The Land Down Under

After over a year of planning, Kelly and I got married this summer! We had a ceremony and reception in Snoqualmie, WA, with nearly 200 friends and family. Everything went perfectly, except for the fact that I got food poisoning the day of. While I spent much of the wedding lying on a bed, at least I managed to rally for the key moments: the ceremony (in which I puked while giving my vows), our musical performance, and our first dance.

I am very grateful that we did not plan our honeymoon immediately after the wedding! After three weeks (during which Kelly also separately got food poisoning), we set off to New Zealand and Australia, in search of the Southern Hemisphere winter!

New Zealand

Since we did not want to feel too rushed in this trip, we chose to just visit one city: Queenstown on the South Island. Queenstown is probably the biggest destination for skiing in New Zealand, and possibly the entire Southern Hemisphere. There is also good hiking and adventure sports. Arriving in a 40 degree rainstorm was a bit of a change from summer, but we were happy to be cold!

Downhill Skiing

There are four ski areas near Queenstown – The Remarkables, Coronet, Cardrona, and Treble Cone. We made it a goal to spend one day at each. I’ll give my review of each:

Cardrona

Unfortunately, the one day we went had nearly zero visibility. There are no trees at New Zealand ski areas, so it’s nearly impossible to ski without visibility. Cardrona has a reputation as the best beginning hill near Queenstown, so it was filled with beginners. Kelly got nailed by a snowboard on the very first run. Coverage was very suspect off piste (as it was at all the resorts), so the groomers were quite crowded. The best part of the day was the tasty ramen in the lodge.

Coronet

Coronet is the closest mountain to Queenstown, about a 25 minute drive. As the local hill, it is known for night skiing. We decided to catch the sunset from Coronet one day. Fortunately, they sort of re-groom the main blue run after 4 PM. So we got in a few good runs before it started to get icy and dark, at which point we went down for dinner.

Treble Cone

Treble Cone is near the town of Wanaka. It is almost a 2 hour drive from Queenstown. It has only two lifts, but they have substantial vertical, and there is fun off-piste terrain on the backside. Treble Cone is most famous for incredible views of Lake Wanaka and the nearby peaks. The lines were short but the views were huge. I liked this mountain, but the terrain was a bit limited with a thin snowpack and icy conditions.

The Remarkables

The Remarkables is perhaps the most famous resort near Queenstown. It felt like the most like a destination resort, with quality grooming and bigger crowds. But by North American standards, it was still small, with only 3 lifts. There’s a good variety of terrain, from nice groomers to steeper off-piste terrain.

The Remarkables differs from the other resorts, which all occupy east and south aspects (south is the shaded aspect in the Southern Hemisphere). The Remarkables is north facing. But it actually had probably the most robust snowpack (that isn’t saying much) due to its higher elevation and the way the mountains probably fetch snow when the wind blows.

Snowpack

If these photos do not look very snowy, it’s not just you. The South Islands was in the midst of a very bad snow year when we arrived in mid August. Coronet Peak had only received 30 in of snow all season! These ski areas were only open due to artificial snowmaking.

However, even on a good year, these ski resorts are pretty dry. All of the Queenstown area ski resorts are in the rain shadow on the Southern Alps. The mountains are high, dry hills, reminiscent of the Wenatchee Foothills, just bigger. Estimates vary, but typical snowfall is probably only in the 100-150 inch range. In comparison, Snoqualmie Pass receives 300 inches on average, and even dry Mission Ridge receives 200 inches annually. Coupled with high winds, snow coverage is suspect.

The access to these ski areas is rather unique. While most ski areas are on high mountain passes in America, these ski areas have steep dirt access roads that climb directly to them. Because of the road condition, chains can be required even on 4 wheel drive when it is snowy. Luckily, the ski areas offer free shuttles from the bottom, and paid shuttles from town! I definitely recommend taking the shuttles. Even though we had a rental car, sometimes we just parked at the bottom of the access roads.

With the poor snowpack, limited visibility on cloudy days, and general small resort size, I don’t think the ski resorts in New Zealand would be a destination if they were not in the Southern Hemisphere. Still, we very much enjoyed skiing in August!

Nordic Skiing

Kelly was most excited by the prospect of nordic skiing in August! Snow Farm NZ is one of the only groomed nordic skiing spots in the entire Southern Hemisphere! Unfortunately, they are in an even drier part of the island than the downhill ski areas, so they only had enough snow to keep a few trails open.

We had heard from Kelly’s friend, Kim, that Olympic skiers Jessie Diggins (arguably the greatest American woman nordic skier of all time) and Julia Kern were training at Snow Farm in the off-season. Kim’s sister is their coach, so we got the beta on when to arrive to catch them. We showed up with a sharpie and asked them to sign our skis, which they gladly did!

The skiing was pretty limited, with only a few miles groomed. At some sections, we had to scooch through bare grass. But skate skiing is still better than no skate skiing! Kelly left feeling excited for the winter.

Milford Sound

Milford Sound is probably the most famous tourist destination in New Zealand. It is located on the wet west coast of the South Island. Most tourists take a four hour bus ride from Queenstown and short cruise through the sound. However, Kelly’s friend, who is from Auckland, “upsold” us to taking a scenic flight from Queenstown. It was a little pricey, but this was our honeymoon, right?

We monitored the weather closely and chose the sunniest day, although we were generally blessed with great weather during the week we were there. Milford Sound receives nearly 300 inches of rainfall per year, or 10x the rainfall of Queenstown.

