September spring storms have been hammering NZ all month (think April showers in the northern hemisphere only more potent) and with the temperature yoyoing up and down, its been doing weird things to the mountains…

This is one of the spots we hike to out the back of Cardrona…

From here we rode about 15 minutes down in to the valley, getting fresh tracks all the way down.

But what goes down must come back up and the only way out is to hike again…

Unlike Europe, this is the best chance of powder around here, plus its damn good exercise…

I thought our 1 and half hour steep snow hike out was tough but was put to shame when we went to listen to Stephen Venables do a talk in Wanaka. He was the first Brit to climb Everest without oxygen, and on one of the days he climbed for 16 hours without stopping…epic.

Watching Shaun White pull back to back double cork tricks in the pipe in the new Burton movie rated pretty high, but watching him do it for real during the finals for the NZ Burton Open today just blew me away. It’s the first time it has ever been done back to back in competition. The light was pretty flat all day so photos didnt come out too great but he was sooo much better than almost all the other competitors there so I had to get some shots…

The first 2 tricks are Switch Double Cork 1080 Stalefish into FS Double Cork 900…

It was the qualifying runs of the NZ Burton Open today at Cardrona…kids were throwing down some serious tricks in the Slopestyle and the Pipe so I stopped to watch for a while. The forecast is rubbish for the finals tomorrow so I shot a few photos while the sun was out with the massive inversion hanging just under the resort.

Snowpark decided to have a free day, so Stu and I went up to check it out and shoot a few spots.

You can view flash sequence panoramas here

1st proper pow day of NZ09 – we went up TC and got freshies in the saddle bowl and then shot a few photos.

Stu snowboarding – poor riding, terrible filming…

We hired a kayak and paddled out to an island in the middle of Lake Wanaka called Ruby Island.

Definitely a better day today…hiking with 1 or 2 other people to find some powder has to rate as one of my favourite past times…

The snow conditions are not too great right now, but its always damn good exercise and the views are epic. We hiked up to the radio mast at the top of the resort and checked out the storm blasted snow on the buildings, and then found a few good chutes to drop down in to.