...Let the Wild Rumpus Start...

The higher we hike, the more promising the snowpack. Opening Day, we muse. Mumford & Sons remains in my head- the slow pulsing a good mental companion. Although we have been hiking all summer, it is rarely in plastic boots, much less with skis on the pack. Too thin to skin means sore backs tomorrow. All skis are rock skis, we repeat. 

At day's end we have determined that skiing the sand in September should count. Not only was skiing accomplished, but we logged more vertical than we would have on the residual snowpack, and probably in better conditions. Top that off with Kim's Dark And Stormy and the great headlamp caper, and spirits are high in the San Luis Valley...

We have no rental car. The backpacker's budget is one of thrift, and we must economize. Fortunately a bus runs regularly from Queenstown to the ski fields. Even more fortuitous, the bus driver is a South Islander Kiwi who will not pass up on his own opportunity to patronize (and, per his pitch, "localize us to") the Cardrona Hotel apres-ski tradition...

There is not a lift attained experience in the Western hemisphere that matches it. Or any of the hemispheres, for that matter. The Aiguille Du Midi tram is one of the true religous icons of our sport, regardless of your feelings on ski lifts. Not to mention that when you disembark, you step smack into the opening scenes of the greatest ski films of all time. It stands alone. 

"I think we were the only four in there with a full set of teeth- but they gave us a hero's welcome when we rolled in. People came out of the bar like it was the Tour de France. Since the resaturant was already closed, they had to get the owner to unlock the kitchen for the pie." 

...Needless to say, the gear didn’t arrive. Chevalier knows no pain like the passage through Milan-Malpensa, and now it was wearing off on us. Not by 4:30. Not by 8:00. Maybe it’s in Kathmandu. Who knows- maybe this will inspire legions of Kathmandu baggage carriers to take up back-country skiing. So now, due to an executive order laid down by Chevalier, lead knight of international travel, we are sitting on a Swiss train rocketing through the Rhone valley towards a rendezvous with a French cabbie who is prepared to shuttle us the rest of the way into Chamonix.