Skiing in NZ (or, we're not in Kansas anymore, Toto)

We learned today that skiing in New Zealand is way different than skiing in the US.  It's in fact slightly terrifying.  First, you have to conquer a 7km dirt road that winds its way WAY up a steep mountain - with no guardrails, steep drop offs, and what seems like only 1 lane (but is in fact a two lane road).  Sheep also wander onto the road without warning.  We all agreed that it was one of the most terrifying roads we've ever been on.  Erin drove it like a rock star (and keep in mind, we're driving on the wrong side of the road here), but we all had sweaty palms and fogged up the windows by the end with our panic.

Then we get to the base of the ski mountain, only to see lots and lots and lots of bare ground.  I mean, lots.  Parking lot is a mud pit.  Our ski rental guy the day before had warned us about this lack of snow and had told us to head to the other lift for better snow (higher elevation).  Oh, did i mention there's only 2 lifts at this ski resort? And it has the largest ski-able area of any ski resort on the South Island?  Oh my.  We're really not in Kansas anymore (or more aptly, Colorado).

Under very cloudy skies, we headed up the first lift, and then took another incredibly terrifying and treacherous ski road over to the other lift.  The runs that this cat trail were above seemed to head straight down the (very steep) mountain.  We all hugged the far side of the run and stayed as far away from the edge as possible.  We decided that since there aren't any trees anywhere on the mountain, these runs seem so much more treacherous.  In the US, if we were to lose our edges and fall, a tree would most likely stop us.  Here, we'd keep tumbling and tumbling and tumbling down the (did I mention steep) hill, until maybe a sharp rock stopped us.  Ouch.

We finally made it over to other ski lift, and there indeed was better snow and at times even decent visibility (at other times, we were literally skiing in a cloud).  We ran most of our day over in that section of the mountain, re-running the 3 groomed trails again and again (the ungroomed trails had major snow issues and with the cloudy skies were incredibly hard to see - with either more snow or better visibility, we would have been brave enough to try some of them, but that wasn't to be).  The bottom of the runs were pretty icy (and later slushy) but the top of them were pretty sweet.

Possibly the best part of skiing was the view the entire time.  Every direction you looked were more gorgeous mountains, even under the cloudy skies.  Wow, and wow, and wow again. 

When we headed down the mountain in the early afternoon as the clouds took over the top again and the winds picked up, we were greeted on the lower part of the mountain by crazy corn snow (wet, sloppy snow), as well as a lot of bare patches.  Beth and I decided we were done for the day around 1:30, though Erin made it out for a few more runs after that. Not shockingly, I had boot issues with my rental boots (I always have boot issues, as my family will attest), so I needed to get the rental boots off ASAP at that point.

We're all glad we skied New Zealand (esp since the first place I ever skied was somewhere in NZ when I was 11 - thanks Dad!), but we all agree that there's no place like home...

(Another skier on one of our lift rides told us he'd skied another resort near here the day before and it literally rained on him the entire time; by the end of the day it was pouring buckets and everyone was soaked - yuck.  On a more positive note about NZ ski resorts, there was a youth race at Treble Cone that day, and it seemed like people came from Europe and other distant places to ski there, so it obviously was well-regarded enough to warrant a long trip there).

8/13/13 update: back in the land of free wifi so added some pics!