lucky me I have been given the rare treat of 2 days off in a row so it is time to take advantage of it pronto! Queenstown beckoned. Living there is Laura a great friend of mine from uni and Ange and Caitlin some more awesome pals from last season. Wednesday afternoon and up Cardrona mountain the snow is starting to come down pretty hard. Certainly the most I have seen it come down since I have been here. Very excited about the next day I head off to work. I was hoping to finish the night early and hitch over wednesday evening so I could have more time in Queenstown. No luck as 4 gentlemen came into the bar just as I had closed up and finished mopping. 4 of your most complex and time consuming cocktails they may as well have asked for! So I got on making them and in my anger as violently shaking the cocktail shaker I bludgeoned myself on the forehead with it! So hard I stumbled back and went all dizzy. The inch lump took less then a second to appear and I struggled half with dizziness and half with laughter to finish the order. Thankfully by the morning the lump had gone down which was great as I didn't fancy explaining it to everyone!
I was up bright and early, bag packed and hitching by 7.30am. I quickly got a ride to Cardrona which is about a 3rd of the way to Queenstown. Then starting walking the mountain pass from Wanaka to Queenstown. It wasn't long before I was picked up by a lovely bloke who was actually rather irritated he was going over to QT. It seemed he had promised he would ski with a friend of his today. The first powder day in at least 8 weeks! And his friend was more of a one run then cafe and beer kinda guy. Not the kinda guy you want to be skiing with on a day like today. Not to mention he was very annoyed that he had to go over to QT as the mountains weren't as good. This worried me a bit but not enough to kill the excitement of going over to ride with my mates and play on a new mountain.
I was up Remarkables by 9 am pretty impressive I think. This was because in QT a nice chick offered me her bus pass up the mountain. Seeing the fresh snow I was immediately so pumped to ride. Laura had work till 11.30 and Caitlin was too lazy to be up this early so I went to enjoy some of it by myself. I hiked for about 30 mins to find some amazing fresh lines, a feeling sorely missed though I hadn't noticed until the rush came to me gliding down the mountain turn after turn. As i got to the bottom of the run buzzing with excitement I boosted off a cat track blind to the landing, in the air I saw nothing beneath me but a huge rock smiling at me from far below. My thoughts were of broken bones boards and the end of the season for me. My board hit the rock first thankfully and I bounced backwards off it missing the rest of the rock and landing in the soft snow. I paused and felt myself and amazed I had some how escaped unscathed I thought well my board must be snapped thats that for sure. Not too upset about the prospect as I was still thrilled to be in one piece. My board was of course an utter mess. Chunks out of the bottom, scratches everywhere plastic ripping out at all angles but it was in one piece too and very fixable. I took it straight to repairs and within 20 minutes a lot of P-tex and some TLC it was ready to roll again. Thank god. By this time Caitlin had appeared. Always great to see her. She introduced me to her friend Alice and we set off to enjoy the day and the fresh snow. After a few hikes and a few amazing runs we got to the bottom of the mountain where the snow started to become grassy. In a fun mood we tried to ride it anyway as far s we could this resulted in me being head first 3 inches deep in muddy water. Very funny although this humour wasn't shared by the bus driver taking us back up the hill. He took a bit of persuading but eventually I was allowed on.
Not long till we were joined by Laura. Me and Caitlin were very keen to try our backflips and rodeos and as we hadn't yet this season so we spent our lift rides searching for a good spot to throw ourselves off. We saw a few here and there but none turned out to be the one. Never the less we found some fun. A cheeky little cliff drop into powder and one spectacular view as well. No backflips though. But still an amazing perfect day. Me and Laura then headed back to hers with some supplies to intoxicate ourselves and a bit of grub. The plan was to meet Caitlin Ange and Alice later but they ended up being too lazy. So just me and Laura headed out for a night in Qt we went to this club which had just opened. I think it was called "The Viynal." It was underground and dark but had a great vibe and some really good live music was going on all night. Fuelled with booze we got our boogie on and had an awesome night. Some of you may have noticed already but I have a slight resemblance to an american rapper called Macklemore. This resemblance gets repeated to me about twice a day minimum out here and has now just become a part of my life. So when a drunk Argentinean guy came up to me in the club asking if he could buy Maclklemore a drink there wasn't much of a morale struggle in my already tipsy brain to refuse. This was a fun 15 mins of pretending until his presence became annoying and we decided to go back to dancing. Laura was great she was constantly introducing me to people it seemed she knew the whole town and then some. Eventually due to too much drink it was time to call it a night. Not before having a Ferg bakery pie of course! The morning came far too quickly and with it a horrendous hangover dulled slightly by the fact that I was clearly still very drunk. Reaching for my phone I see its 11.30 am and Caitlin is about to board the last bus up the hill while I lay in a self pitying and loathing pit of headaches and sickness. I decided I was not to be beaten by this as Laura had work anyway and I needed to be productive. I dragged myself out of bed and stumbled a lot out of the door clutching all my belongings and my snowboard. I made it just in time to get the last bus and sat on there thinking why I had wrenched myself from bed so prematurely because nothing could be worth the way I was currently feeling. I crawled up the stairs once at the base building to be greater by laughs from Caitlin, Alice and Ange at my intensely hungover appearance. A quick change in the loo and a lot of water and I was ready to roll.
We had a few fun runs to get warmed up and then spotted the perfect backflip spot. Given my current state it would have been wise to pass up this opportunity but the part of me that was still a bit drunk thought it a marvellous idea. We went to the base building and collected shovels and our bags. There we bumped into Gaz an employee of Les Elfe last season with us who told of of a great spot up over the top of one of the lifts. This seemed like a much better idea as it was far less in view and Caitlin would rather not be seen at the mountain she works at doing what we were. We found the spot as Gaz had said and got to building ourselves a whippy little kicker. About half an hours hard work and we had ourselves a pretty well made jump. I walked up to the top of the run in and had a look at it. It looked a bit too whippy. Crazy infact so we decided to shave a bit off the lip and give it a go. i just popped off it first to see how it was and it felt great. Next comes the backflip. This didn't go quite as smoothly as before and I didn't have the commitment. I chickened out mid air and first point of contact was my head and neck. Not a fun fall! But shockingly I was alive and could move. Caitlin then followed with an equally failed attempt! hers was a direct face plant which I must say looked hilarious! After these 2 very painful and bad falls we decided that the jump perhaps did require the whip we had previously deemed too much. So after a bit of a reshape we hit it again with more promising results and again and again. Eventually it started becoming more controlled and composed in the air and then bang got it! Caitlin kept stomping them and then falling over just after. So so close. She then decided to try "one more" never a good idea. She spun it round but it was too slow and she ate the shit big time. Her yelp of pain was pretty prolonged so I was worried as i rushed down to her and after a quick check over releavingly she was ok. A bit of a messed up wrist and probably some internal bleeding but nothing to worry about. At that point we decided to call it a day. Met up with Ange and headed home.
In the morning we woke up bright and early to road trip back over to Wanaka. All four of us Ange, Alice Caitlin and me rode Cardrona all day. Messing around in the pipe and the park having a laugh then after lunch we took a little bit of a hike up to a great view point and stopped for another little smoke and a chill surrounded by one of the most jaw dropping views I have ever seen. We took a little gnarly line down from the view point and boosted back to mine. I had work so I left the girls to themselves and after a quick shift came back to some merry girls who were keen to chill out and watch a movie so we stuck dumb and dumber on and had a nice chilled eve in . Great to hang out with them and catch up. A tremendously fun filled bunch of days off and I got my rodeos down! Sweet.
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