Gourmet Lodge Weekend

9 - 11 August 2013

Whakapapa Village, Tongariro National Park

Team: Mark, Spike, Me, and 29 others

This was a highly unusual trip to the lodgefor us. For starters, Mark and I had a 4 month old with us, second, we were going on a weekend full of other children.

Also, there was the awesome fact of it being a gourmet weekend.

We left Wellington as Spike was due his nap, just on lunchtime. After stopping at Z Mana, and debating McDonalds for lunch there, we decided to keep heading up the road instead since Spike had just fallen asleep.


Eventually we had lunch in Levin, followed by afternoon tea in Taihape, and a very brief stop just south of Waiouru with the sun setting over the mountain looking glorious. The drive west from Waiouru was challenging - straight in to the setting sun at times. We arrived at the lodge about 6pm, just after sunset.



Feed and bed for Spike, then dinner for us before the rest of the families arrived by van at about 9pm.

Saturday morning dawned clear. Dammit. I was in charge of the cooking for dinner during the day, and that was going to take most of the day and I was hoping to have plenty of help - especially with Spike having a cold that was bad enough we considered not going away.

By the time we had finished breakfrast, cloud was coming over the top of Pinnacle Ridge. The snow cover was already awful, and the weather report was average, so Mark agreed to stay in the lodge rather than waste a whole days pass on what looked to be a half days skiing.

Cooking started. By lunchtime we had much of the preparation done. The casserole (Beef, Onion & Guiness) was in the oven already, the pumpkin soup in a pot on the stove, cheesecakes were setting in the fridge and one set of bread was also in the breadmaker for turning into pull-apart garlic breads.

People started to arrive back in the lodge, having given up on skiing because of the weather. Spike was the centre of attention for some of the other kids, with his portacot setup in the lounge for his naps. More people started also helping with the last bits of dinner prep, as I abandoned plans to do potato dumplings and scones, instead simplifying the 5-course dinner ever so slightly.

We started dinner with standard lodge nibbles at about 4pm, followed by pull-apart garlic breads (BAM, and the bread was gone), before serving mains at just on 6pm, and dessert just after 7pm. The food went down a treat, and it was lovely to get so many positive comments.



Mark and I joined a few others for a few rounds of 5-handed 500 (no scoring) once Spike was in bed, before heading off for an early night ourselves. Breakfast in the morning was awesome, mini mushroom and egg pastries, apple danishes, loads of bacon. Even better, it was all cooked before we got up!

The weather was awful, however. So we packed up, and as Spike was due to go down for his nap, we loaded him down to the car and headed home, via After Hours for Spikes wheezy cold.

Menu:
Finger food: As usual for lodge. Carrot and celery sticks, dip, crackers, cheese and pickles.
Entree: Pull apart mini garlic breads
Starter: Curried Pumpkin & Kumara soup with Sourdough bread
Main: Beef, Onion & Guiness casserole with mashed potato and veges
Dessert: White chocolate & berry cheesecake with ice-cream

Skiing, or attempting to anyway

Back in high school, I did PE as an optional subject, and one of our big assessments was a ski week in 6th form. It was about the only assessment I failed in two years.

We were at Temple Basin – in mid October. There was no snow on the learners slopes, and actually almost no snow on the entire field. After a day of doing nothing in the lodge there, we got some snow, and spent the rest of the week around the far end of the skifield in Downhill Basin.

The lessons were rudimentary. So rudimentary I don’t remember anything from them apart from using our poles to turn our skis from side on to the slope to facing down the slope. I remember fear, the knowledge that the runout at the bottom of the slope we were learning on was a fairly substantial bluff. Mainly I remember giving up after the one short lesson we were granted and spending most of the week hiding in the shed at the bottom of the hill, going out into the snow only when I had to.

By the end of the week the only thing I had achieved was more fear of skiing and a sense of utter failure. I was presented with an award from the group of “person most likely to never set foot on skis again”, and the tag really stuck.

It was easy to avoid skiing while at uni and immediately after. I very rarely was offered the opportunity, and could plead poverty when I was. Not many of my friends skied anyway.

Then I met Mark. Who had been skiing and loving it for a couple of years (on the plus side, at least it was only a couple, and not forever and a day), and wanted me to go with him to the mountain when he went away for weekends.

Our first year dating (2008), Mark paid for me to have a snowboarding lesson for my birthday. I was still adamant that I wasn’t going to ski, but I figured I could give snowboarding a go, so I didn’t have to sit at home alone for multiple weekends each winter.

Snowboarding was hard. After my two hour lesson and about another 20 minutes playing around, I needed a break, so went to the café. After that, I found it was just too hard to get going again. That night at the backpackers I was absolutely exhausted. I could hardly move, and was immensely glad I had a bottom bunk. I spent my Sunday miserable at the café at Turoa while Mark skied.

In 2009, I spent only one weekend up the mountain, and the weather was awful, so not much was open and no-one was really skiing anyway. In 2010, neither of us made it to the mountain, between starting new jobs and planning a wedding, we didn’t have the time or money to go.

This year, I had no more excuses, especially when the only weekend we had planned for the season was an absolute stunner. Staying in the lodge had bored me to tears (literally) on Saturday, and so I caved in to pressure on Sunday and went down to Happy Valley for a ski lesson.

I admit, I had a much better time than I anticipated, considering I had been nearly shitting myself with anxiety while waiting for the class to start. Our instructor was patient, well spoken and funny. We were corrected without being laughed at, cheered when we did things right and generally encouraged to keep trying even when we found things tough.

By the end of class, my big achievement was that I could stop myself, at least occasionally. It’s a skill that I barely managed to hold on to over my half hour lunch break with Mark. After that I decided I was sore, tired and to be honest a bit emotional at the fact of having faced my fear, and I didn’t feel the need to prove myself any more for the day. So we took my skis back to the hire shop and went up to Knoll Ridge on my sightseeing pass together.

I found that I was definitely less sore after skiing than I had been after snowboarding. I’m sure that the work I have done with various personal trainers over the last three years to increase my core strength, balance and fatigue point have all contributed to this. My sore bits were the fronts of my shins from the boots and my calf muscles.

Will I ski again? Probably. I suspect you will find me in a beginners lesson again next winter, and the winter after that until I get to the point of being able to turn and can move up a step. Its going to take a long time to be confident enough to get out of the learners area, but I’m ok with that.

Still here, just not tramping

Dont worry, I havent fallen off the face of the earth.

After tearing my hamstring at Easter, I had to take a good bit of time off tramping. I'm not back into it yet.

But I did go skiing on the weekend - more on that later :)`