Fille de Neige
snow.co.nz/blogs/fille-de-neige/
Chantel Smith
I like to snowboard as much as possible! I'm found most weekends on the slopes of Ruapehu.
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the end of our Chill Tour
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Posted on Thursday August 27th at 2:22 p.m.
Let's take it right back... We left Craigeburn in the morning of Tuesday the 18th August and started the tiki tour south - stopping for one last coffee at Chill HQ in Springfield of course! The weather on the drive between Methven and Fairlie was terrible. It hosed down. We ended up taking the day off and hunkered down for a night in Tekapo. Jack Frost paid a visit overnight and we finally used the ice scraper that had been teasing us in the car. Take that you beauty. Reports of 15cms of fresh at Mt Dobson! And off we went.
Today was not a day for my little 152 I had with me, so I did a couple submarine runs before I totally changed my binding set up. There had to be more than 15cms here for sure. Blue sky and fresh lines all day, all within the field. Stoked. The carpark was full and there were a couple of school buses up there, and they say it was busy for a week day, but we couldn't tell. Eventually we compensated for the lack of lift lines by pausing often to take photos. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.
carpark-cam @ Dobson
getting buried, whoops
chairlift cam
trail map, not required
nice
From here to the beautiful Ohau. We treated ourselves to a stay at Lake Ohau lodge, and had the most amazing view of the lake and Mt Cook from our room. A 3 course dinner and a 3 course breakfast and back into it for yet another day on the slopes. Not as much snow coverage as when I was here this time last year. It sounded noisy off the main trails so we gave that a miss. Hiking was on for some straight above the chair, but we were loving the rest on the chairlift, we'd been spoilt for snow yesterday, had day 11 legs, and were quite happy to tootle round on the groomers. Ohau I love... Ohau! It was the last field we could use our Chill Pass. What a blast we have had.
And then onto Wanaka.... it seemed like a big bustling city after the small fields and small towns we'd been to. It was also sad to know that we were coming to an end of the big trip we'd looked forward to for so long. Luckily there's a few more fields between us and Queenstown airport and we had 2 more potential riding days to fill, Yay! We filled these with a play at Snowpark and the last day at Cardrona, flying out of QT Sunday 21st with some very happy stats under our belt.
- 15 potential riding days
- 13 days riding - 9 days "tracked in" on our Chill Pass
- 9 different mountains - 6 of them with Chill
- Mostly good weather, but an EPIC powder day to top it all off
- a renewed addiction to a good coffee (thanks Ned's Cafe @ Chill HQ!)
Thanks to Chill for bringing together a whole lot of great mountains on the Chill Pass. We have unfinished business with some, so will be back again for sure. Thanks to SnowCo for asking me to pen my ramblings. And thanks to my travel buddy for the greatest two weeks of madness and fun I could ask for - "WOOOOOW"
... stayed tuned, I am headed back to the volcano now!
