Had a lovely time at Palmerston with my family… it’s just so nice having an Aunt and cousins in the country.. lovely.

So, a leisurely non photograph filled few days up there, before heading down to Wellington to see Glynn and Jayne and Isla. Maaike flew up on the Friday evening and it was just such a lovely relaxed weekend. So chilled – great to see Isla (G&J’s 2 year old) turning into a real little human.

Hilarious – as soon (like one foot in the door) she was over and handed me a book saying “will you read this to me please”. I obliged.

Partly ‘cos I was looking forward to these:

Glynn has been brewing beer for _quite_ a while. This year he was one of 4 winners of a beer competition in Wellington. You had to come up with a style of beer which reflected the charachter of the city. Glynn dedicated his to “Blanket man“, a local Wellingtonian who died this year. It was an excellent beer – and a deserved winner. Anyway, the beer was then produced by a local company and poured in bars all over the city, and available in supermarkets. Well done that man.

Other than that… had a lovely time at a place called Carlucciland. An environmentallist bought some land out of town and started producing sculptures from metal he’d welded. It’s so very cool.. and has a great mini-golf tournament (Maaike won – by a hair!)

Excellent excellent times – a brilliant way to end my holiday before starting work..

Finally – Maaike and Isla’s lego creations.. and a picture of Gollum… as the Hobit is about to come out in the cinema’s and Wellington is going mental.

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.

Still, a beautiful tramp – thoroughly enjoyed it.

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

1. Wasting a powder day.
2. 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.

View Larger Topographic Map

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.

Good times.