Mount Hutt New Zealand

we are on our Honeymoon out in New Zealand at he moment and saw there had been a big dump at Mount Hut followed by some sunny weather, so we packed our Motor home up and set off for the mountains.

Mount Hut wasn't on our list of Ski areas to Ski in New Zealand due to it's nick name of "Mount Shut" but we were certainly happy we made the 4 hour drive across, we stayed the Friday night in Methven which is about a 45 minute drive from Mt Hut nice very quite little town.

As the birds began the morning chorus I was up and as excited as a kid at Christmas!!

We set off early so as not to hit any traffic as it was Saturday, I am so lad we did the drive up the mountain to Mt Hut was terrifying at best an unsealed gravel road which went across open ridges and may be not my best idea to drive up in a motor home!! but the views on the road up were amazing and when we finally got to the base station the mountain was looking in great shape.

not really knowing what to expect from the quality of the runs we decided to head straight to the top of the mountain and suck it and see!!


The lift was a fairly new 6 man chair lift not to fast but it gave us time to take in the amazing views from the mountain, we could see the flat green farm lands right our as fare as the coast line.

The runs were of good quality but limited in number not helped by the bottom chair lift which is below the base station being shut due to an avalanche wiping it off the mountain. later in the day they did open up one of the runs down to the old chair lift which was a sight to be seen to was a complete mess berried under tons of snow and ice. with the chair lift being out of action they were using a hagaland to carry everybody back up to the base station which was an experience.

All in all we had a great unexpected day of skiing and what the mountain lacked in runs it certainly made up for with views and taking the Motor home up was novel as we skied back to it several times for tea and biscuits and we cooked dinner before heading back down the mountain.

I can definitely see were it gets it's nick name from though as it's so open!!

It was reported a day or so ago that people were stranded up the mountain as the weather had come in so quick.

I would certainly ski Mt Hut again but you defiantly need to watch the weather and pick your day.

I have some amazing pictures and will post some if somebody can tell me how.

Sounds like a bit of an adventure Matt! :shock:

Please do post up some pictures - see the instructions in the Using The Forum section in the left-hand menu.

I can't seem to post picture so I will post the links

http://www.photobox.co.uk/album/2073371595

Matt - you just need to use the link to the individual image.

Photobox don't seem to make it easy... but in most browsers you should be able to right-click over the picture and "Copy Image URL" to get the link. Then jut paste that into an Img tag, like this :-

[img]http://img3014.photobox.co.uk/284202545ba931e9a59bc522211406aeda968102af9250ab2f9a690998d85bf128e6cb9b.jpg[/img]

thats where I was going wrong!! I was copying and pasting the address bar of the image!! will sort it out when I get chance the Mrs keeps going on about it being our honeymoon! I can't stop checking snow reports to see if we can sneak some more skiing in.

The Coolest place on the mountain to eat pizza









The Road from Hell



The Lift that got buried!!

We had a week at Mount "Shutt" a few years back. It was closed for the week prior to our arrival due to extreme wind that was blowing what little snow there was to all points of the compass. While in plane from Oz they got a dump and we had a week of good snow and decent weather. A massive low pressure then hit the day after we left. Christchurch blanketed and Mount Shutt closed again.
The road up is a wonder of the modern world. Picture a bonkers road in the Andes, with no guardrail to protect a fall into an abyss and you get the idea. I believe quite a few people have met their maker on it and i am surprised there hasn't been some litigation over it.
The reality is that there is not much skiing there and it is a real hassle to spend 40 death defying minutes to get up there. Sometimes better than the muck we serve up in Oz though. Antipodeans better off going to Japan in the southern summer.