Wanaka

Grab yourselves a coffee and get comfy, this will be a long one.

As always, better and more photos are available on my gallery page.

Since moving to New Zealand, we haven't really left the North Island much. In fact, other than a trip down to Picton and a trip to Christchurch for work, we've not set foot down South since 2005.

Every year, a loosely knit group of Kiters migrate towards a small town called Wanaka. They gather to go Snowkiting. For those who don't want to read the wiki page, essentially, you strap a snowboard or skis on, find a fun piece of terrain and get pulled around on a kite. It's a week long adventure that's been going on for close to 10 years. Like most kiting events I've been to here it's fairly low key.

Planning started last summer, talking to various friends here to get a group together from Wellington. My friend Skip volunteered his parent's house and we bought some tickets. Fast forward almost 5 months and we were ready to leave.

Flying to Christchurch was largely uneventful, but when it was time to transfer to our flight to Wanaka, things got a little interesting:

Now, I'm not the greatest flyer in the world, but I manage. The small plane (19 seats) was definitely setting the scene for how small Wanaka was.

During the flight, we got a great view of the southern alps:

You see the strange thing about winter sports in New Zealand to this North American is that you have to drive up the mountain to get to the snow. At ground level, it's 10-15 degrees warmer then where you end up skiing.

I want to take a quick second to say just how incredible our hosts Mary and Roger were. They had 2 strangers (Ryan and me) come and live in their house for 9 days and were absolutely the most inviting and friendly people I've had the pleasure of meeting. In fact, not only did R pick us up at the airport, but when we got in we were presented with a typical Kiwi BBQ Breakfast:

(all kiwi BBQs have a hot plate on one side and a grill on the other, the eggs went on about 2 minutes after this photo was taken)

The night we arrived, I was invited to go out drinking with several other Kiter friends from Wellington, Foxton, Nelson and beyond. As this blog is targeted at my family, I'll save you the absolutely embarassing condition I ended up in by trying to keep up with Kiwis. Suffice it to say Canadians can NOT drink. The next day was a complete write off and I've earned a new reputation / nick name or two. Not my proudest moment, but I digress.

Monday morning and we were ready to head out to Old Man's Range. I'm not entirely sure what the land is, if it's crown land, a farmer's field or something else, but it was the top of a chain of hills with a very dubious road to head up.

One of several gate crossings to get to where we were kiting. This photo is about 1/3 of the way up.

An aside, as much as I made fun of SUV drivers in Canada, New Zealand (and especially people who live in the more remote South Island) has a lot of justification for having 4x4. I've touched on this before with driving on the beach, but the roads to get to the snow were impressively bad; even the commercial hills had roads that required chains and trucks. This photo is of a Land Rover Discovery (definitely a very competent off road vehicle) getting stuck half way up the hill:

Driving up the hill was like driving into the clouds:

I didn't get a chance to take any decent photos at Old Man's range sadly, I was too busy struggling to figure out the basics of Snowkiting.

I'd always thought that because I was a competent snowboarder and a competent kiter, I'd pick it up simply and easily. Boy was I wrong. The wind was light, so the kites I brought weren't necessarily the best; because I had gaps in my kiting knowledge and gaps in my snowboarding abilities, they combined to make snowkiting quite difficult.

By the end of the day, on a borrowed kite, I got my first couple of good solid runs up and down the hill. Unfortunately, just as I was heading back we got hit by a massive snow squall; visibility 0 and I just about ran into an all white kite as I was cruising back down. Packing up and heading back down, I was sore but keen to try again!

The next day, Ryan and I, both still feeling quite tender from the experience, decided to play tourist instead and drove down to Queenstown. It's known as the Extreme Sport hub of New Zealand, but really, it's the closest thing I've seen to a tourist trap since moving here. Tourism is the #1 industry. It struck me as crass compared to Wanaka, but at least the drive in was epic:

Both Wanaka and Queesntown have beautiful lakes:

Wednesday rolls around and It's time to go on another Snowkiting adventure. This time we were off to the Snow Farm. Once again, New Zealand proved that the unusual is not only common, but expected. We pulled over to gather our troops and saw that a car that had parked behind us had a 2 week old baby goat as a pet:

That's Ryan in the Orange and Michelle in the background.

The Snow Farm really is a spectacular place. It's the primary training ground for various nordic ski teams and also has a vehicle testing track for winter conditions. The view doesn't suck either:

My partners in crime and I started setting up:

It was more productive than Monday, but still challenging. Part of the issue of course is that we're not kiting on a perfectly flat surface (like on the water). Rather, we're dealing with gentle hills and valleys. What happens when you get into the valley? The wind goes away. Sitting waiting for a random gust to get our kites back in the air was rather frustrating at times. But experience is experience and at the end of the day we were still cautiously optimistic.

Thursday we had a day of relaxation, having various adventures around Wanaka. A quick jaunt up Mount Iron gave us these beautiful view:

That's Wanaka at the bottom of the hill. We also hit up a movie (Inception, for the second time, highly recommended) at the Paradiso Cinema. It's famous for it's small theatre with old couches, a car and various mismatched movie chairs and it's intermission where they have fresh baked cookies. A great experience.

Finally, Friday and we had perfect conditions. A nice 15 knot breeze, bright sunny skies and -3, just cold enough to keep the snow in reasonable condition. This was the Snowkiting Day!

As always, Kiwis never cease to amaze me. This example of jandal obsession will stay with me for a while:

I borrowed a helmet mounted camera from a fellow Canadian immigrant in Wellington and finally got it working for the day.

The setup area:

The obligatory photo of my kite (i like how it looks on a white background)

A big photo of me kitelooping my way up a hill:

Look at all the kites!!!

A stunning day. The weather went south in the afternoon and quite frankly, it was a good thing as I was completely knackered. It's exhausting!! Because of the topology there's a lot of work that goes into getting the right lines to make it up and down the hills. The terrain is much more unforgiving; legs get tired very quickly, you're spending a fair amount of time getting up and falling when you're a beginner and the kites power needs much finer grained control.

Saturday, our last day before travel and Ryan and I decided we wanted to do some proper snowboarding. Off to Treble Cone we went! It's a hill unlike really anything I've boarded until now. Completely without trees and with very open runs, it's probably the steepest hill I've ever been to. In Canada, the pitch would have made most of the runs a level higher in difficulty, but because there's literally nothing to hit and no where you can really get in trouble, they rate them a little softer.

The thing with Treble Cone is because of the pitch, once you get off the chairlift it really looks like you're skiing off the top of a cliff:

I quickly remembered what I was doing on a board and proceeded to have one of the best Snowboarding sessions of my life:

Another night on the town with Skip and we were ready to head back to Wellington. The day before of course was the 7.1 magnitude earthquake in Christchurch, which we were worried had shut down the airport and stranded us in Wanaka. Luckily, the airport re-opened at 1:30 on Friday so we were homeward bound.

A second small issue arose on Saturday though: crazy strong winds. Wanaka had such a strong breeze that our plane had to spiral to climb to 10,000 feet before we could overcome the wind and make our way to Chch. Landing in Chch and then Wellington certainly made me nervous about the whole flying experience in New Zealand, an issue I've since dealt with .

So that's the trip. What did I think of snowkiting? To be honest, I felt that with my current skill levels of Kiting and snowboarding I was likely not quite ready to take on another variant. It's a lot more work right now then either sport; I think I enjoy them more. I'll revisit in a year or two after I get better at the component bits. What did I think of my trip? It was legendary. our hosts were fantastic, friends (old and new) were all around, I had a great time in a beautiful part of the world and was doing what I love doing.