The Queenstown Prowl

We've just started up uni again after having a couple of weeks off. Through the first week of our holidays a friend and I had planned to go for an overnight tramp - the tramp I outlined in a previous post - over Tuesday/Wednesday. He gave me a call on Monday to cancel, as he had to fill in for a lady at work that had a serious issue and had to boost to hospital. 'No worries!' I thought. I checked the rain radars and decided to put the tramp back to Wednesday/Thursday and go by myself. I got all of the gear together, and procured an emergency beacon from Hunting and Fishing the day before. I had printed maps and told people exactly what my plan was etc etc- chomping at the bit to get out by myself for a couple of days.

I took off on Wednesday morning to fine weather in Christchurch. On the way out of town there was a warning for needing chains from Springfield onwards (Springfield is 3/4 of the way there) so I continued anyway and picked up a set of chains for the subie in Darfield. Sure enough, the closer I got to the ranges, the more snow there was on the ground. By the time I got to the start of Arthur's Pass there was a chain fitting stop in 100m visibility whiteout conditions. I kept going for a bit but eventually turned around; it was hard enough to drive in the snow, let alone tramp!

Geoffrey in his natural habitat

My 'disgruntled' face

So, after having taken that disappointment like a man... *cough* ... I scooted back to work for a week. Last weekend was my friend Jake's 21st party in Queenstown- what a place! A group of ~20 of us took off from Christchurch on Friday morning (we had a beast of a rental car) and got to the backpackers at about 4:00pm.


We partied that night, in typical student fashion. Saturday arvo rolled around and Scott, Tom and I decided it was a good plan to boost up to Cardrona for an afternoon half-day ski/board. We just about got beached a handful of times on the mud track up the hill- ended up getting there fine. Had a sweet day on the mountain despite poor visibility and a bit of rain. That was the inaugural run on my board which I frankensteined together out of a couple of others and it went bloody well! Got up enough speed to make the bails count anyway.

On the way up to Cardrona - this photo doesn't do the landscape justice

After a hard day of disgracing myself on the snow, it was straight into disgracing myself in town. We went for a pub crawl through Queenstown until impractical hours of the morning, which was ridiculous amounts of fun. 

The next morning we checked out and drove home - the windies through the Kawarau Gorge were challenging for many.

And now I'm back at uni... but not all is lost! I've started a group which will hopefully become a part of the UCSA clubs: FishSoc. I aim to start up the uni's first fishing club. I've got a facebook page with just over 30 people interested which is cool! (www.facebook.com/fishsoc) They advise you need at least 20 people to be considered for UCSA partnership, as well as a lot of easy admin stuff, so we're nearly there! Very excited about the opportunities.

Oh, and Scott and I have a trip to Mt Hutt planned for this Sunday, which should be sick! I've been nominated for an 'Ice Challenge' thing by Francis, so I'll be dunking myself in ice-cold water or something while I'm up there. Brrrrrrr.

Okay that's it! Cheers for sticking through this long one :D