NZ Club Field & Heli Trip – Day 7 – Mt Cheeeeeeseman

In case you hadn’t noticed, this trip had become, in the words of Borat, a Great Success!

The only day with no blue skies was Tuesday, but that was OK as it was a snowstorm that yielded sick pow turns at Craigieburn, and then the sun came back out so we had 2 more days of Bluebird and pow skiing. I hate to gloat (actually that’s a massive lie) but we had totally scored, big time.

Also due to our minds writing cheques that our bodies could barely cash (thanks to our newfound desk-bound lifestyle) the 4 of us were no longer able to walk, let alone ski. On the second run of yesterday’s heliskiing I declined to report that within 2 turns of the pickup I managed to hit a submerged rock, double eject, double commando roll and tweak something. Luckily I could still ski but my lovely wife had to assist with my boot buckling efforts for the rest of the day. To tell you the truth, I could get used to that.

But I digress.

We woke up mid morning with a feeling of true contentment. Everyone had a sense of ‘mission accomplished’, so this combined with weary bodies meant that we decided to head to Mt Cheeseman around the crack of noon. The main motivation was that surely a place named as such would have a cheeseburger on the menu, secondary motivation was that the lifts were T-Bars. The road was pretty hairy too, so we arrived and decided to have lunch.

Regrettably there were no cheeseburgers. So we had a hot dog, and then decided that we should also have a second lunch. (Note the time on the clock in the background)

After second lunch, and then a bit of arsing around with our cameras, swapping lenses etc & taking a few pics of the place:

Finally we put on our boots and went skiing.

That’s about all I can show you, as we did a grand total of 2 runs due to a combination of fatigue, pain, apathy and true contentment.

So instead of thrilling you again with our antics, here’s a video of a dog running down a ski run:

And this is where I will leave this NZ epic. The rest of our activities in Nuw Zulland included cleaning the house, seeing a statue of a big fish, standing quietly in a pub while the Wallabies got massacred and an ungodly early alarm to fly back to Oz.

Thanks for watching, in the meantime I’ll be back to Buller reporting duties, and I’m pleased to report that the same crew will be hitting up Alaska in the not too distant future. 😀

Stay classy San Diego.