How could anyone get injured here?
There were only five skiers and five snowboarders on the whole mountain for heaven’s sake. How could anyone collide.
Yet here was the, presumably, innocent skier on a stretcher in a banana-sled and the presumably reckless snowboarder sitting on the snow with his arm in a sling.
Lake Ohau must be one of the most beautiful skiing resorts in the world, if one of the most rudimentally equipped. It has one main T-bar and a couple of smaller tows. But what a T bar. It goes for a kilometre with a vertical lift of 425 metres. At the top the views are adjectiveless. Rather than an horizon line of mountain, there are rows of them, like white spiked meringue on an uncooked pavlova. Sorry, I thought I said they were adjectiveless.
Mount Cook is a piece of meringue in the far distance.
Below is Lake Ohau (pronounced Oh-how), mid-way between Christchurch and Queenstown in the far south.
But for this terrible accident I was beginning to like this resort very much, and watch for the kias, a carnivorous mountain parrot that can steal gloves and tear at ski boots.
Most Australian skiers and snowboarders go in and out of Queenstown to the four major resorts. That’s fine if all you want is skiing, but if you want to see and feel some of New Zealand as well, I think it is better to fly into Christchurch drive the 480kms to Queenstown and fly out of there. Or vice-versa.
That way you see more than skiing and apres ski scene. You see the lakes, the mountains, and the flat patterned fields of the Canterbury Plain from the ground. And talk to the locals, which is not at all difficult. They use the same 21 consonants as us.
Methven, 100kms west from Christchurch is a farming village of 1000 people on the flat plain below the mountain. The population doubles in the ski season, but it retains its weatherboard, farming charm.
The day I arrived scaffolding for a tower had been put up in the space between the Blue pub and the main intersection. It was covered in hay. Was there to be some medieval witchburning? Or perhaps some bizarre initiation ceremony. The latter was closer to the truth. The tower was higher than the Blue Pub itself, the tallest building in Methven with two storeys and an attic.
They then trucked snow in from the mountains and covered the structure.
It stood there ominously through the afternoon in anticipation. That night, the whole village and all the visitors turned out to watch the ceremony. The lads to be initiated in the ceremony were all in their late 20s, dressed in snowboarding costume and with snowboards. They stood at the top of the structure, now lit by arc lights.
It was ominous. How could they survive? They were to shoot down an impossibly steep and narrow chute then over a jump into the air where some somersaulted and others turned themselves through 360 degrees before miraculously landing board on the snow at great speed and stopping without so much as a metre of spare flat ground.
The village crowd uttered the mixed sounds of a crowd of film extras. The adults and children gasped in awe while the adolescents uttered derisory groans. One of the initiates got a $NZ1500 prize.
It is to be an annual event, this bringing the mountain to Mohamed.
The next day Methven returned to farming. Beside the Blue Pub, there is the Canterbury over the road. It’s weatherboard and feels like it has always been there. It has spread roots into the ground. Men with gnarled hands drink black beer, their faces ruddied with booze and weather and their teeth yellowed by tobacco.
“”How are yer, Bob”.
“”I wish it were bloody Spring.”
This is not apres ski.
Fourteen kilometres up the mountain in Mount Hutt and just a little further away are six or seven club fields. They only encroach the very edge of the awesome Alps which jut up from the Canterbury Plain like a wall. There is no luxury of foothills.
The road to Mount Hutt, indeed to every skifield, is terrifyingly good. These roads are living proof of Hull’s Theorem that the safer you make roads and cars the more people kill themselves through a false sense of security. The skifield roads, nearly all dirt, hairpin their way up through snow and ice with vertigo-inducing drop-off. And there are no guard rails. Let me repeat that. There are no guard rails. If you lose control you go over the edge and die. It is patently obvious to the most testosterone induced teenagers. Result. Virtually no crashes.
Mike Neilson from Lake Ohau said no visitor had gone over on his road ever. He touched the plywood lining of his mountain day lodge. No-one stays on the mountain in New Zealand. At Lake Ohau you drive the 9km up from the lodge by the lake with the view to Mount Cook.
This lodge does a great trade with conventions and the like through the summer and at weekends. But Mike is a bit despondent about his ski trade, particularly on weekdays.
The day I was there, only 35 people graced the slopes — in so far as some snowboarders grace anything. It’s great for skiers and sightseers. Not so good for Mike. A lot of his trade is local and commodity prices have dropped more steeply than his road.
The lift ticket was $27.50 (if you are staying at the Lodge) a tad more if not. If you multiple that by 35 people and take away the wages for 15 people on the mountain, it comes to less than nothing. A bus full of schoolchildren arrived a bit later. The future of the lodge on the lake looks good, but the ski run must be a love not money venture for Mike and his wife Louise. Too much snow area, not enough people.
And what happened in the accident? Well, as I skied up to the scene they were about to head down the mountain. How those people control metal banana boats with a body in it down the slopes is a perpetual mystery. Anyway, I said to one of the people it was a pity I hadn’t got there earlier wasn’t earlier, I would have like to have taken some pictures. From The Canberra Times, etc.
“”No problem,” she said, and then yelled to the medics. “”Hang on. Wait.”
I felt like a paparazzi. The injured were being held up so I could get some pictures.
The woman then explained. Her name was Jan Powell and she was an instructor from the Mountain Education Centre of NZ, associated with the Tai Pautini Polytech, a tertiary education institution.
She was running a five-month course leading to a National Certificate of Ski Patrolling. Doing first aid in difficult terrain, avalanche control, climbing, mega-advanced skiing and solving the mysteries of getting injured bodies off mountains.
Paparazzic guilt assuaged I skied down the mountain and onwards along the to Queenstown, risking my life at every turn because the astonishing mountains and lakes caused an involuntary diversion of my eyes from the road. More of Queenstown in the skiing column on Thursday.
Blocklines.
Injury pic Danny Jones driver. “”patient” Nick Billington. ”doctor” Barnaby Holmes. instructor Jan Powell.
Kia
Mike Neilson