A whole weekend of snow - almost.

Our adviser Pat has left town so we decided to do what responsible grad students are supposed to do: go snowboarding! (At the orientation meeting the presenter made clear that going for a Ph.D. requires a good balance of work and play - and we decided to start off with "play").

We rented a car and drove to Queenstown which is about 3 hours away. Very narrow and windy roads - fun to drive.

No snow in sight for most of the road trip. But finally - a dusting on a far away ridge line:
We got into Queenstown and there was no snow to be seen. The Winter Festival is currently happening and with students on semester break the place was packed. We got there just in time to watch a big firework:
We stayed at the Youth Hostel (central heating!!) and the guy at the reception told us that of the 2 open ski areas one was more family friendly and the other had more challenging terrain. Didn't take us long to decide on the right one. So we took off early the next morning and drove for another 45 minutes to the Cardrona Ski Resort. Up and up we went ....
The snowline was pretty much right at the base of the ski area. There was a sign at the bottom telling people to NOT drive up the gravel road without snow chains. Since there wasn't any snow down there we drove up without snow chains.

But then towards the top we finally did get into real snow:
On my first ride up I met Gareth from Australia:
He couldn't believe his luck - he said had never seen so much powder before! (There was one patch of un-groomed but very tracked-up snow. I told him to go snowboarding in Colorado.)

Most of the day was spent in white-out conditions:
but every so often the area would clear up and expose the beautiful scenery:
Prime minister Helen Clark had just been there the day before to officially open the new chair lift:
It actually snowed about 3mm over the course of the day and when we tried to leave they didn't let us drive down the road because we didn't have any snow chains! They made us wait for the grader and we had to follow it down the road:
The driver must have felt a bit silly since he pulled over after only a kilometer and let us pass.

The next day we did decide to try the family-friendly place, Coronet Peak. The weather was pretty crappy (freezing snow-rain) and everything iced up pretty badly.
That combined with an onslaught of eager skiers caused the lift lines to increase in length over the course of the day. In the end we had to wait for about 40 minutes to get on the lift:
And a picture from the lift:
My goggles also froze up in a matter of minutes - so I had no clue where I was going. The day did have its good moments like when I lost the main trail and accidentally snowboarded down some backwoods gully. Since we didn't have any snow chains (we had smartened up by now!) we did not even try to drive up the road but hitched a ride with some locals instead. And they told us that it's not always like that. Once all the lifts and all the ski areas are open there are no waits in line. Phew.

Made it back to Dunedin by Sunday night and needed 4 days to recover. Can't wait to try this again!