Alaskan Reunion!

Tanja, Christoph and Marlo (the brand-spanking new baby!) came to town last week and we spent the day at the beach on the Otago Peninsula. Contemplating the new and reminiscing about the old. Ahhhh - so good!
And poor Tanja has to drink Clausthaler now :)

Down the 'Presidental Highway' we go...

Once more we went down the 'Presidential Highway' to Milford Sound:
(This picture was taken by Ben last winter - we were in such a hurry this weekend that we couldn't stop to take one. And it was dark anyway.)

We spent the night at a DOC (Department of Conservation) field station where Lara's friends Danilo and Lisa are working and they generously let us crash in the bunk room. Danilo stayed behind and watched their little 2-year old, Naomi, while Lisa joined us for a wilderness trek. We headed further down the road toward Milford Sound though the Homer Tunnel,
..and took off on the Gulliver/Esperance track. Here is a Google image with the Milford Sound Hwy marked in yellow, the track from the road to the camp site marked in red, the hike to the ridge in blue and the rest of the original mail route marked in green:
The track is not very well maintained any more but used to be the main mail delivery route to Milford Sound before the Homer Tunnel was built (entrance and exit also marked in the image). The steepest portions of the track were protected by wire ropes back then but I am still amazed that they delivered the mail over that pass. The next is an image taking at the tunnel entrance looking up into the valley along the path of the green track:
We only did the red and blue portion of the track (not the green one). The lower portion of the trail was lots of bushwhacking (we even lost the trail a few times):
..with the occasional glimpse through the trees:The vegetation got progressively sparser:...until there wasn't any left. We made it to the tent site just before dark. The only flat spot to be found was right above De Lambert Falls in the gravel. And luckily there were a few boulders to hide from the wind during dinner:
And while I was rewarded with spectacular views from the tent the next morning:
and a beautiful sunrise:
... my friends took off at 4:30AM to climb to the top of the ridge (marked in blue). And this is what they got to see from there:
After a short breakfast we started on the trek down.
To avoid some of the bushwhacking we took a slightly different route down a dry creek bed:
...and joined the main track further downstream. We got back to the car just slightly late (Lisa had promised Danilo to be back for babysitting duties so that he can go to work.) Driving back we stopped on the other side of the ridge and tried to figure out where they had gone:
Ah, there it is!Oh yeah, the arm. Well, it's not really were it should be. I was the only 3-legged member of my party. And therefore wasn't allowed to scramble up to the ridge in the dark :( But it looks like the mobility is good enough for biking now. Will give that a shot as soon as my legs have recovered to the point where I can swing them over the top bar of my bike :)

Brokeback Mountain Country

While Ben put together his splitboard we ventured out to investigate possible ski runs for next season. Which is now sooo close - only about 3 months away :)

We drove to the end of some road that Leigh found on a map, parked our cars ...
loaded the gun...
and headed for the hills.
The biggest adventure of the trip was when the fuel bottle caught fire. I was ready to see it explode but Shelagh and Mike managed to suffocate the flames before the spectacle could take place (and I for once actually had my camera ready!)
Amazingly enough, Mike cleaned it up a bit and it worked again like a charm!

Sheep and cows used to be herded through the area and several artifacts can still be found from that time. Like this hut which Leigh called the "honeymoon suite" - even though it contained 6 bunks and didn't have a very honeymooney feel to it.
And now this looks like a pretty decent slope to carve some turns into:
And this has definitely potential:

We drove a little detour on the way back through Dansey Pass and found another potential gnar shredder:
and a good place to have a cold one afterward:
But until then: Yay for summer, sun lotion and shorts!
More pictures here.

Bring on the GNAR, or splitboard setup or damn! it's cold outside

Since it's summertime in NZ, this blog is overdue for a gnar post. Being that it's too cold and windy to enjoy a chairlift ride for a day's worth of repeat gnar shredding, I had some time to set up my splitboard with a little leftover for actually making a blog post.

First off: Stance. I decided on a +35deg front and +5 rear. Not as forward-facing as I usually enjoy, but oh well, it's a safe choice. I'll spare everyone the details of the trial and error of getting the discs in the pucks oriented a way that works.

Now to decide is which bindings to use. I have on hand:

• Cheap-ass Technines that came free with a board I bought at Play it Again
• Awful K2 A-Team bindings that injured my heel badly enough that it was painful to ride for the last month of last year's season
• Burton C60: stiff, supportive, responsive, comfortable, and extremely lightweight
  

Easy choice, eh? So I cannibalized my '99 Burton Supermodel:
Once I mounted the bindings to the plates, I started to realize that some things just weren't designed to go together. The bindings overhang the sides of the plates by about 1 3/4 inch. I'm sure they get a good amount of their stiffness from being placed directly on the board's topsheet. I think I'll give up some of it with the bindings suspended 1/2 inch above the board's deck. There's also the issue of the toe straps. Burton has a very clever design where the toe straps are held into the binding without a nut and bolt. I love the benefit of the thing never loosening and the light weight, but when used with a splitboard, well, things are bound to get lost in the most inconvenient places possible:
Imagine losing that at the top of a chute as you convert your board from touring to snowboard mode. Solution: Duct tape.
Now that ladder won't pass through the binding without a lot of coaxing.

In touring mode, the overhang on the bindings almost causes them to hit each other, we'll see if that is a problem in the real world:
I pulled the skins out and had every intention of trimming them to size, but I was just not in the mood to do anything destructive and irreversible.
So look for an exciting and action packed skin-trimming post in the near future.

Alpacas

I visited my friend Steve last weekend. He moved to a small town near Christchurch from Anchorage 8 years ago and is now raising alpacas (besides other venturesome undertakings). There are two kinds of alpaca in New Zealand and his are called Huacaya (wa-ki-ya). And here they are:
And here is the reason they are so nakkid:
You can tell which animals the wool came from - the yarn was not colored. Steve had a friend spin the wool and knit sweaters and hats out of it. And I ended up being the lucky recipient of this sweater. Here is a picture of the backside:
The yarn for the sweater consists of 80% alpaca and 20% sheep wool. The alpaca fibers are somewhat weaker than other wool fibers so that the addition of some sheep wool fibers strengthens the yarn. Alpaca is very warm, really soft (I stroke my alpaca a lot !) and does not contain lenolin like sheep wool (which makes alpaca wool hypoallergenic). I looked it up and learned that lanolin is what makes sheep wool naturally water repellent. Judging by the recent weather sheep wool is the way to go in Dunedin!

Steve told me they make weirdly fascinating sounds during mating, so I looked it up on youtube and sure enough: it's called 'orgling' and sounds like this. Enjoy :)

PS: It's not quite perfect yet but the angle has definitely improved:

So romantic

And of course there has to be an arm picture. This is how far I can extend my arm now (the right arm is just sympathetic to my left arm):