Wanaka Photos link

Have been taking the occasional photo, mostly off mountain, of some of the scenery around Wanaka and antics back at the hostel. Video footage up on the mountain needs to be edited first so stay tuned, but here's the link to the photo page.

Not quite out for the count

Now mum when you read this please do not get upset. Shed a tear or two but I don't want to hear any of that advice along the lines of maybe I should give up a sport where one minute you're having a lovely time and the next you are careering over the edge of a cliff and rolling down a hill into a rock. OUCH!!!

After my collision last week I took it easy for a couple of days, hit the swimming pool for some self managed hydrotherapy, and then got back on the slopes. Kel and Janet are here for 9 days, so I joined them at

Goddess wipes out snowboarder **BREAKING NEWS**

It was fast, it was furious and that fucking snowboarder should learn not to traverse straight across a minor slope at such speed. There I was skiing leisurely down the left hand side of a wide slope, small turns, minding my own business when out of my right peripheral vision comes scooting an out of control snowboarder right in front of my path. Nowhere to go, I just plowed right into him, toppling him ass over tit, losing my ski, bending my pole and leaving me with a rather sore right shoulder. Bugger!!!

With a lesson booked for 10 that morning, I was just warming up, but now I was down for the count.

Powder maketh the goddess......fall over!!

I arrived in a blizzard, then after 3 weeks of fairly benign weather a huge cold front hit NZ again and brought most of the country to a standstill. Roads and schools were closed, the garbage trucks failed to turn up and news reports said that up to 3/4 of the country was under snow. Even snow flurries in Auckland, pretty impressive stuff. And powder fell in the mountains, yippee!!

Goddess on ice

After a wonderful 2 weeks of fantastic snow conditions we are now experiencing some rather nasty freeze-thaw weather combined with high winds which have turned the snow fields rather icy. Bad memories of the top of Thredbo come to mind... but never fear, more snow will arrive soon enough and I can stop freaking out at the grating noise of skis skidding across what feels like a skate rink.

The good news is that after a week of really hard work and the combined efforts of Guenther and Heidi I can now find an edge on my skis and actually make it across the rink, down the steep slopes and carve my way somewhat stylishly into the queue line without making a complete arse of myself, or land on my arse for that matter! Let's just say things are on the up.