Snow they said, and snow they got!
I had visitors from the Far North. They demanded SNOW. I suppose that’s like me going to their patch and demanding RAIN! They got it right anyway. As their two 4WDs wrinkled south via the East Coast, down south we were becoming Land of the Long White Sagging Powerline. As they punched into a southerly across Crook Straight Away the snow turned to ice and vehicles fell off various corners of the Mainland and rediscovered the delights of travelling backwards out of control. Schools closed. Transport became transfixed. The power- less stoked up their wood-burners or coal ranges and put the soup on, kids and dogs gambolled in the whiteness and the yahoos of a hundred thousand skiers could be heard echoing through the Main Divide. Meanwhile, I’d been worrying myself silly. A snowball on my head would have melted in seconds from my frantic thought processes. What if there was too much snow? What if it all melted too fast? Where should I take them? Decisions, decisions. Snowbound synapses. What the hell, let’s just do it. And it was perfect. We snuck off, pressures down, chains aboard, and headed for the Pass. The Okuku Pass, that leads into Lees Valley. Bound to have caught some snow, though it could be a metre deep and there’s a ford in the middle that may be impassable if there’s too much thaw already. We found frost early then snow halfway up the pass. There’s a bushy spot that always cops some and it was true to form but not a problem. Just that lovely swishy silence as we drove it gently being careful of oncoming traffic that may have trouble stopping downhill. There was none and ours were the first tracks of the day. The bush was picturesque. The summit, at about 600m, was easy, the view ahead sweet – green and white for ever. Brought a memory for me of being there once with not a scrap of green showing – total white and a blue sky – and Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon booming from an old Landy ahead of me. We headed downhill taking it easy, testing traction, stopping for photos or to make personal yellow patches beneath a pine tree. Then it levelled out to a sweeping easy track through rolling farmland, patches of snow, patches of icy puddles. We’d lost a couple of hundred metres of altitude to well below the snowline and it was quite green but with scant fodder for the skinny cattle. Well, it was midwinter in what has always been marginal farmland. Then we popped over a lit tle saddle – Lees Pass – and the valley opened ahead, flat and low and surrounded by steep bushy hills to our left and snowy mountains to our right. Majestic. The convoy stopped to record it. Then we trundled down to the Okuku River that crosses right to left and disappears into its gorge. We stopped there for lunch, sandwiches and coffee, stamping cold feet on the frozen ground and breathing out white vapour as the swollen river rippled past. The river was lower than I expected but there was plenty of it. I distrust manmade fords when rivers are up. They can look fine but, because they artificially channel the water, they can have deep washouts in the middle that are hard to see. I prefer to find my own crossing so explored above and below until I found a predictable crossing that used a few small ones instead of one big one. This is not a place to invite trouble where ‘2 Degrees’ is not just a phone company! After that through a cropping area with patches of snow and ice to the Okuku Saddle, another low one. Then the long flat run on a good shingle road through the valley proper, over the Ashley River, past the old school and up into the Ashley Gorge way above its winding river. Its sheltered here and gets lit tle sun in winter so there was much more snow and ice than the Okuku. It’s generally not steep but is tight and winding with no armco to catch a mistake. Safely out of there and back to the Plains we looked at a couple of other spots. Day t wo was to Banks Peninsula, which had also copped a good coating of white. I led a clockwise tour through many bays on as many interesting tracks as could be tacked together in a day. Many snowy and icy bits but didn’t need the chains, though good MT/ s were necessary. Ice grit aplenty on the tarmac parts of the Summit Road. Skiddier than the shingle! We did Panama Rd, one of the area’s steepest, cruised though Akaroa and round the harbour to Wainui then over the other side to look down the coastline south over Lake Ellesmere and Kaitorete Spit toward Timaru lost in the haze. Down to Little River for a snack and coffee before heading back to town and another monstrous meal. Both days were perfect. Next day the visitors headed south, ending up in Omarama where it was minus eighteen! Then they advanced to Cromwell at merely minus fif teen. ‘ Snow’, they said, and snow they got. Their timing was perfect. So perfect that on their way home t wo weeks later they were baulked by snow-closed roads in the central North Island!