It appears that Canterbury does actually suffer from the season we call winter and the sight is vaguely familiar. After around 12 months of summer we are at last experiencing short days, cloud filled skies and prolonged periods of rain. Just like home! One good thing about winter though is the rugby season and while we may have missed the six nations, the All Blacks came to town and the chance was just too good to miss. For a mere $50 each we had tickets to see the local derby with the Ozzie's coming along for the fight. the first half was great however the second kind of fizzled out and I was a bit disappointed with the lack of atmosphere in our stan
d (the cheap one) filled with students and foreigners. I can't imagine that complaint will stand when England come to visit at next years World Cup and can just imagine the sound of "Swing Low" echoing around the stadium as we watch their quarter final victory. This is not all imagination as we have taken the hopefully small gamble of buying tickets to both Christchurch quarter finals which should involve England, New Zealand, France and Scotland/Argentina. Not a bad group!
Our proximity to not just one ski option but at least half a dozen has also not been ignored and having spent 8 days enjoying Mount Hutt we thought it high time we looked a little further afield. The last few days at the Hutt have also been very busy with 10+ minute lift queues and so the task in hand was to find some fun slopes, friendly crowds and a bit of untracked powder would be nice. Not much to ask really and of course New Zealand delivered in the form of both Roundhill and Mount Dobson. Driving up to Lake Tekapo 
on Friday night we were on the 35km dirt access road in good time and despite the forecast of cloud and rain negotiated the ski hire shack in time to catch the t-bar in spectacular sunshine, even if the low cloud below us obscured any sign of the lake. The sun stayed out and the slopes were great. Tiny in any one's book but the new lift to a steep ungroomed slope provided ample entertainment. This new lift is of the "nutcracker" variety whereby the user
is forced to don a cosy climber-esque harness with metal rope crimping device attached (resembling the tool the lift is named after). The aim is to try and hold this onto the rope with all your hand strength while it gets clattered through metal runners and hauls you up a very, very steep slope. We both made it to the top, though the hands needed some time to recover from the resulting cramp, and we were treated to steep ungroomed 
powder. About halfway down the top crust softened out enough for Amy to even start overcoming the uncertainty felt at the top and by the bottom we had both felt pleased with our obvious improvement since the start of the season. A bite to eat was followed by a mid afternoon beer and another few goes at the nutcracker where traversing across the hill I managed to score some soft untracked 
perfection. I may not have the best technique (or any at all) but it sure was fun! The following day spent at Dobson was equally as spectacular and the weather just as good the only real downside to the weekend being how stiff our legs were come Monday morning.And what of the Tree competition? Well I am pleased to report that the
judge looked kindly on my entries and awarded them 3 honours and 1 acceptance! While I am a bit worried that this may represent my Ashburton club photographic peak I had high hopes for this set of photos and would have been a little flat had they fallen by the wayside. Best of all, 3 were taken within the last few months, only 1 being dredged up from the archives. The judge was also very good at explaining his reasoning and I certainly feel that I picked up some good tips on 
composition. It was also nice to then see a sample of his work which is truly outstanding and very much worth a look here. The next effort is portraits and I doubt I'll be reporting back on such a good result!
