
A taste of what NZ is offering this year..
Three weeks ago I jumped on a flight to Christchurch for my annual New Zealand ski season shooting trip. I usually spend four weeks here, but this year has been good financially so I decided to push that out to six weeks and I’m so glad I did! After a slow first week or two, spent mainly catching up with old friends over beers, NZ turned it on and I’ve had possibly the best week I’ve EVER had over here!
This year I have a new addition to my kit; a Jones Solution 164 splitboard. Having never owned a split before, I took a little practice tour out the back of Cardrona with Italian/Kiwi athlete Fiona Laryn and Japanese shredder Hiro Nakamura. I planned on focusing on my splitboarding technique but decided to take the camera anyway.. good call as I ended up with this epic shot of Fiona:
This is the day that started it all.. the snow and weather have been amazing ever since! A couple of days later I woke up to blue skies and a report from Treble Cone of 46cm of fresh snow overnight.. a combination I’ve never had before in NZ. We made the most of it, riding in the resort on that day:
…touring out of bounds the next day:
…getting heli lifted further out the next day:
…and finally doing another ski tour yesterday a bit further out than we did on Thursday (image by Christine Wu as I was frothing too hard on the snow to take many shots!):
With locals commenting that this is the best season in between 10 and 15 years, NZ has delivered more awesome snow, wicked shots and fantastic memories in the past week than I’ve had in the last five years. With three weeks to go, I can’t wait to see what else comes out of the trip!