Paul Lalonde comments about the weather we’ve been having: “I’ve learned something about New Zealand. When it’s windy in the valley, it’s a good sign that it’s super windy at the top. And when it’s not windy in the valley… its still super windy at the top.”

Photo by Vanessa Chan

    Well, the storm hasn’t let up and it’s been over a week. We’ve been getting winds that are consistently over a 100 Km/h. The mountains have even closed a few days because of the winds and when they are open usually only a few lifts are running.


Photo by Vanessa Chan

    But we’ve been getting cabin fever so we’ll go up just to see how windy it actually is.


Photo by Vanessa Chan
2 Boys with Cabin Fever.

We’ll ride around on the less windy side of the mountain, where the park isn’t, and try to find some snow pockets. We filmed a bit in the wind and at one point the wind was so strong that it actually knocked me off my feet. It’s so windy you can see the snow blowing off the peak and while we’re in the car, the wind feels like it’s going to flip the car. It’s kinda scary.


Photo by Vanessa Chan

    The park is in the brunt of the wind and riding there is hopeless. It’s so frustrating cause a few days it’s been really sunny and nice but the wind just makes it impossible. Literally impossible! The wind would just blow us off the lips before we even get to the rails and we don’t even dream to try and hit jumps in this wind.


Photo By Vanessa Chan

    If Destination Queenstown hadn’t been hooking us up with all these awesome activities, I don’t know what we’d do.
    So this week, Destination Queenstown hooked us up with some ATVing at Off Road adventures. We almost missed our meeting time because we were stuck behind a plow driving through the Crown Range. We made it just in the nick of time to jump in a cool off roading truck and head toward the ATVing location.
    We put on our awesome orange jump suits and our helmets before picking our ATVs. Once we chose our ATV, we were given a safety speech and then our guide drove us through the beginner obstacle course. Being snowboarders looking for excitement, we obviously tried jumping and doing skids with our ATVs. Our guide had a short fuse and talked down to us, accusing us of being unsafe and threatened to send us with the beginner group. Duncan got scolded 3 times and I got in trouble once. I understand safety issues but it was frustrating because he would be doing skids and jumping his ATV but yet we were not aloud to do it.


Photo by Vanessa Chan

    So like mischievous little kids when he wasn’t looking, that’s when we’d do our skids and jumps. We’d let loose and have a blast in the mud and huge puddles. The mud and water would actually be flying over our head. Those ATVs can really kick back some mess. They were an hour and a half of pure fun and the only problem with having that much fun with mud flying around is that a big smile leads to eating mud. Thank you so much.


Photo by Vanessa Chan
3 muddy boys