Rach catching the end of the ski season

WANAKA Cardrona Rach Snowboarding
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Rocked up in Wanakaafter a horrendous connecting flight, cancelled and delayed multiple times, to have my friend from home, Jon, pick me up from the airport! So great to see a friendly face from home. Jon’s been out here for 3 months on a rookie course learning to be a snowboarding instructor and we’ve met up to travel this country together for the next 2 months!

In Wanaka ...

4 fantastic days on the slopes and great road trips

WANAKA Cardrona Snowboarding
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I spent a couple of days skiing at Treble Cone resort (to get up to scratch again), then just as I was starting to get decent, I thought I’d make life hard for myself, turn to the dark-side and learn to snowboard at Cadrona ski resort – with the best and most recently qualified instructor – JON! I also scored a free lesson from the chief instructor’s examiner in return for me to appear in his video – seemed like a fair trade to me! Hopefully more snowboarding to come in the north island as it’s the end of the season here now.

WANAKA Treble Cone skiing Rach and Jon
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We got 4 fantastic days on the slopes, but when the ski fields were closed there were rainy days which we tried to fill with various activities and trips including a walk up Mount Iron: The boys and I walked up Mt Iron to get the best views of Wanaka and the snow-capped mountains. Then we took a road trip to Haast and Lake Hawea via the Haast Pass which turned out to have some epic scenery, mountains and rainforest, and on that day the rain was torrential so every mountain side sprung roaring waterfalls, we had to stop the car every few miles to photograph yet another immense cascade of water.