Mt Hutt 2011

For me, the ski week began with an early Saturday morning start.  I was catching a taxi to the airport with Josh, who was flying to Auckland an hour or so before I left for Christchurch.  He was continuing on to Honolulu for a family birthday - slightly different agenda to mine.  I was heading down south to meet Mike and Toby and head inland to Mt Hutt.

I landed in Christchurch and settled in to read for a while but Mike and Toby were only 30 minutes away and I was soon reunited with them.  We drove into the town centre to see the damage from the earthquakes for ourselves.  The capricious nature of natural disasters like this was only too apparent as houses unscathed sat next to houses missing chimneys, walls, roofs, cladding and whatever else.  Roads were often like miniature rollercoaster tracks.

I am not overly familiar with Christchurch tall buildings.  In fact, I have always found it difficult to navigate in Chch with its lack of hills to orient myself.  So there wasn't a lot I could look at and go "Oooohhh - that's missing".  But seeing the big multistory hotel next to the casino obviously derelict was astonishing.  There were huge glass windows shattered and curtains billowing out.  Tourists like us were taking photos from the cyclone fence enclosing the central city area.

We left the centre of the city and went to Hornby Shopping Mall.  Hornby Shopping mall is small, soulless and a little bit depressing - but does its job, there's somewhere to park and all the shops you want.  We seem to spend a lot of time there as we pass through from somewhere to somewhere else. Bit like how I used to spend ages at Chch airport even though I never lived there.  Christchurch is the South Island international hub, and Hornby is the closest mall to the airport, as well as directly between it and the main road North or South.

So, we did the usual things at shopping malls - coffees, Brumbies for Cheesymite scrolls for lunch, Pak'n'Save for the week's grocery shopping.  And haircuts!  Mike and Toby were supposed to get haircuts in Dunedin the previous week, but hadn't.  They slotted themselves in, and the hairdresser even rang them back while we were in the supermarket to bump them up the queue.  They both looked good afterwards, even though Toby insisted on keeping his hair long.

We headed out to Pudding Hill Lodge after that and it was great to be back there once more.  Since we stayed there two years ago it has changed hands.  A couple run it now (Pete and Lesley) and this is their first winter whilst in charge.  We wish them all the best.  We stayed in the same unit (1 UP) as last time and we moved our stuff in on Saturday afternoon, choosing the room that looked out to Mt Hutt.

I texted a friend now living in  Chch and we met him and his friend at the Blue Pub in Methven after he skied that day and had a beer with him.  His name is Sun and used to work at Intergen in Wellington - I met him at the Dynamics User Group.  After a quick catch up with him, we met Christine, John and Tom at the Last Post Cafe for dinner.  We all got pretty big meals, and Christine had too many ribs so I shared them with her - yum!

Back to Pudding Hill and settled in to sleep nice and early for the day skiing on Sunday.  Sunday dawned looking pretty good.  The SnowPhone for Mt Hutt said it was open and expecting snow.  Yay.  Mike, Toby, Christine and I squeezed into the Corolla for the day's skiing.  We got to the bottom of the hill and put the chains on  the car and took off.  Mike immediately started experiencing difficulties getting any sort of traction - the chains we had were pretty useless, and didn't do the job.  I think we managed to make it up a third of the way before a chain finally broke off and started flapping around the wheel arch.  Mike and Christine jerry-rigged a fix so we could creep back down the hill.

Not to be daunted by this, we went into Methven and bought better chains!  We drove through falling, lazy snowflakes and it was beautiful.  Back to the bottom of the hill to meet Mt Hutt staff telling us they had closed the road completely to 2WD vehicles - even with super-duper chains.  Pants!  So...  4WD is ok, is it?  Right!  Back to Pudding Hill to switch to Christine's 4WD vehicle.  Back to Mt Hutt where we were informed by staff that the mountain was now closed to all cars and they were expecting cars coming down from the top.  I think the staff person was bemused at the hilarity in the car that greeted this pronouncement.  After trying twice already, Christine had been joking as we approached the bottom for the third time that we would find it closed completely.  Prescient much, Christine?

Back to Pudding Hill Lodge where we lounged around on the couches in the common area reading.  Well, I think people were reading.  Christine's lap turned out to be quite comfortable for me and I fell asleep sprawled over the couch with my head on her lap, buried in my ski jacket and blankets (I was cold at first).  Who knew that would happen?

One difference between last time we stayed here and this time was that Pete and Lesley were putting on dinners, if you wanted them.  It was good hearty fare and this evening we ate corned beef, potatoes and mustard sauce.

Back to the rooms for a good sleep after the exhausting day battling to get up the hill.  Heheheheh.

