Snowboarding in New Zealand
Mountains can get a bit metaphorical sometimes can’t they? ‘We’ve a mountain to climb!’ & ‘The mountain must come to Mohammed’ and frequently ‘don’t make a mountain out of a Mole hill!’ – at what point does a mountain become a hill and a hill become a mountain? I think the answer lies in what you’re using your precious oxygen for, when you climb a hill you use it to huff and puff and when you use it to swear and curse its a mountain… I live on the nearest thing Lancaster city centre has to a mountain – especially when trying to carry home two bags of shopping from Sainsburys!
This one time I was up a mountain. Not a metaphorical one, one of the proper ones they have in New Zealand, the Southern Alps – I could see the summit of Mnt Cook a few miles away and everything… breath taking view, breath taking incline, breath taking cold. The general idea was snowboarding, strap a plank to your pins and enjoy an exhilarating loss of friction. My shiny new Cannon film SLR joined me and together we made beautiful photographs – until I fell on the Pommer and smashed the command dial to bits. I started at the top, camera in bag, bag on back, me on board…whiz! Finished board in the air, me underneath, on top of bag…crushing camera…crunch! I cursed the mountain and have forsaken what may otherwise have been a dazzling career as an international snowboarding champion.
I fell down...alot
Tags: Cannon SLR, Mount Cook, Mountains, New Zealand, Snowboarding, Southern Alpes
