Goodbye New Zealand

It‘s always sad to say goodbye, especially in this case after having 2 awesome months in New Zealand.

I would like to give you a short review of my last 2 weeks after the NZ Freeski Open:

We left Wanaka right after the competition and drove our campervan all the way up to the North Island, where the last competition was held.

The Ruapehu X Treme is another 3 star Qualifier event and the only competition on the north island.

 Mt Ruapehu is an active volcano and the biggest ski resort in New Zealand.

I had a really good run with a 360 at the top and was really satisfied with ending up in third position.

After the competition we hiked to the crater and enjoyed the sunset up there. 

my Lines 1. run (red), 2. run (green)

scetchy conditions

hiking up to the crater

sunset on the top

small lake inside the crater

 After the competition we focused on one of our main goals, to climb and ski Mt. Cook.

The weather didn’t look too bad for the following days, so we drove back to Mt. Cook village to give it a try. We arrived at 11 pm at the village and decided to check out the conditions and talk to some guides the next morning.

When we had a glimpse at the Mountain range in the morning, we knew it would be really hard to even climb the summit because there was a large amount of new snow and the faces looked really loaded.
We talked to some mountain guides about the current conditions up there and what we heard didn’t make us happy at all.
“The only team who tried to climb Mt. Cook this season a couple of days ago had to turn around because it took them 16 hours to even get up half of the way to the summit.
After some discussions we figured that the summit wasn’t realistic anymore.
I spent a day of rock climbing before we drove to the west coast to enjoy the last days in New Zealand.

spending a night outside

bouldering at Mt Cook National Park

trying to hitchhike back to Christchurch..... didn't work out ;)

We hiked 5 hours up to a small hut which was located next to natural hot pools.

We stayed up there for one night before we drove back to Christchurch to catch our flight back to Europe.

enjoying the hot pool

 At this point I want to thank everyone who made this last two months to one of the best time in my life.
I’ll return for sure hopefully to find Mt. Cook in better conditions the next time. In the next months I’ll prepare myself for the upcoming season, do some climbing and hopefully enjoy some late summer days.

Cheers Raphi