Yearning for Roy.
A lifelong pipe dream realised.
From ISSUE 105 2023
Words Sam Smoothy| Images Chris Dunn & Mark Clinton.
June 1989.
Long before the sprawling subdivisions and super mansions, a quiet dirt road ran outside my gate at 97 Stone Street, Wanaka. Lined with pines, it skirted alongside the cemetery, headstones sharp in the sun, sparse bouquets buried in snow, to Squash Court Hill. Tiny sorrel boots were strapped onto plastic skis, and hand-in-hand, my parents ran me down my first ski run. I was pitched face-first into the bank, dusted off and dragged back to the top. Again, and again.
Mother, enthusiasm waning, retrieved an errant mitten while I slumped in a heap and stared through the dusted pines towards Roys Peak, whose shadow crept long across the sleepy town. I was almost three, rather soggy, and needed a nap.
From then the dreams started flowing, inspired and blended with reality. That now-familiar feeling of floating through powder was so foreign it frightened my younger self. I thought I might simply float away, never to return. And at night I did; midway down Treble Cone I would transform, morphing into a bird of prey. I swooped off the side of the mountain, joyously flying lines down tussock-clad ridges that plunged far below the snowline, the lines that never go.
Night after night.
"Pipedream discussions... of relocating the country 1,000km south, or propping the town 1,000m higher..."
Year after year I’d mindlessly stare at the school books as the short June days dragged towards opening day. I yearned to escape the cloying damp under the ever-present inversion cloud, to return to the sun in the blinding alpine. To soar. More recently those opening days began to slide later, to shift around capricious early-winter storms.
The annual family tradition— skiing together for my early birthday—became unreliable, as opening days pushed back and the snowline crept higher. Those childhood days slipped further into the past. Snow, if it even falls in town, is often gone before the morning coffee has cooled.
There have always been wandering chats about pre-dawn starts, for a magical June snowfall on Roy that never seemed to come. Pipedream discussions circulate of relocating the country 1,000km south, or propping the town 1,000m higher, or some cataclysmic event to return us to an ice age.
The conversations all circled around finally coating the steep, spine-like grass ridges of Roys Peak with enough snow to ski. Every day I drove past the mountain to Treble Cone, staring up at the brown walls above and hoping that day would come.
June 2022.
The snow forecast made no sense. I pushed refresh again and checked other forecasts again. It remained curiously constant; polar air colliding with a huge moisture cell. The storm of the decade had arrived.
At 5am I rolled out of town with local pals Mike Handford, Chris Dunn, Hamish McDougall and repeat visitor, photographer Mark Clinton. We drove through the dark, particularly muffled calm of a snowed-in town that’s common overseas, but so precious here at home. Out of the carpark and over the fence stile, Mike grinned as he dropped his split-board onto the 5cm of snow covering the ground.
"I'm skinning from the bottom."
The rest of us carted our skis a few hundred metres higher before the depth increased and the real work began. The once-drearily familiar hiking track was made anew, now buried under two feet of snow. Native shrubs groaned under the unaccustomed weight as we skinned higher through one of the deepest tracks I’ve set in NZ.
Breaking through a layer in the clouds, headlamps flickered in and out of the mist below; we were not alone. After a couple hours of breaking trail, we crested the ridge into a cold south wind that whipped drifting tendrils of snow into the air. We were soon joined by more friends who had timed their ascent perfectly, taking an extra hour sleep while we plugged away. But it didn’t matter.
Excitement rippled through everyone: the pipedream was really happening, right now. We chatted options as we gazed out over the north ridge of Roys Peak, jutting 1,000 metres above the two arms of Lake Wanaka.
Dropping off the western aspect, I laid turns down a smooth rib, descending toward the darkly mirrored waters of Glendhu Bay. Pulling up on a prow, the cold snow clung to my bewildered face. This was no longer a novelty ski—there were real quality turns to be had. The boys all ripped down the shoulder, the blown snow hanging in the air long after they passed in the soft, blue, dawn light.
I skinned up toward the ridge, heading for a subpeak with some beautiful eastern ramps. Trying to gain the last, steep 50 metres, I clicked out of my skis and sank up to my nipples. The fresh snow had fallen directly on large, alpine grasses and was so full of air at the base it was bottomless beyond the possible depth of snow.
Using my poles, I heaved myself out and rolled unceremoniously to the downhill side, only to be immediately stabbed in the leg by a buried speargrass. I waded uphill, thrashing about, barely able to move, just like I had on those first powder days many years before.
Finally on top, the wind was really ripping as I shouted across at the crew further back on the ridge. Mark, resplendent in head-to-toe camouflage more suited to this normally brown-grassed landscape, hunted around for a fresh angle on New Zealand’s most Instagrammed mountain.
"This was madness. Was this really Roys Peak?"
I dropped into a nicely filled flute, the snow buffeting my face as I cranked turns, with small sluffs running either side. Mike and Hamish had found another rib and slashed down it, perfectly backlit by the sun peeking through a hole in the upper bank of clouds. We regrouped under the face, snowy and satiated.
The other groups hadn’t been so lucky with the quality. A small change in aspect had already turned the snow on their lines heavy, but there were still smiles all round. Numerous gangs of locals roamed around, popping past for a chat, skinning back up for another lap; a true social gathering of those who’d patiently waited for this rare day to arrive.
We dropped into one last pitch en masse, whooping and popping over a barb-wired fence into a meadow, bouncing off barely-covered tussock pillows as the snow steadily grew heavier. We clattered back down the farm track, rocks grabbing at our skis. The snow was too thin to turn or brake, but we skidded on, giggling.
A group of schoolkids was touring up, late to the party but brimming with enthusiasm and gave us a thumbs-up as we passed. Running out of snow, we finally ground to a halt, chucked the well-abused skis over our shoulders and trotted the last few hundred metres back to the car. Mike was only going to be three hours late for work—not too bad, really.
The town buzzed for days afterward, the temperatures stayed low and the snow stayed put. Bars flowed with excited locals’ chatter. It’s like the storm of 1995, the resorts are opening early, the next storm’s rolling in, maybe this was that long-hoped-for, all-time winter.
Sadly, it wasn’t to be, but for that one glorious week, where childhood dreams blended with reality, as the storm of the decade rolled back the years upon the slopes of Roys Peak.