The Remarkable Remarkables

On Saturday, we snowboarded at The Remarkables, which is a resort close to Queenstown. It was smaller than Cardrona, but the weather and conditions were about the same.

Zack and I did hike up a little part of the mountain, hoping for some fresh powder, but we had no luck. The view was good though!

We spent more time at the terrain park on this day, trying to master (small) jumps and rails. This is definitely not our specialty, but it was fun to give it a whirl. Adam has a GoPro camera, so he was able to capture some videos of us in action! Well, Zack in action-me just being ridiculous.

More about our time in New Zealand to come...

Carving it up at Cardrona

Zack and I flew into Queenstown on Thursday, August 16. We explored the cute little town that evening and planned to meet up with our friends the next day at Cardrona Ski Resort. They had flown in on Wednesday and were staying in Wanaka, which is an even smaller town about an hour away from Queenstown. Anyway, we got up early on Friday morning and watched the sun rise over the mountains as we drove toward Cardrona...

New Zealand definitely has lots of sheep. Here is one group we passed by early that morning...

We drove up and up the mountain road...

We finally reached the resort and saw some snow!

We met up with Todd and Alena and Adam and Emily and their friend Kate (who lives in Wanaka but is from Denver too). Kate took this picture of the six American expats...

Now, to be honest, our expectations for snowboarding in New Zealand were quite high. We thought it would be just as good as, or actually better, than it is in Colorado. That assumption was completely incorrect. Cardrona is one of the bigger resorts, and it is TINY compared to the ones we're used to boarding. It seemed to have nearly all man-made snow, and the conditions were sort of slushy. But that didn't stop us from having fun! After almost two years, it was a blast to be on a snowboard again, and the weather was sunny and perfect. The views from the resort were incredible, and we had a great time cruising down the slopes with our friends.

Zack and I moved to Australia with no intention of ever snowboarding while we were here, so even though I had just gotten a new snowboard and outfit the year before we left, it's all back in the United States. To get by on this trip, my outfit and gear was a combination of borrowed, rented, and purchased op shop items! Zack, on the other hand, has had the same coat and pants for many years, so we could justify buying new stuff for him when we found a sale at a store called Auski in Melbourne. The funny thing is, he chose this combination of a blue coat and orange pants on his own, but everyone on the mountain seemed to have the same color combo! I captured one of his twins in the picture above right.

Tomorrow, I'll post about our day spent snowboarding at The Remarkables, but here's one last picture from the top of Cardrona...

Check out that view...the one behind the cute guy!
P.S. I have no idea what the mustache was about.