Mount Shut

Sometimes things work out better if you dont plan it. Leaving the paradise of lakefront behind I expect I'll be in Christchurch tonight although I do tell our driver that I wouldn't mind checking out Methven. At Geraldine (our breakfast stop), he says its time to "call it" if you want get off at Methven as we don't go through the town unless we are picking up someone there. Moments later, two dutch girls ask the driver if they can get off at Methven to do some skiing.. Ok detour locked in. After they'd studied the form they realised they werent going to make their plane by departure date (no bus wed) so they abort, but Dusty says, lets check out the place anyway. When we get there, the weather is looking good and I ask him to drop me out front and if they've got a spare bed, I'll stop here.

I'm in and it's 11:15am. (later that night George, the owner says he booked more people than beds, so it was a tight squeeze). I figure I may as well check out the ski scene and immediately discover there is a shuttle bus leaving in 45min to Mt Hutt. I'm on it.. Scary ride up there (overtaking everything else up the mountain), this is the cowboy minibus version with only 3 passengers.. But anyway, we make it up without sliding off the edges. By the way, this unsealed road winds around the edge of the mountain with no barriers for 14kms. Cars do go off the edge, and a recent story of a bus doing a 180 degree spin on some ice and somehow managed not to go over the edge. The bus now going a new direction figured it was better not to do a three point turn and go back up the mountain and drop everyone off!

As I've not snowboarded before (not without a kite), I'm told that I really should get an intermediate class to learn the essentials. I do that, and I'm not regretting that one bit. After my instructor Matt, figured out I didn't know what turning really meant, he showed me the back and toe strategy on the beginner slope, and then I'm away on the main drag. I'm hooked and I want to squeeze the last minute out of the ski lift.. but I'm reminded that there's always tomorrow.

Tomorrow comes but Mt Hutt is living up to its reputation amongst the locals here as Mt Shut, as I'm up at 6:30am to see the official word on the notice board. I consider myself lucky and fortunately plan B came into action as the bus is still booked to come and get me to take me on the last leg of Magic back to Christchurch.