Well, after yesterday's massive disappointment, Mt Hutt fully redeemed itself. Myself and SJ got ourselves up at 6:30am, checked the snow report and...yay!!! It's open. With 35-50cm of fresh dry powder 
. Got all the "right, thens" out of the way, out the door and on the road (via Maccas of course). Roads were loads clearer than yesterday, but still icy, with barely anyone on them. Had we beaten everyone up there? Or had they beaten us? Chains for everyone on at the very very bottom of the access road. Despite getting up so early, we still didn't get up there until almost 10am, by which time a lot of the powder had been tracked out by the lucky few.
View from Mt Hutt
Originally uploaded by le_sloth.
Signs up all over the place warning that a lot of the off-piste was
baseless, or faceless, or something. Whatever it was, it was too hard
to resist, so withing an hour or so I'd decided the Anthem was now
gonna have to be my rock board. Lost count of how many rocks I hit,
lurking under that freshness - the base was not looking good by
lunchtime. Queues built up as every man and his dog arrived to ride,
but still nothing like those in France. That's pretty much how the day
went really, I found a sweet stash of pow under the 4-man chair that
had to be ridden very lightly. Loving these drops into powder, really
pushing myself to go bigger. SJ loved it, brig grins all round. Only
thing without a grin was my board, which had multiple core-shots,
stripping out any p-tex from past repairs. Dropped it off for overnight
fixing in the workshop.
Back in Methven, went to the Blue Pub for booze and food, before Alan got hold of us and was in need of an early night. Barely any time for photos, but you know where they are. Awesome day. 