Southern Alps you kinda think that the closer Canterbury hills are just that.. hills. In reality of course, they’re still reasonable bumps on the landscape. You go from ~340m up to 1364m. We booted up and down in 4 1/2 hours or something (my thighs burned for 4 days! definitely not used to running down hill). This really is one of the wonderful things about living in New Zealand and in Christchurch – quakes ‘n all.
Had been slightly dreading & quite excited about this weekend for a while. My friend Paddy is heading back to Ireland in March and has a few things on his NZ-tick list to finish off. One of which was mountain biking the Heaphy. It’s a 78km bike ride and you have to carry your gear on your back (or a freeload rack (rugged back-carrier))
Track’s profile looks like this:
It’s also not _at_all_ a round-trip… you can see a nice map here, so we helicoptered in (here’s Paddy)
I’m afraid I didn’t take many pictures – partly ‘cos it was raining a bit, partly ‘cos I didn’t have a convenient crash-proof place to keep it and mostly because Paddy and Ian both had go-pro’s (that odd looking box Paddy has in the picture above) with which they took masses of video. I’m hoping to get the finished product and link to it on the blog (in a month or two when they’ve finished the editing!)
Maaike was amazing – she definitely loves her new bike… though she definitely abused it on this trip. That said, the bike got its own back and she has a few new scrapes ;) here she is on the second day..
It made quite a change from the last time I was here, many many moons ago with Mhairi and Marcel when we tramped in fine weather. I do reckon mountain biking is the way to go though, if you’ve got the chance. It’s a stunning ride though with the scenery changing completely from beech forest on the East coast, to rainforest? on the West.. stunning.
Originally we’d planned on taking 3 days (2 nights) to do the trip, but as there was supposed to be a southerly coming through on the Saturday, we decided to press on (at Perry hut) and continue through to James Mackay hut. We were slightly naughty as we’d booked in to Perry.. but there was just enough room at Mackay hut (more due to luck than anything else). It would have been an uncomfortable night on the floor!
Then out on the Saturday – along the beach – all in all an excellent trip.
The other thing worthy of note was the hostel we stayed in (Rongo’s). It had the most wonderful collection of art installed around the place. Each summer the owner invites a “resident artist” out, to live in Karamea and “do art”.. and I think they generally gift a piece to the hostel.
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