Peaks and Places | Travel and Adventure Blog

After living in Colorado for so long, we both fell in love with skiing. Naturally, knowing that we would be in New Zealand during the winter, skiing made our ‘must do’ list. We had the Ikon pass in the States, and with that pass, we had five days to use at The Remarkables, Coronet, or Mt. Hutt. We debated skiing either The Remarkables or Coronet while we were in Queenstown, but there was no base and barely any snowfall while we were there. The ski season here is much shorter than what we were used to having in Colorado, and we were getting nervous that there would never be enough snow. Finally, while we were in Christchurch, at the end of July, we decided to take the leap and ski a few days at Mt. Hutt.

Mount Hutt is in the west of the Canterbury Plains, basically in the middle of the South Island, roughly two hours from Christchurch. We spent a few days in the area and scoped out the weather until we decided a couple days that would be best. Since we had to pack for an entire year here, we really didn’t bring adequate ski gear or clothing, so we opted for a couple nice sunny, somewhat warm days. This would help us stay a bit warmer with our limited winter clothing.

Once we had dates picked out, we had to rent the ski gear we needed. There was a little town, called Methven (unfortunate name in my opinion), near the mountain. This is where we ended up getting our ski pass and our rentals. As you might guess, we got some of the cheapest rental skis we could find. It’s safe to say you get what you pay for, these ski rentals did the job, but there were the worst skis either of us have used in a long time, maybe ever. We got pretty spoiled in Colorado…

Since we picked good weather days, we were pretty hopeful we could get the van to the base of the mountain. The morning of, we checked the snow report which stated all 2WD vehicles must chain up, that was us. Thankfully, we had boughten chains days earlier in anticipation for this, we were ready to go.

The drive up was slow and we only needed chains for the last third of it. The road was gravel, about 10 miles long, and steep. The van did well, but went pretty slow and had to let a bunch of people pass along the way. We eventually reached the chain up station and settled in with the other ten or so unfortunate people who also had to chain up. The chain up process went pretty smooth, Eric did great. We got all chained up in about 20 minutes and did a couple laps around the parking lot to re-tighten them up. After Eric tightened them up, we were ready to hit the final stretch.

This final third of the trip was by far the worst. The road was snowy and icy, luckily the chains worked flawlessly, so no spinning happened. This didn’t change the fact that the road was way narrower than before. We had a 200′ shear wall on our right, and a 1000′ drop off on out left, with no guardrail. This stretch was beautiful but also nerveraking, and it was a relief once we made it to the parking lot. We arrived right around 9:00am and were eager to start checking out the mountain.

We took our time getting our gear on, mostly to give the sun more time to warm things up, so we got skiing around 10:00am. Mount Hutt only has three lifts, if you ask Eric, only one is worth using. We took that one up, and got right to it. The groomed runs were really nice considering how little snow they’ve gotten so far. The not groomed runs were basically just rock fields, so we avoided those (Eric was bummed about this). Morning skiing was solid, but afternoon skiing was even better. Once the snow heated up it reminded us of spring skiing in Colorado.

Since we had the van up in the mountains with us both days, we were able to go back into the van, warm up, and make some lunch. Since it was pretty chilly, we had decided to do soup and grilled cheeses. We typically make extra coffee in the mornings, and put the leftover into a mason jar and into the fridge for later, so we were also able to enjoy some ice coffee. It was honestly the perfect way to break up the day before heading back out onto the slopes.

Day two of skiing was pretty similar to day two, and we had to chain up in the same spot. Eric spent a little time playing around with the chains in an empty parking lot, and it was pretty fun watching the van dig in the snow a little. Eric thinks we can take it anywhere now. The morning skiing was good, the afternoon was even better. Day two was even warmer, so afternoon was a slush fest as the Colorado guys would call it. We skied pretty casually these two days, the snow wasn’t great and there really wasn’t that many different runs to go on. We were pretty content doing a little over half a day and hanging out at the lodge. Mount Hutt was a solid ski hill, I wouldn’t call it a resort, because it was far smaller than the “resorts” we have been to in the states. Eric said it was similar size to his ski hill growing up in New York, Greek Peak, but had way better views.