New Zealand

Tim Konrad(God), Ralph Backstrom, Jackie Paaso, and myself (aka- unofficialsquaw.com-Blasters) arrived in New Zealand a couple of days ago. We got on our connecting flight from Auckland and headed to Christchurch. This is where we picked up our new rig for the next couple of weeks and started down the road.


We drove for around two and a half hours to a little town where we where trying to go cat skiing the next day. I would love to tell you the name of this town, but won't for two reasons- 1 I believe it is an untapped resource that no one can know about, and 2 because I can't spell or let alone even remember the name of the town at the moment. The next morning we trekked out to the Cat Operation and met the owners. They were not to keen on letting us get up there, do to the extreme wind factor, so we had to settle for meeting there Tar family and playing with there little dog Doddy. For me it wasn't quite skiing, but I love animals and enjoyed seeing these awesome creatures almost as much as I would have enjoyed the skiing. We said our goodbyes and promised we would return in due time, hopped back in our rig and headed to our final destination, Wanaka.

The drive was a little over three hours that was quickly passed due to our unexpected hitch-hiker friend that we picked up who was full of fun stories of his travels around the world, that is a whole other story in its self tho. I would like to say that Wanaka is some what like Squaw, but in all reality Squaw does not have palm trees and is not as beautiful as here. We got settled in at our new homes that are right on Lake Hawea, where we got the pleasure to meet up with Mike "Fuckin" Wilson and the legendary Tom Day. All of us were super tired and called in an early night so that we could go explore in the morning.





We awoke to a nice sunny day and headed out to Treble Cone ski resort. We all managed to get our tickets and headed up the hill for a fun day full of back-flips and GS turns(check out unofficialsquaw.com for clips). Once we had had our fun we raced back to the hotel for the opening meeting of the World Heli Challenge. I understand that this was only the opening meeting of this event, but my god! I have never in my whole life felt such an amazing energy from an event. This is a very special thing that Herro(starter of the WHC) has going on and I hope that everyone that reads this follows this event as it goes on. So here we are waiting for that first clear day so we can all get back out there and do what we love to do.