Ski Sunday

One of the reasons we came to New Zealand was to ski/snowboard. It's a very different affair from the Three Valleys. The resorts are really small - the biggest ones only have a couple of chair lifts and the smallest ones only have a rope tow. We went to 2 of the bigger resorts as Gav doesn't like tow lifts. Mount Hutt (near Christchurch) and Treble Cone around Wanaka.

Over here you have to drive right up to the snow fields from the valley (no free ski buses or gondolas). We checked with a few of the locals near Mount Hutt if we'd be ok taking the camper van up without chains and they all said "sure , no problem". What a mistake! The drive up was the scariest trip of my life. It was a steep 14km twisty gravel track, with sheer drops, no barriers and snow, ice wind and rock falls for a bit more edge. We crawled up and by some miracle made it to the top. But we were both petrified about the ride home as we'd have more ice and gravity to add to the mix. So we had a pretty short ski (fabulous powder, blue skies but v windy) then went back to the van so that we could make it down while the sun had melted the ice beffore it started to freeze again. But all our worries were for nothing, because when we got back to the van Mr Owen realised he'd lost our only key while boarding!

It was our lucky day as some angel had found it and handed it in.

A couple of days later we skiied at Treble Cone and decided to pay for a bus up the mountain so that we could relax and enjoy the skiing. The resort town for the ski fields is Wanaka - it's beautiful, set in a valley right on the shore of a huge lake. You can see the lake when you're skiing (pic 2).

The guy in the ski hire place in Wanaka told us that there was a 2 lift passes for the price of one voucher on some packs of the local beer, so we set off to find one. It was looking for a Wonka's golden ticket, every shop we went to had sold out of the promotional packs. Then we found one. Beer and and free pass, great offer - saved ourselves $89 (30 quid).