Sweet Silver Lining

On a scale of one to successful, I definitely wouldn't rate the last few weeks very high. We attempted to do quite a few things... and failed to do quite a few of those. But hey, there's always a silver lining. So here's the rundown..

Idea #1: 

Temple Basin Ski Field. I was so excited to try this field! It's supposed to be a really unique experience - some would even say the best skiing experience of their life (in NZ), but as their website says, "It is not for the feint of heart". Since I don't consider myself to be that, I bought a GrabOne deal with two day passes- one for me and one for Cam. We waited for the perfect day and on a sunny day with 30 cm of fresh powder, we drove out to Arthurs Pass.

Where it all went wrong: 

The reason this field is not for the feint of heart is because you have to HIKE there. Remember the access roads I described in the last post? This field doesn't have one. Instead it has a "goods lift" that you access from the main road, and then you hike up the mountain and get your gear at the top. The problem is that every description we read of the goods lift said it was right near the parking lot. So we parked near the parking lot (it was full so we really parked on the side of the highway) and started up the track. About 10 minutes in we were thinking that this was really ridiculous and we couldn't see the lift anywhere. Cam decided to drop his stuff and run up without gear to see if he could find it, and in the meantime I called the number on the website to ask. No answer. As soon as I googled the goods lift and found out it was actually 800 meters PAST the carpark, I got a call back from the number I had just called. He said the goods lift had closed about 10 minutes ago and that we could maybe pay the goods lift guy, who would be coming up behind us, to carry our gear for us. No thanks, we said. We've had enough of you Temple Basin.

The view from the track wasn't too bad. If only we weren't carrying all our gear.

The silver lining?: 

We ended up calling to complain - the lift was poorly marked and the man on the phone told us the goods lift closed at 11 when the website told us it closed at 12. He also told us that if we tried to go down and see if it was still working, we wouldnt get up to the top for another hour so it probably wouldnt be worth it. The resort apologized profusely and said WHY WOULD HE SAY THAT ON THE BEST DAY OF THE YEAR???Rub it in, Temple Basin. (They refunded us our lift passes, so that was nice)

Since that wasn't much of a silver lining, I'll come up with the one we felt in the moment. The drive was beautiful, Cam had never been so far in to Arthurs Pass and there were at least 4 ski fields on the way back to Chch that we could stop at and just pay for a cheap half day pass. On to the next brilliant idea.

Sick of snow photos yet? This one is the view from Idea #2 (Porters Ski Field)

Idea #2: 

Porters Ski Field. One of our kiwi engineering interns told me to go to Porters at some point this winter. It's a club field, so it'll be cheaper than Mt. Hutt, and it's really close to Chch. It's on the way back from Temple Basin so we called to see how the conditions were and if we needed chains and they said all good - come on over!

Where it all went wrong: 

Twenty-ish minutes later we drove in, feeling great about the road and the day, and just as we thought we're gonna make it to the top, we run in to about 5 cars stopped at a switchback. A Porters employee comes over and tells us "it'll just be a minute, we had someone drive off the road" (MY WORST NIGHTMARE). About 10 minutes later a grater goes up. About 5 minutes after that, the same porters employee asks us if he can have one of our sour patch kid candies (only if you fix the problem, sir - nah he was the man, we shared happily). And to make a long story story, about 40 minutes later, we were told that the road was closing and we weren't going to be able to go skiing today. womp. womp.

The silver lining: 

They said if we called and intended to go back they'd "try to work something out... maybe some free food at the top". Cause everyone wants free ski resort pizza. We probably won't be going back, but at least they felt a little bit bad. And on the way home we stopped and made a snowman! That was pretty awesome. Oh also since Porter's messed up, we were able to get a refund on all the ski gear I had rented! Win!

Captured the snowman AND snowball fight in one photo!

We made it back to Chch in time to relax a bit before the work week started. And the next weekend we were off to Tekapo with one of my new work colleagues and his girlfriend.

The road back - sorry for the overload of snow photos.

Idea #3: 

I feel a little bad doing it, but I think I'm going to anyway - this one was Cam's idea. Cam was really keen on going to Tekapo. It's about three hours away, there's a holiday homes website, so you can get a bach there, and most of all there's an observatory there where you can do incredible stargazing. Cam has never seen the milky way so we thought it would be fun to make a weekend out of it. There's also a ski resort, a hiking track I was interested in, hot pools, and a tube park. I agreed - it was a pretty good idea.

