Kiwi Stoke, New Zealand 2012

[Dhelihiker]

yeH BUDDY!! I can tell you're dying to jump off of shit, he he I hope you guys get dumped on!!

[leftfield]

Looks bony. I'll be there in two weeks, start snowing please.

[skier666]

You'll like the upper lookers left of TC. Just stay in the tussock and you'll be fine.

Love the scenery in this one:

[cheese]

ahh, i missed you down at dobson + roundhill. shouuld be pumping next weekend though. hint for next time at dobson, if you drop off the back of the peak lookers right from carpark (with the solar panels on it) you can ski down to the access road hairpins. lots of fun terrain there too.

[Gerome]

Hey, is anyone going to be at the Remarkables Ice and Mix fest? I'm leaving right now for Queenstown.

[kiwinig]

Not partaking in the fest but looks like it should be good times, enjoy! Am down in QT tho and will be at the Banff Film Fest on sunday night if you're sticking around for that?

actually thinking about hitting up Awakino skifield on saturday, probably the most random and chillaxed club field of them all... winter has been pretty sad snow wise here in QT :-( but at least the climbing is decent, was up single cone a couple of weeks back

Hey, is anyone going to be at the Remarkables Ice and Mix fest? I'm leaving right now for Queenstown.

[Island Bay]

Awakino sounds like a good plan. We flew over the Two Thumb Range (absolute truckloads of snow) on the way back from Wanaka, and it looked like anywhere exposed to the E/SE got lots of snow.

Weather should cooperate as well, with a weakening ridge on Saturday before a new low moves in from the Tasman on Sunday.

Take photos )

[cheese]

fox peak for me this weekend. its the first time open in 4 weeks or so.

christ, my written english has got crappy recently. i should express myself better.

[Gurutasker]

Here's a quick video of some early season bits.. need to get some de-fogging for my camera as a lot of the decent stuff was un-usable.

[kiwinig]

Pics to follow when i find my camera but tiem for an update...

Awakino was awesome 2 saturdays ago, the road was steep and rough as usual but in good nick up to the lodge and we skinned up to the field from there to score smooth buttery corn all day long. It was pretty busy up there tho, there must have been close to 30 people skiing in the morning before people started venturing out touring! when we went to buy a ticket we were told to just sort it out at lunch, lunch time comes and goes and then as we are saying our goodbyes before skiing back to the truck we ask again about paying and get told that if we have $80 (for 2 of us) they would take it but if we didn't have $80 they'd just take whatever we had on us - classic laid back club field, skiing is far more important...

Wednesday came around and the boss comes into the office and shuts the door, (ususally not a good sign) then proceedes to suggest i should think about giving up my ski roadtrip planned for fri thru monday up to the canterbury clubbies as the office was going to be short staffed with others away blah blah. The kicker being that he and my office mate were going heli-skiing up near mt cook on thursday and there was a chance that there was going to be a couple of spare seats so he would like to take me to! argh, what to do?? after thinking it thru and deciding that the spare seats probably wouldn't happen i tell him that since the gf really struggles to get time off and we had been trying to visit the club fields for 3 years now there's no chance i can cancel my holiday. an hour later he emails me and says that we are all on for heli-skiing, fkna! who cares that i have 2 days work to sort out in an afternoon....

After a late night Thursday starts with a 5:30am wake up and a drive up to Glentanner, we end up flying into the Ben Ohaus and getting 7 awesome runs each with between 900-1200m of vert with powder ranging from knee deep to 10cms lower down. sweet terrain with steep glaciated upper sections then super fun rolling lower sections makes for a great day. Drive back to QT via the Omarama pub for a few jugs and the worlds biggest scoops of hot chips.

Friday means another early start to get on the road with the road trip crew to Fox Peak which is usually only open weekends. Get up there to find 11 cars in the car park and about 10 people skiing, boot deep winter snow in the top of south basin and awesome creamy corn on the main field! after a great day we head north, narrowly escape getting taken out on the main road at 100kmh by an oncoming car that somehow spun out on a corner and slid sideways/backwards thru our lane, down a bank and into some trees about 200m up ahead of us, rally drive the truck thru the Lyndon Rd in the dark and make it to Castle Hill to hit the beers and meet the rest of the crew.

Saturday meant another rally drive back thru the Lyndon road to Mt Olympus and the forecast bad weather held off long enough to harvest more corny goodness as we chased the sun around the field all day. Mt O rocks!

Sunday rolls around and we wake up to rain on the roof, drive up to Broken River only to find out that the field is too unstable after the rain so we hit up Porters for an afternoon of super slush in between trying to stop the swarms of keas from eating bits off the cars.

More rain overnight means no skiing on monday and we cruise home via the Tekapo hot pools.

STOKED on free heli action and club field roadies!

[DJSapp]

And Roundhill on Sunday: Each club field visit is a surprise. My low expectations of Roundhill were blown away when we arrived at the Heritage Rope Tow, the longest rope tow in the world at 1.5km long and rising over 634m vertical.

Rope tow to the sky.

Holy fucking shit. That rope tow has more vert than most of Tahoe. I'm exhausted looking at it.

[DHogg]

Any one ski today? Sadly I had to fly to Auckland just as the storm cleared. Snow was pretty low around wanaka- and weather good. Tc has had about 1.2m new snow at top in the past week.

