Heading south again

It was time to head back to Wanaka for the winter. But not without a few detours on my way south.

I stopped in at Mt Nimrod Reserve campsite in order to complete the day hike that heads into the small reserve, visits an impressive waterfall  then climbs up onto a limestone peak before descending back to the campsite. You can also access the Hunter Hills from there for more extensive tramping, but at this time of year I prefer sleeping in my car than in a tent!

From Mt Nimrod I headed to Geraldine and Fairlie, then up past Lake Opuha to tramp out to a hut up the North Opuha River. It was pretty easy stroll upstream, with great views up to Fox Peak. There were a couple of mud patches to negotiate but otherwise a good 4WD track all the way to the hut, sitting on a terrace looking out over the tussocks to the headwaters of the Orari River.

It was a very chilly morning with a decent frost, but clear skies and no wind made for a pleasantlywarm walk in the sun back to the car. 

And then it was back to Wanaka. 

As usual, it's a waiting game. Arrive back in town and move back into the flat I've been sharing with Karen for 8 years, go to onboarding signup for Cardrona, and then sit around for the mountain to open and work to commence.

The onboarding usually happens in early June, a couple of weeks before the mountain opens, which is a bit annoying, as in recent years the weather has still been pretty good for further preseason adventures.

So I went for a bike ride or two, and one day Jude brought her kayak over the hill and we went for a paddle up Stevenson Arm.

It was an inversion and brutally cold. Very scenic with not much breeze, but brutally cold. Next time we'll choose a better day.

Early season there is never much snow, but with cold temperatures the mountain can make the stuff and get the mountain open weeks before natural cover would allow. Sure it would be limited terrain, but it gets paying customers up the mountain and cash registers pinging. Except it's all cash free so EFTPOS machines beeping!!!

Trouble is, June is getting warmer, which means less cold days so less snowmaking can occur. But we did get open on time, if only with very limited terrain available.

And then it was back to teaching people to ski.

That's next....

Ski Goddess News 2024

It was a big year for me on the ski slopes this year. I had no accidents or injuries and I'm now far enough up the priority ladder to get consistent work. But it wasn't all plain sailing.

The season started off better than last year, with more natural snow and somewhat colder temperatures allowing for snowmaking to get a bit more terrain open. It was still slim pickings, but at least we had Captain's open for the school holidays.

Bookings were down on last year, and the school holiday period was no-where near as hectic as it had been in previous years. The resort managed this downturn by not increasing us from a five day to a six day week. I was pretty thankful for that.

I work full time because I get no priority as a part-timer. This means endlessly waiting in pool for work, and being lucky to get anything else besides first time lessons at 11am! Don't get me wrong, I love teaching first timers, but when you are working more than 1-2 days a week the rinse and repeat nature of part time work gets tedious.

Cardrona sponsors a number of international instructors, and the visa requirements are fairly onerous, with the resort required to give them a minimum of 30 hours a week. Since the average is 4-6 hours a day, but sometimes less, the overseas instructors get rostered on a 6 day week. And they only have a contract from 1st July until the end of September so they aren't employed during the quieter ends of the season. 

June started off fairly slow. As I said, I got consistent work, mainly group lessons and then at the end of the month I got a week of half day lessons with a charming young man with Down Syndrome named Owen. Owen had come over to NZ with his parents for a week of skiing before taking a week off and then competing in the Australian Nationals of the Special Olympics. He'd won a silver medal last time, and this time was competing for a place on the Australian team to go to the World Championships Special Olympics in Turin in March 2025. Like no pressure!!!

In his early 20s Owen was a chatty young man, and over the week he made so many friends, from bus drivers to lifties, to just randoms all over the mountain. His technique definitely needed refining, as he was still wedge turning on green runs, and terrified of steep terrain. Over the week we got his skis parallel and his legs closer together, and he got confident skiing the runs over in Captains. His dad took him down Whitestar one afternoon, and then sheepishly agreed with me that that had been a bad idea...

I tried to get a brushes course on McDougall's for him to practice on, but the race trainers weren't able to help me out. Both Owen's parents weren't actually worried about him getting any race training, but they were very impressed with Owen's improved performance.

A week later I got an email from Owen's dad Paul. Owen had not only won the Gold medal in his division, he was off to Turin!! I think that means I'm an Olympic coach!!!

July school holidays just weren't busy. I did a week of SkiWees, a four day immersive kids program where the kids are with you for the whole day, including lunch. It's high energy and can be a lot of fun if you don't have problem kids.

Problem kids are usually kids with behavioural issues that either haven't been diagnosed or haven't yet been managed adequately. Often parents don't disclose issues until after you've spent the day fighting fires. We have an adaptive program at Cardrona, which means that we can pair those kids with a volunteer, so that all the kids in the group get to share the instructor's attention. But if parents don't disclose, it gets difficult.

