Spring??

Tuesday was officially the first day of spring. However, with the warmest, wettest August on record, we felt like we've already had spring for a month here. It was colder all round in Autumn than it was in winter this year!

Anyway, Spring arrived properly...... and so did winter, again!

Here are a couple of photos taken by Greg this morning from our balcony once the skies had cleared. It was a beautiful day today - blue skies, fresh powder on the mountain, and work committments that neither of us could re-schedule... annoying!

The first photo is a close up of the Gondola and Ben Lomond. We like the snow in the trees the best! You may also be able to pick out the gondola building - like a little island in the middle of the snow covered clearing.

And a wider shot, showing Bowen Peak on the right.

It snowed to lake level for pretty much all of Wednesday, being Andrea's birthday (she was pretty impressed with the 'present' from Queenstown). We went out for dinner to a place called 'Prime' on the waterfront and sat at a window seat watching the snow lightly fall under the lights outside. Very pretty!

Seemed to be the right thing to do at the time

Well, everyone else is doing it so I thought we should start up a blog too. It's nearly the end of the ski season, with only one week remaining. The forecast for most of the week isn't what you'd call fantastic, but with any luck the freezing level will drop and we'll get some fresh snow for the weekend.

This is what the Remarkables looks like today - blue skies but not a whole lot of snow left.

We didn't end up going skiing or snowboarding on the weekend as the weather wasn't flash on Saturday and then on Sunday we needed to do really exciting stuff like mow the lawns (it hasn't been good lawnmowing weather for the past 4 weekends, other than when we have been out and about) and tidy the house. It's not all that great when the highlight of your weekend was shifting the couches to vacuum under them, but it happens....

It is fine and sunny today, with a light frost this morning. A pretty typical spring day in Queenstown. Hopefully it won't get too windy this afternoon as we are intending on taking Jen and two of her liftie friends out wakeboarding. It's going to be cold, no doubt about it, but it always is in the water (the lake is about 400m deep, so the temperature tends to not change a lot). I only have two wet suits and they will be used by Jen and her friend Sarah so I likely won't be wakeboarding tonight. Oh well, I will take the time to take some photos of the others and brush up on my boat driving skills!