Southern Alps [56K], pink in the early morning light, was worth every extra penny, and the main event was yet to come!
(Lois Rose and Mike Redding joined the
Pentagon Ski Club on a
Blue Ridge Ski Council-sanctioned trip to New Zealand and Australia in July. Following is Lois' account of just one day on that 17 day trip. Read and be jealous!)
Skiing the Tasman! This was, without question, the most incredible experience of my life. If you are a downhill skier of intermediate ability or higher, you absolutely have to go to New Zealand and ski the Tasman Glacier (pronounced GLACE-ier).
After one day in Christchurch, Mount Cook National Park was our first skiing stop of the trip. So you can imagine the frustration of 21 skiers primed for their first run in New Zealand when, for both of our days there, weather conditions prohibited flights up onto the glacier. Double the frustration, since the only skiing at Mount Cook is the glacier (or more difficult heliskiing). Unable to wait any longer, we continued on to Queenstown with some of us mulling over the suggestion that it didn't cost that much more to fly back from Queenstown.
So nine determined glacier skiers were up before dawn the next morning to find out from trip leader Joel Gardner that the weather at Mount Cook was splendid and the trip was a definite "Go!" Our small plane took off from Queenstown airport just at dawn, completely packed--with the nine of us and the pilot. The hour-long flight up the eastern slope of the Southern Alps [56K], pink in the early morning light, was worth every extra penny, and the main event was yet to come!
As we changed into our ski boots at the 
Mount Cook airport [73K], we were each equipped with a beeper lest we be buried in an avalanche or lost in a crevasse. Comforting! Then we climbed into the two small 
ski planes [83K], needed to lift us, our two guides, and our gear up onto the
Tasman Settle [70K] at the top of the glacier. We were the first
skiers [60K] up there after the storm that had kept us from skiing it earlier, so we would be making tracks in virgin powder that was knee deep.
Once on the glacier, Tony, the lead guide, spelled out the rules. He would tell us when we could ski wherever we wanted, when we should stay within a certain distance of his track, and when we should stay EXACTLY in his track like little ducklings, sometimes with crevasses on either side of us. He explained how to "read" the glacier for forming or covered crevasses. He also warned us that when he stopped, we were to always stop BEHIND him; he might have stopped for a good reason! And as the day progressed, he was polite but firm in enforcing the rules!
Grant, the second guide, brought up the rear. His main job, besides making sure no one got lost, was to help us up when we fell. He became a rescuing angel for some of us, especially as the day wore on and turning became trickier on the shady side of the glacier where the snow had settled and crusted over.
The vastness, solitude, majesty, and power of the glacier and mountains is hard to describe. They swallowed us up; we became insignificant specks on the snow, with no real points of reference with which to judge height or distance. The terrain was relatively gentle, with short downhill slopes, never very steep, followed by long 
schusses [82K], always with enough drop that we rarely had to walk or pole. We stopped once and climbed up through an ice cave and tunnel in the glacier. After we skied down the east side of the glacier, the planes picked us up and lifted us back up to the top, to a higher spot on the west side of the settle.
Lunch [73K], consisting of wonderful hot soup, quiche, sandwiches and drinks, was already set up on a "snow table," complete with table cloth.
Then after lunch, and a check to make sure our beepers were still beeping, we skied down the
west side [68K] of the glacier. This is not just skiing down one side and then the other of a normal ski run. The glacier is two miles or more across, with ridges and ice falls blocking the view of the area skied in the morning. Each run was about 6-7 kilometers long, the afternoon run being a little longer. (They said on a better snow year, they can usually ski 2 kilometers further down the glacier than we were able to go.)
When the planes picked us up after our second run, they "buzzed" Mount Cook on the way back to the airfield. From my seat next to the pilot I got quite a thrill! I was sure he was going to fly us right into the side of that mountain, and then after turning at what seemed like the last minute, he put us through a notch I was sure was too narrow for the wing span. All this, plus views down at the ice falls and the glacier we had just skied. And me out of film! But the pictures will be etched in my memory forever.
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