New Zealand 2008

Avast! There is an Island, sweet as cheers mate. Thinking my head is going to explode from the Headrush I was going to endure over the following days down under. But nooah, beeing down under means nothing like that - it only has the sun move from west to east, driving on the left side with your car and there it was again, winter. After correcting all the above my Jetlag still felt pretty bad.

Once again since four years away from the south of this beautiful Island I went to look for the changes and took my chances to explore on this part a bit aswell. I have been to snowpark a while back and seeing it now is an accomplishment of a concept that they stayed true to. The Park had still the same resemblance as my memory of it but the „new“ Chairlift and the restaurant plus the appartements are killer. As there was a competition going on in which Sani A. and Marco G. competed.

I decided to do some runs and check out the other hillside attractions away from the busy comp. Cardrona and Treblecone are fun resorts nearby. On the way I picked up hitchhikers and realized that the people come from every corner of the world to ride here. Anyway after poaching a room at snowpark for the night I went to Wanaka town of which I still had bad memories of last. Years back a Policemen broke my nose while getting arrested. Long story short the bar we got those sort of trouble in is no longer existing plus the policemen no longer serves there and I got my nose corrected since then. So I buried these memories and put em to rest because my next adventure was around the bend.

My fellows in crime were Zach Marben, Curtis Ciscek, Eero Niemela and Brian Iguchi. We had a fine adventure picked out and started driving from Wanaka and two hours later we arrived at the Mt. Cook Hermitage. The next day we lifted off in a Heli and it dropped us in midst of the southern New Zealand Alps. Overamping by the great snow we encountered and the many turns, cliffs and windlips to air I must have caught a cold. The next two days were downdays and gave me time to recover from my cold.

Third day back up in the alpine it had snowed quite a bit and so we started right into it again. Flying in a bird around these mountains is quite awesome and the best was probably that for the first time in my 100 days of heliing we could listen to tunes on our headsets during the flight. Some beats later we landed again and  they pulled out a big lunchbox from the back of the helicopter – probably best lunchtime ever. Then after we scoped out some runs on the glacier where our guides introduced us to „how to“ move safely in such sketchy enviroment.

We used harness and ropes to get close up on the ice features that we thought are rideable. Took some photos of each other and used our old bootpack to get back to the pick up where the heli was waiting. We used the heli as minimal as we could and hiked a lot. Altought that made our helidays pass very quickly and our adventure was coming to an end. We drove back to Wanaka and spent two days riding at snowpark which wasn’t that fun anymore after the freeriding days seen.

My departure was creeping up and once on the check in counter my flight got suspended due to heavy snowfall. So I had to stay overnight again and the next day I was heading back home into summer and to make it in time for my Videopart Intro shoot with the Pirates.

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