We flew with Glenorchy Air in a small plane of 10 passengers. Our pilot was humorous and knowledgeable, flying close to the mountains and pointing out different features.

As we crossed the divide into Fiordland National Park, the mountains started to get crazy. The valleys were flat and open, but the valley walls were insanely steep, rising to sharp ridge lines. Glaciers hung to the steep cliffs. These were some of the steepest mountains I had ever seen.

We landed at the airport and took a short walk to the cruise. It was a stunning morning, with clear skies and a dusting of snow on the higher peaks above Milford Sound.

Milford Sound is actually a fiord, not a sound, carved by giant glaciers descending from the Southern Alps over the various ice ages. The glaciers have left behind walls thousands of feet tall, plunging straight into the ocean. If there is one type of mountain scenery that I am a sucker for, it is fiords (possibly because we don’t have them in Washington).

Throughout the sound, there are streaks of rock visible through the steep vegetation. The rock is generally not very porous. Soil cannot reside on the steep rock slabs. But lichen grows on the rocks, kicking off a chain of successively larger vegetation latches on until finally trees are clinging to each other over the steep cliffs! Every once in a while, during big rain events, the entire ecosystem can “avalanche” and the entire cycle starts over.

I definitely recommend visiting Milford Sound. The flight was a nice, quick way to experience it, but I’m sure the bus tour would also be great!

Hiking

Even in a typical winter, there is low elevation snow-free hiking near Queenstown. But during this winter, there were even more hiking opportunities. A silver lining of the bad snowpack was getting to go on some beautiful hikes.

While Kelly slept in one morning, I drove out to Glenorchy to go on a trail run. It had just snowed the day before, so I found one of the lowest, flattest trails on the map. The drive was an adventure, with multiple river fords. Google Maps named many of the places by which scene in Lord of the Rings was filmed there.

The forests of New Zealand are very different – jungly, leafy, and chaotic. Deep in the flat valleys, there are naturally open grasslands, which make for lovely “tramping”, as they call it. There actually are conifer trees above Queenstown, but they are invasive and currently being removed. Across much of the east side of the South Island, the barren hills had me initially puzzled. Yes, it is dry, but the precipitation amounts resembled places like Leavenworth, which have many trees. The climate was pretty mild in the winter. The lack of trees seemed strange. After some research, I discovered that the early Maori and Europeans set fires to clear land, but many of these fires grew out of control and wiped out forests across much of New Zealand. The fires were so extensive that the forests simply never returned in many places.

On our final full day, Kelly and I hiked part of the Routeburn Track. This is one of New Zealand’s “Great Walks”. While it is typically crowded in the summer, it was quiet in the winter. Temperatures were crisp, and it felt like a stunning November day after the first major snowfall of the winter.

We hiked all the way to snowline at 4000 ft, to a stunning overlook of the steep valley.

This hike left me wanting to return to New Zealand during the summer season. But even if I never get the opportunity, it was awesome to see the Southern Alps up close!

Queenstown

We stayed right in downtown Queenstown, which was wonderful for walking to the restaurants each day. The food was generally good, with lots of different ethnic options, since there are tourists from around the world. We also did a few short hikes from town. Outside of outdoor activities, there isn’t that much going on, but there are nice shops and restaurants.

Australia

To complement our outdoor focus in New Zealand, we planned a 4-day visit to Sydney next. We did zero research going in, wanting to just see the city and play it by ear. We saw a play at the Opera House, took the ferry to Manly Beach, and walked around the city.

A few things stood out to us about Sydney:

• The public transit is great. Trains get you into the city quickly, and light rail takes you short distances. The main street in downtown is actually light rail-only, with no cars and abundant walking space on both sides.
• The city is impeccably clean. Like Tokyo-level.
• There are a ton of green spaces near the city. Many of the rocky bluffs may have just been bad for building, but there are lots of public beaches and coastal walks.
• There are a lot of Asians, and thus the food is very, very good. There are entire neighborhoods that serve almost exclusively Asian food, of all types. And the commercial units are often smaller, allowing shops to specialize in a specific dish. For example, there was an Onigiri Shop right next to a Sushi shop. This allowed us to do “tasting tours”, rather than just ordering large dishes like you would do typically at a sit-down restaurant. This also reminded me of Tokyo.

The locals were surprisingly friendly. We had a great conversation with a man in the rooftop hotel hot tub. While waiting for dinner, we met two locals, Rohan and Chris. We sat next to them at dinner, and they invited us to drinks after. They took us to O-Bar, a classy rotating bar on the 47th floor, offering a great view of the Sydney nightscape.

On our final full day, we took a tour bus to see the Blue Mountains. These mountains are more like high plateaus with canyons and cliffs than typical mountains. The eucalyptus trees and waterfalls were nice.

However, the best part of the tour was not the scenery, but the tour guide. He cracked jokes, taught us Australian lore (Google “Scott Morrison Engadine Maccas” and “Steven Bradbury”), and facilitated a game of Australian slang (apparently, a “Richard Gere” is a beer).

As we headed to the airport, we caught the leaders of the Sydney Marathon, which went right by our hotel. While the marathon was cool, we also paid an extra $100 a night or so for our hotel because of the marathon premium…

We enjoyed our time in Sydney! We both felt that it was the nicest, most pleasant English-speaking city we had every been to.

Back Home

Now Kelly and I are back to regular, married life at home. Thank you to everyone who made our wedding so special and contributed to our Honeymoon Fund! We are excited to put wedding planning behind us and start our next chapter of life together.