We had booked a 5 day boarding package through the cheapest company we could find. The downside was that we only had 4 nights accommodation in the deal. We arrived the day before our lift passes started and set ourselves up in a local camp site and got ourselves kitted out with some, not so bad as I expected, rental gear. The next day we jumped on the bus and took the 1hour journey up Mt Hutt.

We were one of the first people up the mountain so the two of us took full advantage of a few practice runs to get the rustiness out of our snowboarding muscles. The first difference we noticed from boarding at home was the size of the resort or "ski field" as it is called. The area was made from a large dell in the mountain with the runs ranging from a nice easy green run in the lower part with mainly black off piste runs around the outside of the dell and blue runs inside.

All in all there were three chair lifts and about 10 different runs including the off piste stuff. There was also a small and large terrain park with rails and jumps that I was hoping to master by the end of the week (the small one that is!) Katie seemed to pick it up where she had left it with the snowboarding two years ago in Italy and after a few runs everything was going OK with me too. Then the curse of Mt Hutt hit us. Others had told us that Mt Hutt was often known as Mt Shut due to the excessively high winds that it encounters and sure enough by lunchtime all the chairlifts were shut until further notice.

After an hour over our lunch I was just beginning to curse our decision to take the cheapest package when all of a sudden the winds suddenly stopped and the clouds cleared and we were treated to a brilliant afternoon of boarding. We returned back to the guesthouse with aching limbs and absolutely shattered. What better way to get rid of the aching muscles than a soak in their spa bath.

After a couple of days boarding we decided that it was time to step it up to the next level as Katie wanted to take a lesson to improve her confidence on the steeper and narrower parts of the mountain and I thought I might as well get some pointers on the rails and jumps so we booked ourselves an hours private tuition each and decided to take advantage of the early bird special price which meant that we were one of the first people on the mountain again. The previous night there had been a very hard frost so the groomed runs were as hard as concrete. When learning new things you are guaranteed to fall over more than usual. I was learning nose and tail press turns and how to "pop" some jump turns. Every time I caught an edge I either landed on my arse or knees with a crack on the rock hard ice pack. Needless to say that after an hour of doing this repeatedly I was a quivering wreck and just boarding in a straight line was hurting.

Katie on the other hand was falling over less, as she had got just what she needed from the instructor which was some confidence and that meant being relaxed. It worked and by that afternoon she was at the top of the mountain looking to take one of the more challenging routes down. We were both pretty tired and Paul was sore so we took the 3pm bus back to Methven for a relaxing evening watching films in the TV room. Our last two days on the mountain we had good snow and despite Paul's bruises and the crowds we really enjoyed ourselves. Paul pulled of some great tricks on the rails, and had them caught on camera, and I was carving up the slopes with a smile on my face By Friday afternoon we were tired, and felt ready to head off to another part of South Island.