Monday morning and the mountain was on hold until 10am.  We decided to chance it, and headed out to Mt Hutt in Christine & John's 4WD to be ready for the update.  Turns out that was a good call, because at 10am the road opened and up we went.  Tom came with us and Toby started his Ski Week class.  Turns out he was the only Ski Week child there.  I think the wind and -7C temperatures had something to do with that!  Checking later we discover that the wind chill brought the temperatures down to -28C.  Talk about cold!  I had so many layers on.  Thermals.  Shirt.  Merino top.  Wind jacket.  Ski jacket.  Scarf.  Mike was missing his gloves and only had his inners (fleecy gloves) to keep his hands warm in these freezing conditions.  He also bought goggles as it was definitely a goggles day with windswept powder whipping up into our faces.  I found spare thermal gloves in my pocket and it stopped frostbite for Mike!

Snow cover was just a little sparse...

There had been a huge dump of snow up and down all of NZ - everywhere, that is, except Mt Hutt.  Satellite photos showed all of NZ being white except for a small sliver of green - exactly in line with Mt Hutt!  Ah well.  We did have beautiful views of the Port Hills covered in snow.  Christchurch, just 100km away, had had half a metre of snow to sea level.

Tussock in the foreground, snowy hills in the background

Funnily enough we spent a lot of time in the cafe during the day.  But I think I should have stayed outside as I was always colder coming back out!

Let's try for nicer weather on Tuesday,eh?

Tuesday we headed up the mountain once more and it was a glorious day.  Blue skies, bit of wind.  Christine experienced ticketing problems today - and they never seemed to be able to sort them out.  They'd all agree it was bad, but no one seemed to be able to fix it.  Christine and Tom got lessons and John was Base Camp in the cafe.  But suddenly at 12:30pm, all the lifts closed and the staff started announcing that we were to head down the hill because high winds were forecast.  Bother!  And I'd been having such a great day!  Well done Mt Hutt staff though - At Mt Lyford everyone ended up stuck at the top of the hill overnight.

Dinner this evening was followed by pavlova and now Toby has a favourite new dessert!  He ate two helpings!

Wednesday the mountain was on-hold for the morning and as John, Christine and Tom had to be away early afternoon, we all had the day off.  We had lunch at the award-winning Dunsandel Store cafe (back on SH1, about 40km south of Chch) and said our goodbyes.  Back to Pudding Hill Lodge for the late afternoon and a relaxing time.

Thursday morning we were up the mountain nice and early but Mike wasn't skiing due to unexpected feverish shivers and a weird cough.  I had the best day skiing despite the snow being hard packed and icy in patches.  I had two lessons (morning and afternoon) and enjoyed my afternoon class with Mike from  Park City, USA. He said that I'm an advanced skier now, not an intermediate one.  Mike the Instructor fixed a recurring problem with my skiing - not enough 'up' as I transition between turns.  One of those 'aha' moments - it made the skiing afterwards a lot more fun!  And I managed two runs with Toby before the lifts shut for the day.

Gorgeous snowcapped hills on the way down the ski road

Friday morning Mt Hutt was shut for the day so we packed the car and headed back a day early.  We did our best to make it to Picton for the 2pm ferry across to Wellington, but it was rapidly obvious that wasn't going to happen - we were about 60 min short.  It wasn't to be but Bluebridge make it so easy for travellers.  They moved us to the 7pm ferry and so we dawdled up the island to Picton.  Snow was still lying around at the top of the South Island in places after the dump they received on Tuesday.  In fact, a lot of the country was smothered in snow - except for Mt Hutt!  We explored Gore Bay (on the coast by Cheviot) and it looked beautiful.  A tiny village on a road to no-where, attached to a beautiful, deserted beach.  And we had lunch at Maungamanu, where Mike's whanau come from - a picnic by the beach, on the road to the graveyard where his ancestors are buried.

Alas, in spite of all this dithering, we still made it to Picton over 2 hours early.  The best that you can say about Picton is it's far nicer than it used to be.  Still, its only purpose is to be somewhere you go when you need to get a ferry.  This used to be actively unpleasant  back in the day; now it's quite nice but still pretty dull, especially after what must be the 20th trip through there.  So we tried to fill in time.  We drove around the town green a few times.  Mike wanted to try to set lap times around it but I wouldn't let him.  And we went to see the Camping Ground where I stayed when I was just 10, and then again with Mike as I moved up from Dunedin to Wellington!  It's a really pleasant camping ground that ticks all the boxes except one slight problem - there's a rail bridge going through and over it that they use to shunt trains for loading the ferries.  At all hours...

Still, eventually there was nothing for it but sit in the check-in queue and read books.  The ferry sailing was uneventful and soon we were home in our beds.  Whew!  A bit of a washout as far as the skiing was concerned, but a great south island holiday nonetheless.