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haven't found any snow yet, but the waves at raglan are pretty nice! gonna be climbing this saturday by wharepapa south and then heading to taranaki probably on sunday if any one happens to be in those areas. i'll try to summit taranaki if the snow permits and i can find someone to go with...

rare moment of no rain this morning at manu bay


some surfer far more skilled than myself


wainui beach

Jealous dude, beautiful country down there...

Have you been to Queenstown yet? Trust me dude, make sure you go to Arrow town for meat pies

Not one of my better performances, but what an incredible trip:

http://vimeo.com/11544542

^^Can't embed this for the life of me, lil' help?

ben turned up at mt ruapehu, went for a fun skin up the southern side of the mountain..scored some nice conditions for early season...good to meet another splitter and talk/ share some concepts...

shot of ben on the sentury split

awesome shot, nick! thanks! here's a few of my photos....

after abandoning my plans to summit mt taranaki due to persistent fog and rain most of the way up the mountain, i headed east in search of snow.

while waiting for the weather to clear, i climbed part of the tongariro crossing, and celebrated my first snowy footprints in the southern hemisphere with the last of my jack daniels.


i also found some rather uninviting hot springs.


fortunately, the weather cleared the next day, so i headed up mt ruapehu to the closest resort--whakapapa. they were only running one lift, with less than 100ft of gain, so i opted to splitboard. trying to decide how discreet i needed to be in my approach, i went to the ski patrol office, where they practically encouraged me to climb through their resort and even called up their snow safety guy to brief me on the snow conditions. damn it's nice to get away from american tort law!!!


the coverage was pretty poor down low, so i had to do a bit of scrambling before i got to try out my new board for the first time.


but soon i was above the level of the resort and into some decent snow. i hiked along this edge looking for a good spot to start my run, and made a mental note of the gnar in the background... bet that'll be ready to go by midwinter.


my first tracks in new zealand were also my first tracks on my new sentury dimension board.


the next day i met up with a local splitter, nick (ghaniman), and we headed up the southwest side of ruapehu above his local ski field, turoa (none of the 3 resorts on this mountain go anywhere near the summit, where all the good early season snow is).


as we neared the summit, heavy cloud cover started to roll quickly up the mountain, so we decided to turn around and ride while we could still see.


nick led the way into some fast high density powder and took off shredding before i could get a proper photo...


then he shot that sweet photo of me when i finally caught up near the bottom of the run.

i was contemplating taking off to head south, but this one line that nick pointed out to me yesterday kept haunting my thoughts.... and in the end i could not bear to leave without hiking back up to check it out.

but first, a stop at the summit to see the ominously steaming lake in the ruapehu crater.


and then on to the goods... i don't think i would have been able to leave the north island satisfied without bagging this line.


if you ever find yourself in the town of ohakune near the turoa resort, make sure you look up nick. he's a fun guy and a great rider and knows his mountain well... and his cabins have the only good shower i've found anywhere in the country. make sure you ask to watch the old snowboard videos he shot and edited!

now, time to head south...

bs
You have got to stop talking about NZ, the drool is wrecking my keyboard.
I'll be in Wanaka in 8 weeks, cant wait.
Our first ozzie BC trip is in 4 weeks, just waiting to get the wire out of my foot from a broken toe while surfing.
If you are game check out the photos
http://www.firstlightsnowboards.com.au/ouch.html
Pin out on Wed and in the Hills on Friday.
Then look out NZ here we come!!

when i arrived on the south island, i found that my weather mojo was fading... the precipitation had stopped following me. so i took a couple weeks to explore and visit friends while i awaited the return of the snow-clouds.

hiking in paparoa national park. it's important to be prepared!


jules stopped by and we did some climbing outside christchurch.


there wasn't much snow yet at arthur's pass, so we climbed some rock there too.


it took a full day of hiking to get to the welcome flat hot spring...


but it was worth it! after 2 prior failed attempts on the north island, i finally get to soak in an epic new zealand hot spring.


