Rolling, Rolling, Rolling (18-21/06/09)

THURSDAY 18TH JUNE

After another lesson with Rowena on the big slopes, where I fall over a lot and my feet hurt because of the fact I have to apply more pressure due to the incline. I went about my day with a lot of apprehension. It’s amazing how quickly you can lose your confidence after a few falls, and it seems like I’m starting over again.
That’s the boring bit of the day over. The real story of the day happened on the way home.We got on the bus at 15:00p.m ready for the fifty minute journey back to Methven. We were having a laugh and a joke with a couple of Aussies who we’d been talking to on the way up, just asking how their day had been and what not.
About ten minutes had passed and then there was a cry of ‘Stop the bus. There’s someone down there.’ With that the driver pulled over and about ten of us shot off the bus to see what was happening. Within seconds the reality of what had happened hit us. A car had gone over the edge of the cliff and rolled down about 200 yards. There was a woman about eighty feet down the cliff who had tried to climb back up, and her husband was still sat outside the wreck of the car unable to move anywhere.
One of the Aussies raced down to the devastation below to help out the man. In the meantime two other guys went to the aid of the woman and helped her back to the road, where she broke down unable to control her emotions.
As luck would have it in the five minutes that had passed three more cars had reached us and one of them had a doctor and a nurse aboard. The best of it was they had both been involved in a training exercise just six days previous relating to this kind of situation. With 111 having been called and the mountain rescue on their way, plus a doctor taking charge of the situation there was very little else we could do so we headed back to town, still astonished at what we had just witnessed.

FRIDAY 19TH JUNE

We didn’t go up the mountain today, as we were both quite tired from yesterday’s exertions. We didn’t really want to move either at 06:00a.m as it was absolutely freezing, so most of the day was spent doing a few chores. Also, it gave us a chance to sort out the TV. After spending most of the day up a mountain you don’t really want to be doing too much at night, so because we don’t gave have all that much money, watching TV is about all there is to do that’s free. Unfortunately the reception in town is not the best, so we asked Mark (the campsite owner) if he had a better aerial than the one we owned. Around twenty minutes later he returned with an aerial off the side of a house, and told us to hang it in a tree and make sure that it was pointing towards the kitchen. It does look like a bit of a bodge job, but it works so we can’t really complain.
The two people who were involved in the accident yesterday are both recovering after being air lifted to Christchurch hospital. The woman suffered only minor cuts and shock, while the man had a fractured pelvis and large laceration to the head. The car, a Toyota 4x4, was a right-off. If they had been in anything smaller they would both have probably died.

SATURDAY 20TH JUNE

Today was a very bad day for me as far as my snowboarding was concerned. I went straight on to the big run and within ten minutes I suffered a pretty bad fall. It was so bad that I couldn’t even walk for the entire day and it has rendered me unable to board until about Wednesday. Not the best news by any stretch. In the evening we went out to watch the All Blacks against France. We didn’t stay out much longer than full time as I was in a fair bit of pain just being stood up.

SUNDAY 21st JUNE

Sundays are definitely going to be our day off from the slopes, just because of the sheer volume of people. There are far too many and it makes it difficult to ski or ride comfortably. Instead we just dossed around the campsite watching TV and getting warm in front of the log fire. I also heard that yesterday one of the lift operators was having some ski time and a snowboarder ran into him and caused him (the lifty) to break his neck in two places. In my opinion there are too many people who don’t know the basics i.e. stopping and turning. If they did then things like this wouldn’t happen as everyone concerned knows how to avoid the situation. Maybe it was just a freak accident but I’m not so sure.