June 2018
Landing in NZ at 5-30 am and then walking to the Domestic airport with the sun rising on my first day back for 6 months 🙂
It was nice spending 3 days with Gary and family adjusting to the climate change from spring to winter.
Then I spent a day with Kirsten in Sumner by the beach walking her new Pug dog.
After a 6 hour drive I finally arrived back at Calum and Andrea’s just outside Wanaka just in time for dinner with the family, one of our friends Karl was also there.
Waking up the first morning to the sound of Bell birds and Tui’s was a joy to the ears.
There was an inversion so the temp’s were about 10 degree’s cooler than Christchurch and 15 degree’s cooler than England about 4 days before that.
The sound of Tui’s is a new sound for the area and we were lucky if we saw one.
But now there are about 9 that are coming around for the sugar water that Andrea puts for the birds in the winter, photo of the Tui, above,ready to have a drink.
I’ve been back in Wanaka three weeks now and have been settling in nicely.
I’m not in the Barn yet as the couple in there have to find a place first, that suits them.
I’m living in a self contained flat at the end of the main house.
A week after I arrived back the opened they new swimming pool which we have been waiting for for 25 years in the town and between biking to Hawea and back three times a week I have been swimming, keeping my fitness up ready for the ski season to start which was yesterday. 🙂
Even though Cardrona opened last weekend Treble Cone where I have a season pass opened yesterday.
It was good to be back on my ski’s again, I went ski-in with my touring buddy Derek ( above ), by the time we got to the upper mountain at 10-30 the only good area’s that were good were the gullies where the wind and sun (crust) had not affected the snow since our last storm 3 weeks ago which dumped over a meter of snow on the mountain’s.
So we went ski touring straight away, above is me hiking on my ski’s with the ski area in the distance with Lake Wanaka also in the far distance.
It took about 15 minuet’s to get up onto the ridge to do our first run (left ), we were the first two out there and after we did our first run (above) we saw another 4 hiking out.
The South and South East aspects were the best which didn’t have a sun crust on them and from the photo above we hiked back up towards the ridge on the left where the rocks are and did our second run down above with Derek in the photo.
It was a nice calm sunny day and its the first time I’ve skied with Derek since the season before last.
We then hiked back up onto the ridge and went and did our third run further to the left further along the ridge to the what they call the wedding cake which has the two big rocks on the top.
Derek went down first to the skiers left of my run (out of the photo right) and took the photo of me coming down what is my favorite line off the wedding cake.
So we did 4 hike’s including the hike back to the ski area and we did 3 nice runs on the silent and uncrowded slopes out the back of Treble Cone.
It snowed all night and most of today up there, I didn’t go because the vis would have been bad, not like Canada here, there’s no tree’s to ski in 🙁
Its supposed to snow tonight too and should be better vis tomorrow so will be going up for another ski tomorrow. 🙂
April 17th 2019
Having difficulties in editing my journey this last 12 months and google not allowing me to actually get to my editing page saying my password etc was wrong when it is written down in my files and after 3 attempts it made it harder for me to contact them and get it going again.
I found another site that pop’s up every now and then with a different format which I used up until December 2018 then decided to stop.
Going through my history on my computer I found the above editing page which I did when I came back from Canada in June last year.
There have been 3 different formats over the last year which is confusing for those that want to read them and for me to edit stuff, so I’ve decided to call it a day with the site.
Its been fun over the last 24 years editing and putting stuff on the site about my journey and experiences and sharing it with family and friends, if there is anyone still viewing the site for updates, thanks for your visits.
The original aim of the site has lost its direction and that was to “Stayintouch”
🙁