NEW ZEALAND SHREDTACULAR: Big-mountain skiing and avalanche scares in Kiwi land
Contrary to what I've seen in ski news lately, there really is more to New Zealand than Snowpark. In fact, there are ridiculously big mountains down there that deserve some love, and I'm here to share it.
I just recently returned from 10 days in Middle Earth, better known as Mount Cook Village, waiting out wind and rain storms for one of the most memorable heli skiing days I've known. Hiking around the valley while we waited out the 75mph wind gusts that nearly toppled our trusty Winnebago, I felt like a first time explorer at the end of the not so beaten path. Two and a half hours from Queenstown airport, the road ended and the Tasman Glacier began leading up to some highly anticipated powder turns and the highest peak in the southern Alps. First summited in 1894 by a group of European climbers, Mount Cook, known as Aoraki by the native Maori people, stands 12,316 feet high. Not bad for an island. The place reminds me of a cross somewhere between Las Lenas and the Swiss Alps, boasting moon-like landscapes littered with huge turquoise ice features and crevasses. One thing is for sure: It's still wild.
I didn't believe it until I saw the alpenglow on the peaks below blue skiess as the sun rose the morning we were scheduled to fly. I had never seen weather that extreme in the days leading to our scheduled heli day. For that reason, I expected to hear concern regarding wind loading with new snowfall in the heli briefing, but briefing shmeifing—there was snow report, no transceiver practice, not even a "don't let the rotors cut your head off" talk; this was New Zealand, where lawsuits don't exist and you're pretty much on your own. That or the guides assumed we knew what we were doing. We were definitely not in North America anymore.
Getting in the laid back Kiwi spirit, I adopted the guides attitude who casually shrugged and nodded as we pointed out lines, as if to say, "Why you asking me?" The first few runs were like nothing I'd ever skied. Huge blue ice features and seemingly mellow rollovers gave new meaning to "don't go beyond where we tell you" when we nearly lost Charlie in the first few turns to a man-eating crevasse. Laughing that one off, it wasn't long before the new snow began turning to hot pow, and point trigger avalanches started showing up over every rollover. Feeling it was time to move on, we decided to head to a less sun exposed slope to shoot some steeper lines. Out of the heli, we stepped out onto a super wind slab and again checked with the guides who gave the "no worries nod" and sent me on my way, the first of the four of us: Erik Roner, Aussi Charlie Timmons and snowboarder Rob Kingwill.
After finishing my first real line of the day down a nice open chute, I headed to what I thought was a safe zone and pulled out my camera. Roner ripped a couple of turns into an air and disappeared below a rollover. But as I looked over my point and shoot, I watched the entire slope fracture with a crown of up to three feet in places and roar down the valley with no sign of Erik. Reminded of some ugly days in Jackson this past season, I pointed it over the knoll relieved to find him perfectly safe. As I looked up again, however, I watched what was left of the slope fall away, seemingly right above me and I bolted. Again.
A bottle of wine calmed the nerves for a few more perfect heli drops, a gourmet lunch and a kicker building session at one of 17 picturesque huts in the range overlooking menacing ice fields with Cook in the background. As the last load touched town, we couldn’t have asked for a better day and promises to return were made by all.