[Gerome]

The only place open in the Mackenzie region was Roundhill, so we went back there today. It looked like 50cm of new snow had fallen, but the wind was intense. Heritage lift wasn't open, maybe due to concern about cross loaded slopes as it was getting hammered (scoured) by the wind all day and they changed the avalanche concern from considerable to high later in the day. Rope tows don't seem to be affected by wind much. The t-bar was a blast though, I worked on my low-angle pow turns in the fresh snow all day. The snow set up later in the day, which made the snow much faster.

I imagine further south must have been the best place to be. Trebble Cone and the other resorts southward were open.

Today made up for yesterday. The most frustrating thing about NZ is that the weather doesn't cooperate for anyone working a Monday to Friday job. Saturday was a bust. We went to the Ohau Snowfest, which for such a small population the south island has an impressive contingency of enthusiastic costume partiers, mostly stemming from the Queenstown region. But with the weather and high wind, nothing opened at Ohau. All the other ski fields remained closed as well.

I'll have to post some more photos soon. I went to the Remarkables Ice and Mixed festival and had some sick climbs on ice and my first experience climbing rock with ice tools. What a terrifying and awesome eperience. Last week, Cragieburn and Porter's turned out great despite the spring rain.

[uglymoney]

Lots of great stoke and pics in this thread! Hoping to get back down there with the entire family in a few years for camping/skiing combo trip.

[Gurutasker]

Well an MCL injury and the weather has put in a 3 week drought for me.. the longest since the season started! Looking forward to getting back at it this weekend where I have the whole week off. This current storm cycle (and possibly the next) are looking more and more like what they should've been in the winter..

[kiwinig]

what a mixed bag of a w/e... but at least it snowed...

Sat arvo was pretty sweet up remarks hiking the chutes in mostly blizzard with a few breaks in the wind/vis to let us see what was going on occasionally, nice boot-knee deep powder! Sat night we headed north planning on hitting Ohau on sunday and catching up with some (hungover) buddies who were at the ball but alas we woke up in Otamatata only to find Ohau shut and QT sounding good. So back to QT it was, up the remarks but Shadow basin on wind hold just as we got to the lift, lots of pissing around, riding the other crap lifts, drinking coffee with shadow continuing to tease us before we finally pulled the pin and headed over to coronet for some sloppy (chopped-up) seconds, argh!!!

So lots of driving and time wasted for a few good runs and missing out on what was a good morning up the local hill but at least there is snow on them there tussocks again... Such is life. wx looks prety wild for the rest of the week so hopefully there is some before work powder on the cards but who knows in nz....

[DHogg]

Not sure if anyone can see that. I can't, but assuming that's since I'm on an iPad. NZ open finals video. Don't know what I think about the judging....

[skier666]

Charlie for the win as far as I can tell.....hmmmm. Still some nice skiing in the Alta chutes though.

[kiwinig]

snowing out the office window now again, some good wind effected pow up Coronet this morning tho...


Winter has finally come to queenstown now that its spring time

[Gerome]

A little photo update for you all.

Remarkables Ice and Mixed Festival

What's the best way to learn mixed climbing? Forget the top-rope, use every technique known to keep happy on an anxious 40 degree approach, and follow one of the best ice and mixed climbers you just met. Add steel picks and crampons to hard rock and flail up two icy, challenging pitches.









If I smile, I'm happy, right?


Let the pro lead the climb








I have to follow that!!!


Why did I leave the skis in the car?


Topping out on the climb







Remarkable view of the resort from this view point


Let's have some fun ice climbing








And finally, back at Porter's where the beginner run is a 700m 35 degree slope. Yes!






and a grey day at Cragieburn



Signalling OUT!


The bags are packed, the vacation days are submitted and the high pressure system over Mount Cook is setting in for a few days. In less than 12 hours, I'll be climbing into a helicopter or a ski plane to be transported to the upper reaches of the Tasman Glacier for a few days of touring in cold snow. This time tomorrow night I'll be climbing into a sleeping bag in the Tasman or Kelman Hut. Yes!

[guermo]

Cool view of Plake's Mistake in that shot, made me think of him after reading the Manaslu thread.

[Gurutasker]

Well my editing skills still need a lot of work.. and I've been working heaps so haven't taken a lot of footage lately, but I slammed together another quick edit;





All's the practice right?

[Gerome]

Craigieburn

Surprise! Snowstorms are still dumping in the Southern Alps. I know some Kiwis that will be ditching work tomorrow to ski at the last club field to remain open, Broken River.

September 16th was a good day as we woke to 20 centimeters of fresh snow on the hill and it felt good being seventh on the rope tow and almost first to hit the chutes, followed by laps of fresh tracks.

[kiwinig]

So since winter has come to an end it has finally decided to snow down south! Coupled with the arrival of daylight savings this has meant a few after work skins in the slush
http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php...type=1&theater

Then, despite being mega hungover and having a pretty slow start closing day up the Remarks last w/e (7 Oct) was pretty sweet after a fresh dump...

Since then there has been some more after work skinning
http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php...type=1&theater

And it has dumped again, got up Coronet on saturday to find more snow than there was this winter...

So then on Sunday had to go touring up Remarks, sadly a bit wind affected tho...
http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php...type=1&theater

Looks like more snow is coming too, if the weather plays the game (not looking likely at this stage) will be heading into Tasman Saddle or Centenial Hut on Friday for the long w/e, yeehaa

[thehaze]

Hi guys!
I would like to keep my winter going and i was thinking about NZ.
So i'm asking to the locals and anyone else who thinks to have enough knowledge about it: what would you think will be the best place for a ski instructor with the purpose of having the best pow skiing but still been able to raising enough money to pay his life and the plane ticket from europe?
Thanks!