Playing In The Snow

9th - 13th June 2014

Argh! Even remembering it gets me excited about it again. I was in Queenstown and I was to spend four whole days skiing on Coronet Peak! I had bought a season pass with the intention of working in Queesntown for the winter but I had accepted the job offer for Mt Ruapehu. I don't think I could live in Queenstown as its quite full on. Its great for a holiday but not to live and as I had got such a good vibe from Ohakune I decided to go there instead. The company that ran Coronet Peak, NZ Ski, had rejected my application anyway. I still had my ski pass though so I thought I'd get some use out of it!

Ready for a challenge!

I used four days of my season pass which worked out to be $220 per day, over a $100 more per day than it would have cost if I'd bought individual day passes. Then the equipment hire and the shuttle bus was another $250 for the week so it was quite expensive in total. I was shocked to discover that even the lockers would cost me another $10 a day! I decided against a locker and put my bag next to all the other bags that people had left at the side of the cafe.

Great view!

It was all worth it though! I managed to remember how to attach myself to my skis, 8 years since my one and only skiing holiday. I slid over to the beginners carpet to take me to the top of a very small hill where I tried to remember how to ski.

It was like riding a bike, well almost. It all came back to me pretty quickly and after lunch I went to the top of the mountain to take the easiest route down (which was the only one that was open).

Gloomy

I wasn't expecting there to be brilliant snow as it was very early in the season and the last major snow fall had been three weeks previous. The weather had closed in over the morning, however, and by the afternoon it was full on snowing. The chair lift up to the top was extremely cold with the snow blowing in on the freezing wind. It was like daggers to the face!

Can't see nothing

I managed to make it all the way down to the bottom. I fell over half a dozen times but that's not the point. I'd made it, so I went again. Then again and again and again. I was away!

Snow!

Heaps of snow

From what I overheard from conversations around me was that the opening weekend had been quite poor conditions but this snow meant that the Monday I arrived and the few days after had been much better.

Skiing selfie!

I expected my legs to be killing me on the second day but they were actually ok. It was my arms that were killing me from all the times I had to pick myself up! By the end of the second day though, I managed to get all the way from the top to the bottom without falling over once! I was so proud of myself!

Day 2

The last day was the best day for the view. Not a cloud in the sky. It looked awesome! By now I was getting reasonably confident and picking up speed. This meant, whilst I fell over less, the crashes were getting more spectacular and the bruises bigger!

View from the top

the playground!

Mountains

playground

More mountains

Having got up early on the last day and not wanting to leave I had managed to get myself on the leader board for the day with the most distance covered. I think this is a real achievement given that i hadn't skied in 8 years and even then it was only for a week!

Check out No.9

I did very little else other than ski for the four days in Queenstown except for the final night when Darren and Tara showed up after coming back from their holiday in Indonesia. Apparently the temperature difference was 32 degrees!

We had some beers at the beach as we couldn't drink in the hostels and we couldn't afford the bars. We were very very cold by the time we had finished them and we were happy to join the heat of the Buffalo bar where we stayed for the rest of the night. I enjoyed catching up with those two. We started talking about work about half an hour of meeting up which is a bit depressing but there you go!

The next morning it was time to rejoin the Kiwi Experience. I'd only had about 3 hours sleep so I was very tired waiting for the bus in the bar watching the opening game of the world cup.