One of my SkiWees weeks (I did 3 over the season) I had a bunch of boisterous boys and one attention seeking young girl who had been moved down into my group because of her disruptive behaviour and dangerous skiing. Over the course of the week, and many conversations with her mother, who was really struggling with managing her behaviour, we developed some boundaries and kept things safe. I also discovered that amongst the 5 boys, 4 had a diagnosis of ADHD and 3 of them were on medication for it. Not that any of that was initially disclosed to me, but because the boys talked about it, we had some really robust conversations about ADHD, behaviour in general, and what was acceptable and what wasn't. And we all made it through the week in one piece, me included!!

I didn't do as many private lessons as last year, but I did do my fair share of lessons for women in their 30s to 50s who suffered from lack of confidence. I swear there is room for some niche products in this space - there are so many of them. Group lessons are full of women like this, and I personally think a multi-day package that supports these women getting more confident on skis would be well subscribed. I'm not the only instructor who thinks this.

August was busy, but not enough to go to 6 days. I managed a half day ski touring in Soho with Sharni, where we skinned up to Mt Cardrona, skied down Soho until the snow got a bit dodgy, then skinned back out.

And then the bookings backed off. Knowing this I asked to have a couple of weeks off to do some Rookies training at Treble Cone. I don't need to work full-time, or work at all really, but if I can get some time off when it's quiet then that gets the work/pleasure balance back in my favour.

I did 2 weeks of training, the first with Takao, who has only just retired from the Japanese Demo team after 20 years. He's an awesome skier, and really interesting to get a completely different perspective on ski performance.

The second week I trained with Nico, who helped me take things back to the basics and really dial in lateral balance and angulation, particularly on my left leg. But it also snowed a lot, so we spent a lot of time skiing off piste finding powder lines, and on the final day I lost one ski somewhere towards the bottom of Matukituki. I spent well over an hour trying to find it, to no avail, so I waited for Nico to bring me some new skis for me to ski out. Otherwise it would have been a one ski job!!

walking back up the hill when the saddle lift went on hold due to high wind

Perhaps someone will find it after the snow all melts, but I wasn't too upset. I'd set my mind on purchasing some new skis in Japan anyway...

Needless to say, I didn't do any more Rookies training, but I did ask for another week off as work levels were still very low. Better for someone else who needs the work to get it.

I spent my 3rd week doing some snowboarding, going for skis with friends, and another day ski touring with my friend Jennifer from Alaska. This time we went even further down Soho, which made for a very long skin back out, just getting back before some bad weather descended.

The final week of September I had work. I had six half days with a family of 3, though we ended up changing the schedule to suit the weather, and extended those days to full days. Mum and 2 teenage boys. Both boys had ADHD and ASD and one also had Tourette's. Dan had done one day skiing on a school trip, Ben had never skied, and Gay had been a total ski bum until having a family.

We started at the beginning. I was fortunate to have an adaptive volunteer, Lois, who was able to help me all week, so that I could take each person for some individual coaching as the need arose. The boys both picked up skiing really quickly, and were soon making turns down the green runs, meaning I could leave them with Lois to get some mileage whilst I took Gay down some blue runs.

We all had a blast, and by the end of the week the boys were able to get to Captains and back, though they weren't quite ready to ski it top to bottom. Gay tells me they'll be back next year, so I expect that will be another well paid week for me.

Having that time off in September really made my season enjoyable. It's easy to get just a bit burnt out as the days are exhausting, especially when you factor in travel to and from the mountain each day.

I'm hoping that I can get a similar balance next year, where I take a back seat when the business levels drop.

I was pretty keen to get back to Australia for some windsurfing, so I left NZ at the end of September and winged my way back home to WA. I made a little detour, spending 24 hours in Canberra in order to drop off the tramping gear with Matt, and pick up my ski touring poles that I'd used in March on the AAWT and stupidly left behind at the trailhead. The lady who picked them up for me had indeed managed to bring them to Canberra, so my ski poles went back in my ski bag for their next trip to Japan.

I left the ski gear in Perth, in Nay's garage, and took the bus up to Geraldton. It's now time to do some sun and wind worshipping.

That's next....

Paddling is fun!

I'd returned to Wanaka to attend my second annual packrafting meetup. This is the silver lining of being a COVID refugee in NZ. Instead of windsurfing in WA and skiing in Japan, I'm catching up with new and old friends for a few days of paddling around Wanaka.

I missed the first packrafting session of the meetup, because I'd booked in for a 90 minute full body massage, and well.... I needed that more than I needed a lake session and a float down the Clutha River to Alberttown. I could have made the paddling session, just I get a wee bit lethargic after a massage...

We had a communal dinner out at Hawea and a few speakers presented. One was Stu, who talked about the trip he'd just completed, though he painted a slightly different picture to what I remember, not that he neglected to talk about how pretty unpleasant some bits had been. I had thankfully joined him after the bit when Bill and him ran out of food for a few days....

The next morning we ran the Hawea River from below the dam to the Alberttown swing bridge. In the middle is the Hawea Wave, which we got to play on with a little instruction from Huw of Packrafting Queenstown. I didn't manage to get into the wave, but I had a fun play anyway.

The Hawea River was a pretty easy paddle, and in the afternoon we headed out in convoy to Cameron Flat in the Matukituki Valley, getting a tractor ride over the river to stay at Tititea Lodge for a couple of nights. I was on cooking duties that evening, spending a couple of hours boiling a lot of potatoes for a salad!