Lake Tekapo in Fall (March 2015)

Church of the Good Shepard (also in good weather)

Where it all fell apart: 

God decided to dump a midwinter, blustery, cloudy, cold, miserable, rainstorm on Christchurch and Tekapo last weekend. The house was non-refundable, the observatory tour is only refundable if you're there in person at 5:50 pm for them to tell you the weather is bad, and chances are the forecast is going to be wrong in this country... so we went anyway. Despite our best wishes, the weather didn't really clear up, and it turns out there isn't much to do in Tekapo if its raining. Also it was a popular weekend for this rest stop/town because of the new moon (good for stargazing) so the "bach" we rented was pretty lame. Didn't even have a full size couch!

The drive around Lake Tekapo to the Roundhill Ski Field

Silver lining: 

Cam and I managed to get in an afternoon of skiing. (Finally!) Visibility wasn't great, but we had fun on the slopes while we could. I was glad just to make it to a field successfully after all the trouble we've been having. 

Once we met up with Kyle and Iona and realized that the obsevatory tour would probably get cancelled, we called the house-rental company and asked if they had any board games. They did! So we played a fun battle-of-the-sexes round of Cranium :) We also ate really good pizza, saw a bit of the All Blacks rugby game, and got a good night sleep. It was really fun hanging out with Kyle and Iona, but I still wish we had seen the stars!

Skiing was fun.

So that's it for this episode of Ideas and Mishaps, but just so you don't think we have the worst luck in the world, here are a few things that went well:

We went to Paint n Sip!! We actually had to cancel and reschedule this twice, but we finally made it and it was really fun. The theme was Paint Your Mate - Picasso Style, and I think I hit this one out of the park.

Beautiful!

Looks nothing like me.

My sister got engaged!!! I'm so so happy for her and cannot wait to help plan the celebration!

This photo is THREE YEARS OLD. Still love you guys just as much as when we danced the night away in Hoboken.

My mom's puppy went to Canada while my parents are out of town. This is particularly exciting for me because the family who is dogsitting take the best pictures of her.

This is her boyfriend - They like to cuddle.

And finally, the New Zealand Film Festival came to Christchurch! We got tickets to five movies and have gone to four so far. Here are my ratings:

Enchanted Kingdom - ✶✶✶✶✶ (best nature documentary I've ever seen)

Pheonix - ✶✶✶✶ 

Dope - ✶

While We're Young- ✶✶✶

Lobster - TBD

Just two more wintery weekends until my trip to Australia/the USA! Spring will be here before I know it - just in time to kick my winter blues away :)

As much as I love this GIF, it's time to stop wearing sweaters.

SEE YA SOON, SPRINGTIME

Winter's Here

Hello friends and blog readers :) It's been a while!

Winter has officially set in and I've been alternating  between sitting on the couch with my hot water bottle (Cam introduced me to this gem. Life changing!!), going on really cold site visits, and doing really cool stuff on weekends - if I do say so myself.

One of my favorite photos of our recent adventures taken from the slopes on Mount Lyford

My last post was on things that made me happy in June and our trip to Pauanui. Man that feels like a long time ago. Since then we've celebrated Half Christmas, the Fourth of July, my friend Jess's birthday, my friend Ruchika's birthday, and started enjoying the joys of winter - because believe it or not, those exist :)

I wrote about Half Christmas and the Fourth of July in a recap-of-holidays-spent-abroad post. (LINK HERE).

For Jess's birthday we went to Strawberry Fare for dessert, where I had the best dessert of my life. Thanks for the recommendation Kiki!

I forget what it was called but it was SO GOOD.

The following weekend we decided to try to go skiing. I was pretty nervous because I hadn't skied since the end of MIDDLE SCHOOL. Also, aside from a day in the  Swiss Alps (Thanks Mom and Dad!), I had only ever skiied in the beautiful mountains of Western Pennsylvania and New York. The mountains in New Zealand are real mountains, like you could potentially fall off the side of one and not be ok mountains. They're called the New Zealand Southern Alps, for goodness sake. But Cam was adamant I'd be fine, as long as I wore a helmet, so I rented some gear and off we went.

