Of the over 220 days each year in which I wear ski boots, all but a handful are spent in uniform. At home in Vermont and here in Wanaka, I have a wide array of responsibilities at the resorts where I work, and any real down time when I get to simply be a skier is a precious commodity. Despite the well-deserved reputations and the number of guests accommodated by the resorts where I work, all are actually pretty small places when it comes right down to it. The total number of staff at Treble Cone in particular is miniscule compared to our position in the industry, and combine that with the number of our day-to-day guests who are season pass holders who spend a lot of time there and who know all of us, and it feels smaller still. It’s incredibly hard for me to go for ski, quietly, on my own or with friends without feeling the spotlight on me or the need to be on my game for the kind of guest service which is so key to our success as a resort. I love it, all of it, but it does get tiresome. So what can I do? How can I set aside the pressures and the attention? I leave, that’s how. I take a road trip to ski elsewhere. I go to Ohau!
Ohau is a small ski field about a two hour drive from Wanaka and Treble Cone. The place has one chair lift that goes right up the middle of the big, main bowl of the mountain, and a long, expansive ridge with some awesome terrain that requires a bit of hiking from the top of the lift. And it’s quiet there. Very quiet. And nobody knows me. And they don’t care what I do or where I do it. And then there’s the Ohau Lodge. It’s at the bottom of the road leading to the ski field and is one of the great ski lodges –the rooms are utilitarian but clean, the common spaces are comfortable and casual, and the food in absolutely terrific. Spending a couple of days between the lodge and the mountain really can lull even the most grizzled old pro into a state of lucid, contemplative relaxation that is a tremendous gift during a busy ski season. A couple of weeks ago, for the second year in a row, I did just that.
It’s a rarity for me to work a 5-day week at Treble Cone, so when I was gone for the two days of my trip my absence was notable. When I returned to work, many of my friends and colleagues inquired after the conditions at Ohau, knowing how much I had been looking forward to skiing there. The honest answer was that the conditions were awful. The majority of the snow was frozen chop having the consistency of coral reef, the snowpack was quite thin leaving many of Ohau’s legendary steeps without much cover, and despite a cloudless first day it never became warm enough for the snow to soften except in a few aspects off of the hikeable ridge above the bowl. Yep, pretty awful. And that didn’t matter whatsoever.
My friends and I didn’t go to Ohau to ski in hero powder up to our guts. We didn’t go there to get our fifteen minutes of fame with youtube videos of our skiing on sick terrain. We didn’t go there for any reason other than to enjoy making some fun turns in an unhurried atmosphere with precisely no pressure to perform in any way, for any reason. We went to relax, to take in the view, to spend some time outside without it being work, to enjoy each others’ company, and to find the skiers that live somewhere buried deep beneath the veneer necessary to function effectively as ski pros. It worked, flawlessly.
Ohau sells these great t-shirts that say “Ohau I Love to Ski”, and it’s true. For me, the atmosphere of the place encourages the simplicity of merely enjoying skiing for skiing’s sake. The thing about it, however, is that in an atmosphere like that, skiing becomes a vehicle for something else, something deeper and more important. During my time at Ohau, skiing with that ease, that lack of pressure, that lack of attention, pure and simple sliding on snow and enjoying the thrill of it, the skiing became a vehicle for escape from the mundane, from the daily grind. It permitted us to take stock of where we are, what direction we’re headed and how we’re going to get there. That’s the real reason I go there, and saying that I’ve gone to Ohau for the skiing is such a simplification that it’s just a convenient lie. I go to Ohau to be a skier, to enjoy life the way a mere skier does, with friends who appreciate all that being a skier means, and to remember why it’s so good that we’ll happily dedicate our lives to the craft of it.
Ohau is a small ski field about a two hour drive from Wanaka and Treble Cone. The place has one chair lift that goes right up the middle of the big, main bowl of the mountain, and a long, expansive ridge with some awesome terrain that requires a bit of hiking from the top of the lift. And it’s quiet there. Very quiet. And nobody knows me. And they don’t care what I do or where I do it. And then there’s the Ohau Lodge. It’s at the bottom of the road leading to the ski field and is one of the great ski lodges –the rooms are utilitarian but clean, the common spaces are comfortable and casual, and the food in absolutely terrific. Spending a couple of days between the lodge and the mountain really can lull even the most grizzled old pro into a state of lucid, contemplative relaxation that is a tremendous gift during a busy ski season. A couple of weeks ago, for the second year in a row, I did just that.
It’s a rarity for me to work a 5-day week at Treble Cone, so when I was gone for the two days of my trip my absence was notable. When I returned to work, many of my friends and colleagues inquired after the conditions at Ohau, knowing how much I had been looking forward to skiing there. The honest answer was that the conditions were awful. The majority of the snow was frozen chop having the consistency of coral reef, the snowpack was quite thin leaving many of Ohau’s legendary steeps without much cover, and despite a cloudless first day it never became warm enough for the snow to soften except in a few aspects off of the hikeable ridge above the bowl. Yep, pretty awful. And that didn’t matter whatsoever.
My friends and I didn’t go to Ohau to ski in hero powder up to our guts. We didn’t go there to get our fifteen minutes of fame with youtube videos of our skiing on sick terrain. We didn’t go there for any reason other than to enjoy making some fun turns in an unhurried atmosphere with precisely no pressure to perform in any way, for any reason. We went to relax, to take in the view, to spend some time outside without it being work, to enjoy each others’ company, and to find the skiers that live somewhere buried deep beneath the veneer necessary to function effectively as ski pros. It worked, flawlessly.
Ohau sells these great t-shirts that say “Ohau I Love to Ski”, and it’s true. For me, the atmosphere of the place encourages the simplicity of merely enjoying skiing for skiing’s sake. The thing about it, however, is that in an atmosphere like that, skiing becomes a vehicle for something else, something deeper and more important. During my time at Ohau, skiing with that ease, that lack of pressure, that lack of attention, pure and simple sliding on snow and enjoying the thrill of it, the skiing became a vehicle for escape from the mundane, from the daily grind. It permitted us to take stock of where we are, what direction we’re headed and how we’re going to get there. That’s the real reason I go there, and saying that I’ve gone to Ohau for the skiing is such a simplification that it’s just a convenient lie. I go to Ohau to be a skier, to enjoy life the way a mere skier does, with friends who appreciate all that being a skier means, and to remember why it’s so good that we’ll happily dedicate our lives to the craft of it.
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| Skiing the Summit Slopes at Ohau |
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| The summit of Mount Cook / Aoraki viewed over Lake Ohau |
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