Day 3 we waded back across the river to our cars and drove up to Raspberry Flat, then walked up the valley to Aspiring Hut. We had lunch and then headed down to the river and launched our boats. It was a fun Grade 2 paddle down to just above the Rob Roy Glacier swing bridge, our takeout for the day. Experienced paddlers chose to run the Grade 3 rapid, which was fun to watch, outside my pay scale I'm afraid. 

I'm super happy with my attitude on the river this year. I'm confident, my skills are definitely better, and I'm no longer anxious every time I see an approaching rapid. No longer do I feel like a liability. That's a welcome improvement, and I'm really enjoying myself. People like Jude and Stu have also noticed how much more relaxed I now am. Yay!!

Day 4 was a walk up the East Matukituki River to Junction Flat. There were three options for put ins. I decided I wasn't going to attempt the Grade 3 rapids so just three of us walked to the lowest put in. I joined Graeme (who is super experienced but had to drive back to Christchurch that day) and Kristy who has a gammy hip and knee and can't walk very far. I didn't really have an excuse for just doing the lower section, but do I need one??

We had a lovely cruisy paddle down, with lots of time to play a little, eddy catching, ferry gliding and surfing. There wasn't much in the way of exciting rapids, but it was still fun.

We dried our gear in the sun and had lunch, then Kristy and I drove back to Wanaka. We noticed a small fire at West Wanaka, probably quite soon after it had started, and by the time we got back to town it had become a major wildfire and the road was closed to all traffic whilst the fire crews fought to get it under control. All the other paddlers got caught waiting for the road to reopen, so my decision to do the lower put in paid off!

Here's some video from the event. It has footage of the gnarly section under the Rob Roy swing bridge which most of us didn't run, but it's still cool. David, one of the organisers put this together. Hope you enjoy.

Wanaka PRANZ Meet 2022 from David Stephenson on Vimeo.

The Wanaka meetup was really well organised. The number of attendees was a bit down on last year, around 60 people rather than close to 100 at St Arnaud. That was a better number, with more opportunity to actually get to chat with most people. I didn't end up doing any trips after the meetup, or rather, no-one invited me on any of theirs! But no matter, I had signed up to go tramping with the local tramping club instead.

That's next...

(Thanks to Shayne, David and Sheralee for extra photos and video)

Ski Goddess news for 2018

What a winter it has been!

The snowfall began early, with decent falls in April and May, which set up the Southern Lakes ski fields for a bumper season. Cardrona opened for a wee taster over the Queens Birthday weekend in early June before opening officially two weeks later, and even Treble Cone opened five days earlier than scheduled.

I arrived in Wanaka mid June, so within days was on the slopes at Cardies getting my ski legs again before TC opened. So were quite a few of the TC regulars, so I even had friends to ski with!

Unfortunately I missed opening weekend at TC because it coincided with the training weekend for adaptive volunteers at Cardrona. Even though I had attended last year, there was an expectation to attend again, and more training isn't such a bad thing. Only thing is, you tend to let the newbies have a go using the equipment and there isn't time for everybody....

Monday I was raring to go skiing at Treble Cone. In an unbelievable stroke of good luck the snow gods had delivered overnight, and most of Wanaka had exhausted themselves over the opening weekend, so it was almost deserted for fresh tracks! Then the following Monday it did it again, and I managed first chair on The Saddle chairlift and probably my best runs ever at TC. Heaven!! And no crowds whatsoever....

In July and August I settled in to attending more Rookies training. I had some awesome breakthroughs in my skiing, helped by the fabulous JF Beaulieu, who also happens to be a windsurfing wave riding addict too! Our topic of conversation whilst sitting on chairlifts wasn't often about skiing!! But seriously, JF is one of the best technical skiers in the world and has what I can only describe as a rather zen approach to teaching technique to others. For me, his approach worked.

In between ski training I managed to have some free skiing with friends, including three trips over to Ohau with Janey, where we hiked the ridge a few times for some sweet fresh lines.

I also fitted in the final operation on my left eye. Harry inserted a new intraocular lens and freed up my iris so my pupil is no longer irregularly shaped. That only kept me off the snow for five days!!

And, of course, I did a lot of days volunteering for adaptive clients at Cardrona, including guiding a completely blind person. Boy that was hard work!!

I also dashed over to Australia for three days to celebrate mum's 85th birthday and catch up with family. Then did it again in September when mum's health deteriorated rapidly and we thought we were going to lose her. But she's made of tough stuff!!

In September I resat my Level 2 NZSIA exam, and this time I passed it! So now I have a qualification I'm not sure whether I'll use. Most importantly, I'm a much more competent skier as a result of all this training, and I have a certificate that acknowledges that level of achievement. Well done me!!

So I rewarded myself with a bit of a bucket list trip. Out of the blue I got a phone call inviting me to go ski touring with a small group of women for five days, to stay in a hut above the snowline, accessible only by helicopter, and led by a very experienced guide.

So I did. That's next....