Out of the Mists

I recently made a trip from Wanaka to Christchurch to celebrate Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar (I love the irony of celebrating Yom Kippur in Christchurch). The five hour drive to Christchurch, the South Island's largest city, winds through some pretty amazing countryside. Among the many sights were the Lindis Pass, Lake Tekapo, Lake Pukaki and, best of all, Mount Cook / Aoraki, the tallest peak in New Zealand. It's Spring here and the two lakes are filled with glacial runoff that gives the water an iridescent blue quality. With sunlight breaking through the clouds of an approaching storm only intermittently, the views looking north towards Mount Cook / Aoraki from Highway 8 near the towns of Twizel and Lake Tekapo were particularly dramatic.

By way of explanation, as part of a larger effort to respect and include Maori culture, history and language as a part of modern New Zealand, many places go by both their English and their Maori names, hence the reference to "Mount Cook / Aoraki". It's a credit to the fruits of this effort that in NZ, dual names like this are a simple matter of course.

It's difficult to put the scale of Mount Cook / Aoraki into perspective, but it really is massive. I was fortunate to see its summit above the clouds for a brief spell on Sunday. Like so many of the world's natural wonders, seeing it in person is always more inspiring than in pictures. I do hope, however, that these photos convey a sense of the place.

Going Big, Starting Small

Treble Cone is a mecca for a great many big mountain skiers (and 'wannabe' big mountain skiers). Our expert level terrain really is exceptional - exceptionally steep, exceptionally exposed and exceptionally challenging (the photo is of me dropping into Indicator Chute, a front-side run, a couple of weeks ago). In the Snow Sports School we constantly work to make sure that the public knows and understands that TC also is a terrific place for families and for beginner skiers and riders to learn and grow. In the hands of our instructors, the difficulty of our mountain and the jump in ability required for a student to move from our beginners' teaching area to the green runs up on the hill becomes far easier. We like to think that the result is that first time skiers learning at Treble Cone do not stay beginners for long.

The combination of these two traits - big mountain mecca and leading snow sports school - means that some of our instructors have some legitimately great big mountain "creds". One of our guys, my Kiwi friend and colleague Alex Lynden, has been competing in the New Zealand big mountain scene for several years, has a lot of results on his resume, and is a well-respected member of the NZ freeski community. Another of our Kiwi guys, my buddy Campbell Smith, is relatively new to the scene but brings great technical skill and a bright future. Both Alex and Campbell are also great instructors and are just as likely to be teaching beginners on the their first-ever day on snow as they are to be hucking themselves off of Treble Cone's many cliffs, switch. I like to brag about all of our staff to our guests while they wait for their lessons at line-up, particularly considering that most of our intructors - and it's certainly true of Alex and Campbell - would never do the boasting themselves to their students. All the guests know is that they've got this cool Kiwi instructor (or Austrian, Italian, British, American, Canadian, Czech, French, Swiss, etc.) who is excited to share their sport with them.

The video linked here is from the recent Black Diamond Big Mountain Competition at Temple Basin here on the South Island, part of the Chill Series of events. Alex Lynden is interviewed, there is some awesome footage of Campbell Smith going very, very big in the competition, and many of the other athletes featured regularly train at Treble Cone. Big mountain comps like this one are an increasingly important venue for the industry, whether it be among equipment manufacturers, resorts, apparel makers, film makers, or kids who simply want to show their stuff and who drive their families' consumer choices in the snow sports business. Alex and Campbell, and many other serious athletes devoted to big mountain skiing, provide a great example of how being cool, going big, and being on the edge is not antithetical to the idea of being a great, modern instructor. Ok, well, not at Treble Cone anyway. Way to go guys!

Black Diamond Big Mountain Event from Temple Basin from Richard Sutcliffe on Vimeo.

The Whole Wide World

It’s spring here on the South Island of New Zealand, or rather it’s supposed to be. You wouldn’t know it from the amount of recent snowfall at Treble Cone and the quality of it. Rather than the usual spring-time corn snow which morphs into mashed potatoes by the end of the day, the cold temperatures are giving us snow that has remained dry, light and incredibly joyful since a series of storms dropped several feet of it on us over the past week-and-a-half. We’ve been kicking ourselves lately, and the number of people walking about the resort at the end of the day in a powder-induced daze with immense grins on their faces is a testament to the astonishingly good conditions. Looking briefly at the scoreboard, the stakes our ski patrol uses to measure the accumulated snow pack in the Saddle Basin (TC’s backside) had to be extended recently, several snow fences which normally protect some of our groomed runs from wind are now completely covered, and chutes and bowls that were closed a few weeks ago due to severe avalanche danger brought on by unusually mild spring weather are now fully open and providing the best skiing and riding of the season. Oh, and did I mention that we’re getting what seems like an additional ten minutes of daylight each day as we head into the last month of the season? For crying out loud, a week ago Treble Cone kept the lifts open until 4:30, a time that would have been nearly pitch dark a month before. All of this and TC in all of its glory makes for some pretty inspirational skiing, and I mean “inspirational” literally.

So, in a contemplative mode brought on by several days of continuous powder and a great deal of business for our Snow Sports School, I took advantage of a rare lull in the early morning grind to ride our “six-pack” chair lift solo this morning around 9:15.There were literally no clouds in the impossibly blue sky and I needed to find a place to sit and breathe in the day. Camera in hand, I headed towards a spot at TC called View Point. View Point sits at the top of the Matukituki Basin, which is the only section of our mountain facing north towards the heart of the Mount Aspiring National Park. To get there, one has to traverse a bit, round a sharp corner and go up briefly over a short rise before getting flattened by the view shown in the photos here. It’s shocking. Really.

The reality of my mornings at work is that I’m very busy, running from the moment I step out of the staff vans between 7:45 and 8:00 pretty much straight through until 11:00. I have a lot of ground to cover with my supervisory colleagues and a lot of guests and staff to look after, and frequently training clinics to run for our instructors. Rarely do I get the time to stop and really appreciate where I am and just how extraordinary it is. Thankfully, this morning I made sure to take the time to put it all into a clearer context, in the rarified light of the high alpine sunshine. My few moments sitting at View Point were well worthwhile, like a transfusion of clean air, quietude and a refreshed perspective. When working in this environment day in and day out, I’m busy enough that such moments are few, and I need to seek them out on occasion.

From View Point this morning, the whole of the Southern Alps seemed visible. In the photos here are great views of Mount Aspiring and its neighbors, Mount Earnslaw, several glaciers, and the whole of the Matukituki River valley. In the far distance I could see Mount Cook and it was so clear that I’m reasonably sure I could see the Eiffel Tower. Ok, maybe not Eiffel Tower but perhaps the Petronas Towers. The bright green valley floors, the vast and picture-perfect blue sky, the lake below, and the white snow-capped peaks are the stuff of childhood fantasy and, thanks to my good fortune, the stuff of my every day reality. I just need to stop and look every so often to be reminded.