#tbt to when I climbed one of these mountains through a blizzard. #frolleaguesforever

Stop One: Hanmer Springs Amuri Ski Field:

Cam and I made a trip to Hanmer back in January when we were first starting to date. It was summer here, so we just stayed in the town center and explored the restaurants and the natural hot springs! Cam loves Hanmer Springs so we decided to go try their ski field. First we turned on google maps and it told us to go in to town, make a right and keep driving, then go up the hill. We go to the base of this hill and realized that there was over a foot of snow on the ground and not a road to the seen. We expected some rural roads and came prepared with chains for the tires but this was a bit too rural. Luckily, I still had service so I looked up the website and found human directions to the ski field. They described the road as "undulating with a few tight turns." Not too bad... We drove back to town, made a left, a right, another right, a u turn, and finally we were on our way up a normal road to the ski field.

Pretty normal views... nothing scary yet.

We stopped about a k (kilometer) in to the road and put on chains next to a bright orange sign that said chains required. About half an hour later, while still on a snow-less and ice-less road, we took them off.

Who said we needed chains for this?

Less than 5 minutes later we were sliding around in a foot of snow on an unpaved road. Just our luck. So we got a bit further to talk to a guy in a toyota truck. He asked us if we had chains, said it was gonna get pretty dicey ahead, but that we'd be fine if we had chains. So OK, sounds good to us, lets go.

Where did all the snow come from?!

:)

Finally, we got to the first sign for the ski field.We kept going.... We started up a really steep part of the road, next to a cliff, without a guard rail, covered in snow.. thought to ourselves "well this isn't really undulating" and kept going. Then we realized we were going up a series of steep switchbacks. We made it up the first two just fine and then going around the third one... we fishtailed. Oh my god I have never been so scared in my life. Cam gets the car under control. momentarily. tries again and we fishtailed further so we're now horizontal across the road -- again this is near a cliff with no guard rail. When I said I was never so scared a minute ago, I meant it. But now we were at whole new level. I was so scared. Cam was so scared. We were up a mountain and we didn't know how to get down. "How do we get ourselves in to these situatons?" Cam asked. "What are you talking about?" I replied. THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED TO US BEFORE. So while I tried to focus on breathing and not crying, Cam straightened out the car, reversed in to a flat part of the switchbacks and waited for our Toyota friend to pass us- tell us we weren't even close - and then drove down the hill. really. really. really. slowly. breathe in. breathe out.

On the way out we saw a few people who were about to try the impossible. One of them took to the inside of the road to pass us and ended up getting stuck in the snow bank on the side of the road. When he tried to accelerate out of it, he pressed the pedal way too hard and broke the chains on his tires. He was not too happy, but hey, we saved you from having a terrifying experience on the mountain, bud.

I think our Toyota friend made it all the way up, We also saw another guy in the same car as Cam speeding up the road, fishtailing the whole way. I presume he, from pure determination, made it up. However, we did see another group of people who we had driven past later that day and they said they didn't get too far and other people had gotten stuck. Glad that didn't happen to us. Needless to say, we won't be going back,


After a tense ride back to town, we made a trip to the hot pools! I've never worn a bathing suit in zero degree (celcius) weather, but I think that's about what the temperature was that day. Check that off the bucket list. After a nice soak in the 40 degrees C sulfur pool, (with some way-too-loud kiwi women) we decided to head back to Christchurch.

We were a bit discouraged from the day because I had rented equipment that I didn't want to return unused, so Cam said we could go to Mount Hutt the next day. Mount Hutt is the nicest ski field within driving distance from Christchurch. Supposedly the road was maintained and hardly ever icy.I didn't believe that for a second but said ok.

Sunday morning on the way to Mt, Hutt

Stop Two: Mount Hutt

The road to Mount Hutt was incredibly more maintained than the Amuri Ski Field Road. Before I go any further, I wanted to explain what a ski field is, and how you get there. I didn't quite get it before this weekend, but since the ground temperature in a place like Christchurch isn't cold enough to get consistent snow and maintain it, the ski fields are patches of snow on the tops of mountains. The only way to access these is to drive up an "access road" which loops around mountains, typically along a cliff, to get to the top. Each access road is maintained to a different degree and only some have guard rails. It's really different from what I was used to in western PA, so this access road concept is very new to me.

Mount Hutt Ski Field is that sunny patch up there

The road to Mount Hutt was really nice. Each bend had a name and a kilometer countdown to the end of the ride. The road was really well traveled and we drove up in a line of cars to the top.

Finally we made it, got our gear on, and went for a quick run down the bunny hill. I maintain the thought that the hardest part of the bunny hill is the amount of people who have fallen down and  are then serving as obstacles. HOWEVER, with the views that Mount Hutt gives, Chinese tourists who walked up the hill to take photos are the second hardest part of the bunny hill.

