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First Ever Snowboarding Trip

One thing on my new year resolutions list for 2010 is to go to ski/snowboarding. I was lucky to have last Friday off so I flew down to Christchurch and went to one of the largest ski fields in the country, Mt Hutt.

Since I haven’t skied nor snowboarded in my life prior to this trip, I had this huge debate in my head about whether to ski or snowboard. Finally I concluded to do snowboarding which turned out to be a great decision.

I was extremely fortunate that @sundium took the day off work and accompanied me on the entire trip, and here is a photo he diligently putting snow chain on his car. I never went down south during winter, so hooking up a snow chain was interesting to me. and Sun was kind enough did it all by himself (or maybe he didn’t want me to damage his car, hah hah!)

it was way cooler than I’ve imagined and I was amazed by the mountains full of snow. I came from a city where the temperature reaches -30 degrees in winter, but last time me seeing this much snow (on a mountain) was don’t-remember how long ago

One thing I’ve learned at Mt Hutt was @Telecomnz XT network works way better than @Vodafonenz 3G, while Sun’s iPad has full signal strength, my iPhone4 only  had 1 bar (don’t blame the Antenna issue, I didn’t hold it wrong). People at the reception were absolutely amazed by Sun’s iPad, “I’ve never seen such a thing before”, the girl said. For some reason, they only accept paper for online booking check-ins.

As much as Sun want to save a few trees, they won’t check us in without the paper booking refs. The girl realize Sun can send emails and offered him sending the booking info to an email account where the staff could print it off, very smart. And we are so glad that there are XT network reception.

It was a great day on Mt Hutt and I took a beginner lesson. Our instructor, Tim was patient and I am glad I took the lesson which helped in a great deal.

By the end of the first day, I was able to stand on snow with too feet strapped in, able to slide around the beginner slope, not bad for the first time.

I always know that not knowing of the names of native fauna and flora is gonna bite me in the ares someday, but I never thought this would be as embarrassing as this. I will let you watch this video to figure it out yourself. Yep, too embarrassing to say for myself.

The weather on the second day wasn’t great. Mt Hutt ski field was close due to the heavy wind. We end up going to the Porters. It was a much smaller ski field, but I like the intermediate slope that is a lot of steeper, it’s good as it forced me to learn faster.

The private lesson from Gunnar (a German instructor) helped me a lot, I definitely recommend anyone taking lessons especially if you are a first-timer.

Needless to say, the both days end up with lot’s of spectacular falls and bruise, but it’s totally worth it.

Last night in Christchurch, we stayed at Peppers Clearwater Resort, absolutely loved the lake.