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Sam and Stu's Kiwi Travels
Today we thought that it would make a nice change to go night skiing at Coronet Peak... plus it gave us a reason to sleep in this morning!
We grabbed some breakfast and I checked through my contract with Countryside before signing it and heading into town. Afer posting my contract... I start on the 2nd October, the monday after we get back?!?!? (I guess I would have had long enough off by then), we headed to the Outpost internet cafe to put some photos on this site for you lot at home, and then headed back to the flat to grab the skis.
This was the problem with night skiing, they don't do hotel pick-ups!! I know it sounds lazy but we just couldn't be bothered to carry the skis to town. Anyway we did, and got there for the 5:30pm bus to Coronet Peak.
As we drove to the base stations we caught our first glimpse of Coronet Peak all lit up in the night sky. It looked pretty impressive - to light the slopes up at night they have fixed floodlights onto the top of the chairlift pylons and the stations, surprisingly effective as you can see from the photos. We arrived at the base station at sunset, around 6pm and got onto the slopes as quickly as we could... there were loads of people here, some had stayed all day, but there was still a great deal of people arriving with us after work.
We got to the top of the express chair and started our first run... my god it was icy!! We started off sliding all over the place, until we managed to get to the side of the runs where there was a little more powder. These conditions weren't helped by the kamakazee snowboarders who figure that the slopes aren't patrolled at night, therefore they can 'flat-line' straight down the mountain taking out anything that lays in their path... you'd have thought the pace of skiing would decrease at night... no way!!
We survived the first run, and headed straight back up again. This time we knew where the snow was and we had a much better run down the hill. It was now time to stop and grab something to eat before getting a last few runs in before the skiing finisheses at 9pm.
We headed into the station and found a table. We had a result with dinner, we managed to wangle 2 for 1, I recon the check out lady was new, but I wasn't going to put her right...
So after our cheap dinner, we headed to the slopes again and got a last couple of runs in before the shuttle left for town.
All in all we recon the night skiing was worth a shot, but once was enough, you don't get as much skiing in and it's never going to be as good as day skiing!
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