We got to our overnight stop, Springfield (for an idea of where it is, its 20km from the epicentre of the NZ earthquake at the weekend!), ready to put our skis and boards on the following day. Chris and Naomi chose to travel the 30km to the slopes to check it out for the next day. Its not like in the European alps where the resorts are connected to the slopes, here the slopes are completely on their own in the middle of nowhere. So the first 15km were on normal road, then we turned off onto a gravel road for the last 15km. This gravel road climbed and climbed and climbed to the point where it felt like we were the equivalent to Ben Nevis high, when finally, through the bends in the road, we caught sight of the slopes! Scary scary road! With shear drops on one side of us, if anything had come in the other direction on some parts of the road, we would have been stuffed. Sussed it all out and then headed back to our $3.50pp camp site for the evening! It was pouring with rain all night, so we cooked dinner and we all got an early night as we had to head to the slopes just after 8am.
So we all planned to do snowboard lessons the next day.
We did the main road to the gravel road again. Steph and Steph came in our car as the only person that felt confident driving the road to the slopes was Chris. But as it had rained all night, with the altitude of the slopes, it had snowed pretty heavily overnight and the track up the mountain was only passable with snow chains. So out we all got, put the chains on like novices as none of us had a clue how to, and got on the steep road up again. About 250m from the car park, the car started sliding around all over the place. We jumped out and found that one snow chain had completely disappeared, while the other was all caught up underneath it. To top things off, the snow bus was behind us! So while Naomi ran down the mountain to find the lost snow chain, the people on the bus helped to put the car as close to inside of the road as poss as we were right in the way. Naomi had to run halfway down the mountain to find the other snow chain. We were very lucky nothing more serious happened.
As it took so long to get the snow chains back on again, we sent Steph and Steph on ahead to get themselves sorted for the 10am class.
We finally got to the slopes at 9.55am but were told it was too late for the lesson, which actually worked to our advantage. It meant we could go onto the beginners slopes and practise our turns and see how far off being beginners we were.
Naomi was having no problems with her edges and getting her heel turns, but here problem was it took her 10 attempts to get up the Pomma drag lift lol! When she finally got up to the top, the cheeky lift attendant said to her “he was getting lonely at the bottom without her!!” Lol!
On one of the attempts up the draglift, Naomi fell off and badly tweaked her knee, there was a distinct pop and crack. She persevered till lunchtime, then exchanged her boards and bindings for good old trusted skis.
Chris on the other was like a fish to water with snowboarding. It only took him a couple of runs down the slopes before he was looking like he’d been doing it for years! As we had paid for afternoon lessons, Chris used his lesson to get tips from the instructor on fine tuning his turning and control. But by the end of the lesson, he was told to head up the mountain to some harder/steeper slopes :) whilst Chris had been having his lessons, Naomi headed up the mountain to let loose on her skis!
The end of the day was spent coming down from the midway point on the T bar drag lift, but as we were knackered, it was taking its toll on us all and so Chris only did a few runs.
Manc Steph didn’t really enjoy being on the snow much so choose to sit out the afternoon session. To be honest, we didn’t blame her as the weather was terrible. We had been in a blizzard all morning! While scouse Steph was picking up snowboarding very quickly :) she was just having the same fun that Naomi had with the drag lifts lol!
Due to the bad weather, this is why we don’t have many photos and the ones we do have are a bit misty!!!
Hot showers, chips at the local pub and early to bed after a good day on the slopes :) almost an apres ski evening in europe lol!
Arthurs Pass
We were going to do 2 days skiing, but as Naomi’s knee was suffering and Chris’s legs were very tired, we plodded on along the road hoping to get to see some of Arthurs Pass today. When we left the campsite in the morning, the weather was still terrible. Lots of rain and very very low cloud, so there was not a lot of confidence for Arthurs Pass which was about 100km away.
However, as we got through the eastern mountains and got closer to the west coast, the clouds lifted and the rain stopped and there were smiles all round!
We were on the road to the West Coast through Arthur’s Pass National Park which is a valley lined with mountains and beautiful scenery. Once we were in Arthurs Pass village, we went for a couple of walks into the hills. Our first walk was to the Devils Punch Bowl falls which is a huge 130m high and is a 30min walk from the car park :) we chose the easy walks today as everyone was shattered, this first walk was meant to be one of the easy ones, but was very up and downhill! Exhausting!
And our second walk was into a wood that reminded us of something from Alice in Wonderland, dark and yet beautiful at the same time.
The opening that the path lead out to reminded us of scenes from Japanese films, and proceeded to attend to imitate them :)
After another exhausting day of exercise but in beautiful scenery, we headed over to the west coast through the Pass and stayed in a nice DOC campsite that evening, with plans to do nothing active the next day :)
The next day was spent driving south to Glacier territory. It was a good 200km but as it was all windy and hilly roads, it took most of the day, which was a good thing as we didn’t fancy doing too much and it was pouring with rain too!
