Sweet as ... New Zealand

By Bryan Iguchi

Ideas Born
After a good day riding we sometimes get together for dinner at my house. Travis Rice, Carsten Bahnson, Rich Goodwin, photographer Doctor Zapalac, and myself had been exploring snowmobile-access terrain deep in the Wyoming backcountry, so this was one of those nights...

As we ate we talked of our day, upcoming plans, and our whereabouts for the remainder of the season. The topic of summer riding came up and no one seemed to have a set plan yet since it was mid-February with winter in full swing. I began telling them about my past experiences of getting summer powder in the southern alps of New Zealand. My stories of cheap heli operations and exceptional terrain raised the interest of the crew...it's a land where glaciers descend into rainforests and people say "sweet as..."a lot. The natives call it Aotearoa - meaning "Land of the Long White Cloud."

Reality
Nearly five months later and after endless phone tag and e-mail correspondence, we were on our way. It was crazy - just two weeks before we left, everyone was off traveling and no one had plane tickets yet. Doc was in a small village in the Czech Republic and Travis was in some remote corner of Minnesota fishing - living in a box with no phone. Carsten and I were in Mexico. Everyone was off the map and how we all coordinated our tickets was a haphazard mess that somehow worked out eventually.

A very long day...
Our crew landed in Auckland, New Zealand, in pre-dawn darkness with only a light glow to the east and the grid-patterned streetlights shining and flickering below. It's a thirteen-plus hour flight. We could have been anywhere - there was nothing to give us the slightest idea of the incredibly diverse and strange land we had just entered.

New Zealand is made up of two major islands; the northern one which is flatter with a line of volcanoes running north to south. It's lush with vegetation and has a subtropical climate. The South Island is a few degrees cooler and made up of a long spine of mountains - the Southern Alps, separating the East and West Coasts. The steep mountains of the West Coast get hammered by powerful storms spawned off of Antarctica - the result is far more precipitation in the West than on the dryer, flatter East Coast. With it's maritime climate the weather can change very quickly here.

There's rideable terrain on both islands, but the South Island has better-quality snow. Our flight to the South Island was short and upon landing in Christchurch, we picked up our bags and rental car - an NZ version of the Toyota Land Cruiser 4x4. We loaded the inside of our rig with boardbags, travel bags, and backpacks in a Tetris style efficiency. Our hotel was in the town center - a busy part of the city with record stores, coffee shops, restaurants, and other specialty stores with anything you may need. This city was designed by the British as a cultural center for their offshore farming land and was planned before any Englishman had ever set foot in New Zealand. The architecture here gives one the feeling of being in Europe but the Marui influence and Polynesian ancestry throw in a unique feeling all their own.

Day One

Doctor Zapalac Photos / Snowboardermag.com

I woke up early the next morning as I usually do when traveling far into the Western time zones. Skies were dark gray and the warm westerly winds blew steady. I called the snow report to find out that most of the ski fields were closed due to gale-force winds and rain in the lower areas. This ended up ruining most of the snow below 1500 meters. We determined that heading to the south would be better but it was a long drive, therefore no day-mission. The crew decided to pass on riding and instead we skated a Y-shaped concrete skatepark just outside the city. As we dodged the masses of kids doing fly outs and attempting the latest variations of kickflip tricks we hit the hips and did our best not to roll an ankle and end our trip before it began.

Kev's Bar
Red, green and blue lights shined dimly from the ceiling onto the stained carpets in the nearly empty room. At the bar locals sat drinking Speight's or Canterbury draught beers, smoking cigarettes, and watching the All Blacks play South Africa in a heated rugby match. There's an ongoing rivalry between the teams so it was a game of importance. This was definitely a local's scene - an older crowd and we stood out in the mix.

Doctor Zapalac Photos / Snowboardermag.com Travis Rice

Doc broke the ice by ordering a beer and asked the owner, Kevin, if it would okay to bring up the pizza we'd just ordered at a nearby takeout spot. Kev and Doc started joking around with each other as the bystanders laughed. As things progressed we were introduced to everyone in the bar. It eventually ended up getting pretty rowdy (in a good way) as the drinks went down. The All Blacks won and Kev was blasting Elvis and '80s rock as we crowded over roadmaps with a local bus driver. We talked about life and fishing with a fireman. A Maori guy taught Travis how to play the spoons as we took turns on the pool table for hours. It was a random situation but cool. It gave us a sense of the laidback, life-is-simple attitude of the people of New Zealand.

Carsten Arrives
We picked up Carsten the following day at the airport in Christchurch. With his arrival our Tetris-style fit in the rental failed, so we had to buy straps and put the boardbags on the roof. We told Carsten what was going on with the snow and we all decided to drive south to a place called Ohau to ride the following days. We figured we could use a couple days at a ski area to get used to riding again. We planned to then go to Wanaka and/or Queenstown, then maybe drive back up to finish things off with Methven Heli. Regardless, we were finally on the road and sort of had a plan...

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