Turns out, skiing is like riding a bike and by the time I made it to the bottom of the bunny hill (successfully, without hitting any fallen children) I was ready to hit the slopes.

At first we stuck to the small 4-man lift, which went half way up the mountain.  Even at that point, I was amazed by the length of the runs. Not having used those muscles in a long time, I was shocked at how much I could feel my quads by the end of the run. Go up to the top and have the run be twice as long? No way, Jose. 

But Cam (again) convinced me and we got on the big lift and went up. OH. MY. GOODNESS. When you get off the chairlift at the top the view in front of you is an unobstructed view from one peak in the alps of ALL. THE. OTHERS. It was so incredible. Worth it. And the trip down? It was long. But the runs were fun and I made it to the bottom without too much screaming from my legs. :)

stop it right now.

We left the mountain on a high note. Feeling like we had rediscovered a sport we both loved and vowing to do it again as soon as possible.

Views on the way down weren't bad either.

Post -ski doritos. Essential end to every good day of skiing.

Stay tuned for Stop 3.

The following weekend was Ruchika's birthday and we rented a bus to take us wine tasting in the Waipara Valley north of Christchurch. I spent the day chatting and drinking wine and failed to take many pictures, but here are a few.

Just some cool kids enjoying some wine

And let me just say, the wine was excellent. If you ever see Terrace Edge, Muddy Waters, or Black Estate in the grocery store, I highly recommend them. Especially the last two - the lady was Terrace Edge wasn't that nice. :)

And finally Stop Three: Mount Lyford

My workmate, Kiki, decided to organize a ski trip for the office she chose a club field near Hanmer Springs, Mount Lyford. Another ski term I learned recently, a club field is (and this is not a real definition so don't quote me on it) a field that is not as well maintained as Mount Hutt. It doesn't necessary have chair lifts, or snow makers, or any of the amenities that a field like Mount Hutt has. Still, club fields are really nice and having less people on the mountain is never a bad thing, So many people from the office decided to attend that Kiki had to get us TWO houses. Cam and I ended up in an adorable log cabin down the road from the main house with four other work mates. The other house had 11 people in it!

Cam and my room had two beds. This is where Cam slept :)

Cam and I drove up on a warm Saturday morning and got to the access road before any of my workmates ventured up. After our experience at Hanmer Springs we waited at the bottom and asked two separate cars on their way up if a) the road was bad and b) if they had been up to the field and if there was snow up there. They both said they had been the day before and it would be ok. OK THEN. LETS DO IT.

On the way up- able to see all the way to the ocean!

I have to admit I held the on to the door the whole way up, but other than that I don't think I was that bad of a passenger. We did swear half way up that we would never do this ever again. We cursed Kiki a few times for organizing a trip at another ski field with a moderately terrifying access road, but after passing a car at the ABSOLUTE worst spot (next to a cliff without a guard rail... luckily we got to hug the inside) we got to the top and found that the mountain had pretty much no snow. Well maybe a little snow, but it looked pretty bleak.

Mount Lyford in all it's glory

The rest of our work mates caught up and most of them decided that skiing on the little snow that there was wouldn't be worth it. They took over the bunny hill was seven rented tubes and had a blast. A bit jealous I missed out.

Meanwhile, Cam, our friend Chris, and I set off to explore the mountain. We made it over to the side where the snow was best and the views were INCREDIBLE. A couple had even taken their skis off and were having a picnic on the flat part. That was definitely the right idea. We just kept skiing though. And once again, we had the best time! I felt really good on the slopes and Cam was doing great too. I was proud of us for picking up the sport again after so many years.

Love that view.

Our boss, the brazen Texan that he is, climbed to the top of the mountain on the other side where no mechanical lifts (note there were no chairlifts anyway, just rope toes and T-bars) would take you, and snowboarded down it. His wife has a video that I cannot wait to see.

At the end of the day, we all retired to the bigger holiday house and had a delicious roast cooked by the aforementioned brazen Texan, played games, and hung out until it was time to go back to the small log cabin down the road (can you tell I love it?).

And the next morning, after a delicious breakfast cooked by Kiki we drove back to Christchurch. It was 70 DEGREES AND SUNNY, and I went for a run in shorts and a tshirt. Perfect weekend if you ask me :)

For now, we still have another month of winter and I'm so excited to see what else we get up to. We have tickets for the Christchurch movie festival, an observatory tour at Lake Tekapo, and a GrabOne deal (kiwi equivalent of Groupon/Living Social) to go skiing at least one more time.

Until then,
E

Winter, you're alright.