October 8th 2006: All the South Island resorts finally close after an epic season. 2pm, only a couple of hours of lifts left and what happens? It starts to snow. Big time. Sarah-Jaye was finishing up at work at the Remarkables and took forever to get back down cos they had to put chains on and clear the road. I meanwhile was down in town watching torrential rain come down from the pub where we were out for our leaving drinks and end of season boozery. Looking up to the mountains when it cleared, I could see it'd been dumping. After a night out in Monty's, Lone Star, Revolver and The Bunker, got back home and looked up at the Remarks - completely white, glistening in the moonlight.
October 9th 2006: Opened the curtains to massive snowflakes, white everywhere outside, Remarks covered in thick cloud. By about 10am things had calmed down and it all cleared away to a beautiful bluebird day. Looked on the webcams and even Coronet looked amazing - untracked deep pow everywhere - wasn't long before someone was up there on the Skidoos. Big load of snow piled up on Remarks cam, no sign of any life up there. Went and had lunch at Hamills, looking up at the snow, wanting to be up there. Heard that they'd had 40cm up there and there was more on the way. Sure enough, that arrived again laster in the afternoon and continued through the night.
October 10th 2006: Surprise, surprise, woke up to more snow falling today, right down here at lake level. What's going on here?! Bonkers - we had 23c just a couple of days ago. Now, you may be thinking, ok, so why's Sloth not been out riding it? Oh how many times have I been kicking myself about this? So, so frustrating. But as it stands, we're leaving here Thursday morning, boards are packed away, having had base grind, full tune and storage wax; outerwear is all clean and dry; got to clean this place; got to work. Excuses, excuses! If I could, I would. Oh, and the fact that there's no lifts open! Remarks road is a definate no-go, no way I'm driving through and avalanche zone when they've not been clearing anything. Coronet is possible - there's a few tracks up there now - looks like skiers who've been skinning up [hehe - not what you think 
]. SnowPark is still open, and Canadian Sarah's gone off there today - not sure how happy I am about texts saying "it's like our own private park, plenty fresh dry pow and blue skies" while I'm cleaning the windows. [:'(] It's just my pay-back for all those powder days I've been texting her at work while I'm up playing!
Nope, I'm happy with the fact I've had an amazing season, great powder days and weather. More of a review of all that later. Onward and upward for myself and SJ - off to Mount Cook for a night (they've had 70cm+ up there, with high avalanche warning, so that might mean no walking for us 
). After that it's off to Christchurch to find somewhere to live, then over to aussie for a couple of weeks holiday, sun and Mumhead+Curly Top's wedding.