Any parent who has looked on as their kid's day goes to pieces because a few Rice Bubbles have landed in their lap at breakfast will appreciate the transformation a day of skiing can bring.
Children who are left distraught and discombobulated by the most minor of events at home — a missing sock, a T-shirt that's inside out, a banana that's sliced when it could have been served whole — become, on the snow, invincible beasts.
Bluebird day at Mt Ruapehu. Photo / Winston Aldworth
My 6-year-old son, Baxter, knows well the trauma of the spilt Rice Bubble and the non-matching sock. Such things can induce major meltdowns. But, by God, when he wipes out on the skifield — face planting, with heavy, uncomfortable boots splayed at all angles, exhausted and battered and snow pooling to ice in his trousers — he laughs it off like a champ. Ski for long enough and you'll become graceful at it. But the run to graceful is hard and when your kids learn to ski, they're also learning to deal with adversity.
And so it was on the first weekend of June, the start of the ski season at Whakapapa, when the invincible Baxter got knocked down and bounced back up again, happy in Happy Valley. The early days of the season at the skifield nearest to Auckland are prime for beginners.
I'm keen to keep the kids' spirits up, no matter what tumbles befall them. "Just remember kids," I tell Baxter and his older sister Zoe. "The more you do it, the more you'll find it gets easier."
"It's already easy, Dad," reports the 8-year-old.
Whakapapa was the first in New Zealand to open for business this year, with Happy Valley, and the Rock Garden run immediately above it, hosting beginners and some older skiers, returning to the snow after many years out.
With my kids set up in lessons, knocking themselves down and getting up again, I took the opportunity to clear out a few cobwebs myself, skiing around them — unobserved — in Happy Valley before making a few runs on the higher Rock Garden. On our second day, when the Rock Garden lift was closed, my mate and I gamely hiked up the Rock Garden run, a calf-thumping exercise for a brief downward buzz.
Zoe and Baxter Aldworth at Mt Ruapehu. Photo / Winston Aldworth
It's not all overcoming adversity at Whakapapa. The resort's Knoll Ridge Cafe is a beautiful construction, the likes of which Kiwi skiers would generally expect to see overseas. Meals on the mountain in New Zealand have traditionally been closer to a sandwich and a can of fizzy drink than the sort of fare one finds in Europe, but this impressive building — which has operated since 2011 — stands apart. As the kids buried their faces in warm pies, the adults nailed replenishing burgers.
A spell of good conditions, combined with investment in snowmaking tools, made for fine terrain on the beginners' field in the first days of the season. Lift access to the higher fields was closed in those opening sessions. Now, the rest of the mountain is set to open, and with nine lifts serving 44km of trails, Whakapapa is the biggest ski resort in the country.
There are plans to get bigger. The new gondola, announced a fortnight ago and expected to be completed in a year, will speed skiers to the higher slopes more quickly.
Keen for a refresher touch up, I took a lesson myself, a nice young English lad called Sam spending two hours with me and Chris Beer, a Mt Albert GP returning to skis for the first time in the best part of a decade. Beer said the early-season start had proved a good opportunity to find his feet again after many seasons out. "It's been a lovely day," he said. "I'm getting there slowly."
I was getting there slowly, too. After we'd run through a few basics, I nudged Sam into helping me improve my 360-degree turn. The trick, I gather, is knowing when to lean forward and when to lean back. Pleased with my progress I show my kids when picking them up after their lesson.
