All in a Days Work

Finally, Chantal had a chance to get onto the slopes!As the weather forecast was good, both of us had warned our respective managers that we might not be in on Tuesday. A day up in mountains seemed a much better place to spend the day rather than being cooped up in an office, all dayAs usual, we woke up early and rang the snowline for the latest update (6am that morning) and were both very pleased to hear that Mt Hutt was open. After breakfast, we set off from Christchurch. We stopped briefly at Gnomes Ski Shop, in Darfield (a small country town), for some much needed equipment (goggles for Chantal and wrist guards for Pete). We then continued our journey, past Kirwee, where the pub still serves “a pie and pint” for $6! Must stop off there, one day! Anyway, we drove to and up the winding, unsealed mountain road without a problem. We followed others, and stopped at the ‘Canterbury View’ pullover, 5km up the access road. There, after some fiddling and use of Saxon language, Pete managed to put the snow chains on. These were needed, as there was still a bit of ice on the road. Approximately two hours after leaving our house, we finally arrived at Mt Hutt!

We both got kitted up quickly and hit the slopes. Well, the learner slope first! I had not been skiing for a year, so needed to get used to it again. Mt Hutt now has a Magic Carpet, which is great as you do not get sore arms anymore from hanging on to tow rope! As we were not in NZ last year, we had not seen the new set-up at Mt Hutt and were very surprised and impressed with the new green and blue runs that have been created. We both had a few good runs, before stopping for lunch. It was lovely, to relax and sit on top of a snowy mountain, in the sunshine! My rolls tasted absolutely wonderful!

After lunch, Pete ventured to the very top of the mountain on the new Magic 6 Chairlift, and admired the beautiful scenery, before boarding down.

Chantal joined a ski class for the afternoon. As there were only two in the class, the lesson was cut to 1 hour (instead of 2 hours), as it was almost one to one tuition. It was good to have that lesson, just to get the basics right again. I am pleased to say that I survived the whole day without falling over once! Probably does have something to do with the lack of speed!

Around 3.30pm we both called it a day, and started our journey back to Christchurch. Both felt really fulfilled and did not really want to go back tho work the following day. We are now busy planning a weekend away at a club field (Mt Cheeseman or Mt Olympus) so that we can stay overnight and have a few runs before breakfast! Like my ski instructor said: A great day in his office, today!