31/8/17 Reflection Ski Trip

Last week a small group of people (including me) went to Queenstown for a Ski trip. There was no real point to it in retrospect but it was still epic.

I found the plane rides awesome as the views were insane.  It almost looked as if you were looking over a model mountain range.  The majority of the mountains we passed over had snow on them, I was taken back by it.

My room was the smallest with two bunk beds but was the only one with a balcony and no teacher, as well as the best views. In my room we had myself, Barnabas, Saxon, and Myer U. We also had our own lockers; I used this space to store my chargers, books, and backpack (including lunch).

The name of the ski field was Coronet peak although the mountain's name was Mount Hutt. All the mountain is skiable but some specific tracks are marked out by signs and other skiers. The Ski field has two lifts that will bring you to either the summit (Coronet express) or a fork where you can choose either novice or intermediate. The mountain also includes a ‘magic’ carpet, it’s exactly what it sounds like. A carpet that brings you up the beginner slope.

Each day we left the hostel at 7:30 and was on the mountain by 9:00 for our lessons. Our instructor was a girl named Alice. Because my group was made up of beginners (not to say I wasn’t one) we spent the whole first lesson on the beginner slope which was annoying but necessary. The first time I went on the novice slope I fell to avoid running some people over and had to go on the beginner slope again before going back to novice slope.

The second was definitely the best as I got down the top slope (M1), the Intermediate slope and did all the jumps on the Novice slope. The jumps start almost immediately after you get off the chair lift to your right, you generate a lot of speed going down and you should always try to keep turning so you stay in control. After the two jumps, you execute a relatively sharp turn onto another set of jumps which are more horizontal. The M1 Is about triple the length of the intermediate slope and a bit harder. There are a lot of snow mounds and spots where it’s just Ice making hard to turn.

The trip as a whole was awesome and I was sad (kind of) to leave. I’ve taken lots of photos and I think that Queenstown is beautiful But I wouldn't want to live there