Day 12, Tuesday, Sep. 07 -- Skiing The Remarkables

Synopsis

We spent the day Skiing at The Remarkables, on the eastern side of the mountain range. The highlight was a brief hike to the top of a ridge which offered incredible views of Queenstown far below, and the snow-capped peaks of the Southern Alps that stretched as far as the eyes could see. We then spent the evening updating and uploading our web page in Queenstown.

Detailed Journal

Jason was up and getting ready at 0630 for the ski day. It was the first day that he was getting Lynette up. It never fails that skiing is the one thing that gets him going. We got ready to go and caught a few moments of the sunrise over the mountains across the lake from the 12-Mile-Delta campsite.

We drove into Queenstown and rented skis for the day (NZ$30/person) before driving out towards the Remarkables. Unlike resorts that we have been to, the Remarks are located at the summit of the Remarkable mountains. The base of the mountain, had absolutely no snow. We had to drive 13km from the base to the summit on a very steep, winding road to the summit. We couldn’t imagine people making this drive if there was snow on the road. We made it to the ski resort at 0830, about a half hour before the resort opened. We bought passes and made our way to the slopes. It was definitely “Spring skiing”, but the sun was shining and the views were incredible. The resort was relatively small, and we couldn’t believe how packed out the “beginner’s” area was. If you like bowls, New Zealand is the place for you. That’s really all there are since there are no trees anywhere on the mountain. The area was kind of small, and the chair lifts were extremely uncomfortable (with plastic bars for seats), but it had a quaint feel, wasn’t too crowded and the views made up for the downsides. We started with the intermediate slopes on the left side of the lift. After 3 runs, we made our way over to the other side of the resort. We made a few runs (including one black run where Lynette completed her signature “go down the entire slope on your butt with only one ski”) before breaking for lunch. We went back on the right side and decided to hike up to an overlook of Lake Wakatipu and Queenstown. The views were spectacular. Although it wasn’t new for Jason, it was Lynette’s first ever hike-to-ski. We ended the day by skiing down a run called Homeward Bound. The rental shop highly recommended this run and suggested that we wait and do it late in the day when the snow softens. It was a neat run. A shuttle picked us up at the bottom (shuttles run on the half hour) and took us back to the lodge area. We packed up and headed back to Queenstown to return our gear.

Since we had finished early and we had read about the abundance of internet cafes in Queenstown, we decided to get our webpage up to date and upload it to let folks know how our trip was going. We first looked for an internet café that would allow us to connect our laptop, then we sat in the park for a while, finishing up our journaling through day 9, then making the daily webpages. When the sun went behind the mountains, we went into McCafe (yes, a Starbucks café a la McDonalds… a mix between McDonalds and Starbucks, I can’t believe we haven’t seen that in the states yet!) and ordered a Mochaccino. We sat there for a while, then Lynette went to feed the parking meter while Jason went to the internet location to finish up and upload. The process took much longer than expected, and to make a very long story only slightly long, 5 hours later we had uploaded the webpage and sent out a notification to a partial list of people we wanted to (due to an email mis-hap that wouldn’t let us send it to the entire list).

At this point, we were both exhausted and a bit frustrated that the process had taken the entire evening. To add to it, we drove to two holiday parks in town, one of which was closed, the other of which was full. The second place told us of another camp about 10 minutes away (Arthur’s Point Top 10 Holiday Park), which we caught just before they closed, and we slipped into a spot for the night. To top off the not-so-best night of our trip thus far, we had some nasty sausages and potatoes for dinner. The saving grace was the Monteith’s pilsner we had picked up from the grocery store. Oh well, we were both very happy that the webpage was up to date, not only so our friends and family could read and see photos of our trip, but more so because it’s our own memoir of the trip.

Pictures

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