The weekend in Methven

Hi,

Toby and I had a great weekend, although it ended up with no skiing involved whatsoever.  We left late on Thursday - our flight was delayed an hour.  Mike happily sat with us until we got on our flight.

Thrifty were fast and we were negotiating Christchurch airport in our Nissan xtrail within 20 minutes of landing.  It did make for a late arrival at Pudding Hill Lodge.  I appreciate the manager staying up to greet us at midnight and show us to our room.

Same room as last time.  And we got to stay there as the accommodation had (unfortunately for them) had 75 people cancel a conference at short notice.  Ouch!

Cold morning on Sunday

At midnight, the storm hit.  And what a storm.  We had solid rain for two days with no let up.  Any driving involved a lot of floodwaters and roads were closed around the province.

But we got to Primo for brunch on Friday.  Enjoyed our meal there (although we had a long wait and Toby's poached eggs were hard) - my iced coffee was good, despite the wait.  Not too sweet.

Iced coffee at 130

Our usual driving conditions on Fri and Sat

We got some new ski pants for Toby and some gloves that work.  Bonus!  Still optimistic we'd get to use them at this stage.

Bought some groceries to keep us going for a bit and headed back to our room.  However, dinner wasn't put on and Toby got hungry around 8pm.  Weetbix weren't good enough - and neither was an entire (small) round of brie.

We got in the car and attempted to get to Methven.  Our usual route got flooded and in the dark we couldn't see the other side - nor the sides of the road.  We turned around and tried another way.  We hit more flooding and Toby decided then he'd rather gnaw off his arm than drive through floods.

Primo iced coffee

Toby checks out The Ambassadors 

Saturday morning saw us head into Methven late for another brunch.  The floods had dropped a bit and we got there ok through several flooded roads.  Good car!  Went to Cafe 130 and had a nice brunch.

Rental car leaving Pudding Hill

Got more groceries - enough to keep us going through the night.  But once back at Pudding Hill, we heard dinner was on.  Doh!  We said no and stayed in our room eating bread.

We packed up and paid - ready for the 2.5m of snow and a sunny day forecast for Sunday.  And yes, the day dawned with stunning weather.  But the huge dump of snow meant the access road had 8m snow drifts and the crew were so busy trying to get access sorted, that delays meant we were looking at a midday opening.

Toby and I headed to the access road at 11am.  We were in a queue along the bottom road about halfway back to SH73.  And soon had other cars banked up to the highway.

We put our chains on, in anticipation of a drive up the hill once it opened.  Or, I did one.  And then three lovely men asked if I needed help.  So they took over and were very nice.  Although the chap putting the driver side one on said he'd never done this before.  And it showed.  But brute strength works wonders and the chain got on and looked tight.

He did say we should check with chain staff further up the hill.  Hahah.

But, after waiting for 2 hours, we got the word from Mt Hutt staff that it was a 1.30pm opening.  And after I did the maths on the hours, I realised we'd be lucky to be skiing by 3pm.

Toby and I took the chains off (much faster than putting them on) and headed to Chch.  We wanted to see a movie, but once we got to Riccarton Westfield and queued up, the session was full.  We then went to the airport and dropped off the car and checked in.  Our flight was overbooked, but because we were super early, they checked us onto an earlier flight.

Yay for Mike collecting us early.

Great weekend.  Still 0 for 2 in the ski stakes though.  Better luck next time.

Love,
Angela