then i arrived in wanaka and my weather luck returned. the first snow in 4 weeks fell that night! time to find a mountain...


the snow line in NZ is a couple thousand feet above any civilization, so most backcountry access is via the "resorts" and their incredibly long and steep dirt access roads that wind far up from the valleys to the snow. and the best part is that the resorts realize this and the practice is basically supported by ski patrol! the main chairlift at the treble cone resort is visible near the center of the photo above. it takes 20 minutes to drive to the parking lot from the road in perfect conditions.

after a frustrating skin up a crowded groomer, i reached the gate.


i didn't have anyone to tour with, so i stuck somewhat near the resort, but there was still plenty of pow.


the next day i went to explore cardrona, the other nearby resort providing a convenient sketchy dirt road up to the snow. i spotted this little line within a short skin from the summit.


i was soon followed down by a trio of skiers, one of whom was an off duty patroller who invited me to join them on their tour. which ended up being pretty sick.


then i met a house full of avid climbers and backcountry skiers who quickly proved that they met my well established high standards of maturity and responsibility.


with a group of appropriately equipped touring partners, it was time to head a little farther from the resort.


dropping in...


skinning back towards treble cone we spotted this spire, fully bolted for sport climbing! damn i love this country!


and then today... skinned up cardrona in sub 50 meter visibility, and the cloud cleared just in time for me to find this little chute i spotted last time. (my track is on the left).


and lastly, a panorama of wanaka lake, shot from the treble cone access road.

Awesome. I am so jealous right now. Summer can suck it!

Nice round of Edward 40hands there too.

Damn! I've been sanding the paint off my house for the past two weeks - I'm Jealous.

looks like you are finding some excellent riding over there, good going mon! those surf shots are sweet too.

The fruits of your unemploy..., uh I mean funemployment, look quite obvious!

So jealous!!!!!!!!

sadly, NZ has no 40s of malt liquor. the substitute is far more gut-wrenching and unpalatable--1.25 liter plastic bottles of "scrumpy's hard cider". thus this little parlor game was known as "edward scrumpy-hands", which has kind of an amusing ring to it, i think...

but new zealand isn't all silly drinking games--i've gotten in some pretty decent touring, too. i met up with mike, a skier who contacted me after seeing this thread, and did a couple days of touring. the lines from the first day are shown above; the second day we checked out some terrain accessed through treble cone.

when we first skinned to the top of the mountain, the access gates were closed due to some control work being done near the boundary, so we killed a few minutes building kickers off some rocks near the summit.


this area is an easy 20 minute hike from the top of the lifts, but no one was hitting these sweet rocks... so i figured i might as well go big since the landing was fresh.


then we went to talk to ski patrol, who gave us permission to duck the rope as long as we promised to stay away from the drainage where they were blasting. have i mentioned how much i love this country and the sense of trust and personal responsibility that people have here?


we headed far from the resort and the sound of avalanche bombs, and of course found some pretty sweet lines to ride.


the next day it was so nice out that i decided to take the day off and check out some of the kick ass sport climbing that wanaka is surrounded by.


sitting around the dinner table that night, we couldn't help but notice the nearly full moon rising in a cloudless sky. so we loaded up my van and headed to the mountain for a moonlight tour.


it's hard to describe the amazing experience of watching powder sparkle in the moonlight, so i'll just say that it was even more amazing than i always imagined it would be.


i'm going to head down to queenstown tomorrow and plan to do some touring near the remarkables next week, then head up to arthur's pass. drop me a note if you are in the area!

"the remarkables" lives up to its name!


maggie finds good snow high above the lifts when most of the resort snow had been washed away by rain.


i finally realized my lifelong goal of snowboarding on my august birthday!


carsten, a splitter i ran into on a previous tour, shows off his creative saw work--a burton johan custom tapered swallowtail splitboard.


yes i did hit that rock kicker in the first photo


another great rock feature ready to go with a bit of shoveling



arthur's pass is going to get a couple feet this weekend (which is rather a lot by local standards); i'm on my way...