Darkest Before The Dawn

The view from Bremner Bay in Wanaka this morning

It’s dark out there. Very windy, very ominous, and very dark. Visibility up in the mountains is quite poor, there was icing on the lifts this morning and the wind is howling. Here in town it’s warm as I roam around on a day off, and one would think that looking upwards and seeing the storm slamming the mountains of the Mount Aspiring National Park while it’s so warm would not be a good thing - at home in Vermont that certainly would be the case. Here, like so many other details of the weather, precisely the opposite is true. With the tree line at an elevation barely above town and the skiable terrain all on the top half of the mountains, warm weather in town doesn’t necessarily mean the dreaded “r” word up on the hill – quite the opposite. It can be downright tropical at the lakeside while the driest, fluffiest, dreamiest snow this side of Hokkaido falls on our resorts. Of course, that hasn't happened in a while.

The resorts here in Wanaka have done a good job keeping conditions reasonably good for our guests, particularly so at Cardrona where I work, but we’ve all waited for the current storm with more than a bit of anxiety. So, as I look up the hill and understand that today may be only for the most intrepid skiers and riders, I have been a bit giddy with anticipation for the snow that is falling. Cardies' operations crew may have been doing an amazing job, but I’d love for them to get a break while I rip around and enjoy some fresh powder in the off-piste terrain that has been unskiable for a couple of weeks. Fingers crossed, tomorrow will be the day. It’s always darkest before the dawn, as the expression goes, and maybe it’s always ominous before the pow. My fat skis await me in the locker room and I expect to let them loose in the morning. Gratefully.

Seeing The Light

Sunrise view from Cardrona Alpine Resort

Here in Wanaka, we’re nearing the end of the busiest two weeks of the season. During the “school holidays”, all New Zealand and Australian schools are out and families often travel for their vacations. At home in the US, ski resorts depend on the December holidays, the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. birthday long weekend in mid-January, and Presidents Week in February for an enormous portion of our annual business, particularly in the Northeast. The school holidays here in NZ affect our season in similar fashion, except that it all happens in a single two week period and that those two weeks happen to be the second and third weeks of the season. As evidenced by my complete inability to post anything on this blog since I arrived in NZ almost a month ago, the importance of these first few weeks puts a lot of pressure on the resorts here and, especially with the often spotty snow at this time of year, it can be a bit stressful. This year has been no exception but now, at the end of the second week, we can see the light.

For the 2012 season here in Wanaka, I’ve switched resorts. After five seasons at Treble Cone including the past four as a program coordinator, supervisor, staff psychologist, spreadsheet guru, mass-scale-guest-service-maven and ‘any-problem-that-comes-down-the-pike-go-to-guy’, I am exceptionally happy to have moved to the other side of town and to be simply teaching skiing at Cardrona Alpine Resort. While Treble Cone is justly renown for being a ‘skiers mountain’, Cardrona is a much busier, very smoothly run family resort and it’s a great place to be a ski teacher. The instructors are quietly a remarkably impressive group - no chest beating here, no bravado, just good dedicated professional teachers from all over the world. All of the staff at Cardies have been incredibly welcoming to me and  have gone out of their way to make me feel at home and appreciated, for which I am very grateful. One of the interesting sidelines for me this year is that it’s the first fresh start I’ve had as an instructor in a very long time, and the truth is that it’s refreshing to simply start from scratch. The best part is that I’ve been able to do this while still living in Wanaka, maintaining the many friendships that have become so meaningful to me and making new ones at my new home mountain. With a less stressful (and marginally more lucrative) working life, I’m able to focus more on my skiing and my teaching, finding joy in the reasons I got into this business in the first place.

The holidays will officially end this weekend, and for now that’s a good thing. I’m pooped. Seriously tired. I’ve been getting a ton of work with a diverse group of great guests and I’ve been able to bring a lot of energy to the job, but I’m definitely ready for some rest. It’s not so much ‘the light at the end of the tunnel’, because the busy period is such a great time to be at the resort. It’s more that the end of the holidays will bring an opportunity to get some rest and shine the light of day on how we’ve done, and then to return to our mountain next week with renewed energy and enthusiasm. In the meantime, I’m going to try to levitate across my living room and get into bed early without having to expend much energy - I’ll need all of it for work tomorrow.