Snowlines: Surf and ski all year long

By COLIN MOORE

Eat your heart out all those billionaires who manage to snatch just a couple of days a year at either an alpine or beach resort.

Mark Perana gets to spend the whole year on a surf board or snowboard, and he's paid to do it.

The 42-year-old Mt Hutt snowboard instructor has what many a young boarder might consider the perfect job and the perfect lifestyle.

The happy-go-lucky boarder who is known far and wide as Puke, after the television programme Pukemanu, has his own surfing school in his home town of Christchurch.

His surfing workshops are so successful, particularly with school parties, that last summer Perana left the Christchurch operation to his partner, Aaron Lock, a bodyboarding specialist and competition judge, and moved to the West Coast to run classes at Tauranga Bay, 20km south of Westport.

Once the summer is over, Perana moves on to his other love, snowboarding, and heads to Canterbury's Mt Hutt, where he has been instructing for the past nine seasons.

"I had only been on a board a few times when I saw this advertisement for a three-day snowboard instructor's course that included six hours of lessons a day," says Perana.

"It looked like a cheap way to learn but I soon realised I was in over my head. I was going to pull out but I was told to stick with it.

"I guess I already had balance from surfing and also teaching skills and when I sat the exam I passed."

Perana is now a snowboard examiner for the New Zealand Ski Instructors Alliance.

But when many of his Mt Hutt colleagues head to the Northern Hemisphere to follow an endless winter, Perana grabs another board and heads for the beach.

It's a beaut


Australia's Mt Hotham resort is having a bumper season to go with the opening of its new airport.

The field's natural snow depth is 152cm, more snow than any time since 1996 and more snow for the middle of the season than at any time since 1990.

Fantastic snow conditions across the mountain mean skiers and boarders can carve up fresh tracks through a cover of light, dry powder.

The new Mt Hotham Airport, 20km from the mountain, was cleared of snow in plenty of time for the regular commercial flights from Sydney and Melbourne.

Spring skiing packages, including seven nights accommodation, five breakfasts, a seven-day lift and lesson-pass and night-skiing start from $A690 a person (six share).

Contact: Ski Travel Specialists, ph (09) 307 1350. E-mail: email@skitravel.co.nz

A legacy lives on


When the snow lies thick on the Whakapapa skifield at Mt Ruapehu there is no more exhilarating a run than the Haensli Face, a short but steep pitch above the Waterfall T-bar.

The face is named after Swiss-born ski instructor and racing coach Walter Haensli, who was the driving force behind the development of the Whakapapa field in the 1950s.

Haensli's ski career and work at Mt Ruapehu is detailed in Barrel Staves to Carving Skis, by Taupo historian Karen Williams, a richly illustrated biography of Haensli and an account of the early days of New Zealand skiing.

Haensli, a successful Olympic ski coach and instructor at the Sun Valley ski resort in the United States, was invited to New Zealand in 1949 to promote skiing and run the ski school based at Mt Ruapehu.

As the popularity of skiing grew, Haensli advocated building a chairlift and, in 1952, was given permission by the Tongariro National Park Board to build and run lifts and ski tows on the mountain.

That decision led to the formation of Ruapehu Alpine Lifts in 1953 and the opening of the first lift, the Rockgarden chair, on August 1, 1954, by Sir Edmund Hillary.

Haensli was also involved in the early development of Head skis and Marker bindings and in the expansion of his home town, the Swiss resort of Klosters, which he returned to in 1954.

Haensli began skiing at age 4 on skis made from barrel staves and still skis now, at 78.

Karen Williams is the author of Skiing on the Volcano, a history of skiing on Mt Ruapehu, and Volcanoes of the South Wind, a story of the formation of the mountains of Tongariro National Park.

Her biography of Haensli is available direct from the author for $29.95, plus $5 postage. Contact: Karen Williams, 10 Waihora St, Taupo, e-mail: fireandice@clear.net.nzt