Silly Billies Return to Roam

Gateway to the Gardens! It's been a while since a tale has been told, but I have really missed recording the adventures of Em and Chris on the blog. More than anything, I like to record the stories for myself. It's great to be able to look back at the fun times and mad adventures we've had over the previous year. Although we got up to heaps of adventures last year most of them have sort of faded, hence my decision to blog again. We shall see how it goes, given my time is limited with school teaching these days, but I'll do my best. Chris has even agreed to have a go at writing some posts, so watch that space. We had a great adventure in the wild west right after Christmas. The weather is so crucial when planning a trip to the West Coast, and we spotted a wee fine gap beginning on Boxing Day. So between a yummy Christmas breakfast at my brothers and a Christmas lunch we madly threw together ice axes, ropes, cookers, tents, boots, packs and 6 days worth of food. O...

L'Argentiere la Bessee (our home for the next week) After a successful race in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China it was off to France with the rest of the Seagate team (Nathan, Trevor and Sophie) to prepare for the Adventure race world champs. Having finally got a new camera, after destroying the previous one swimming in TWALK, I thought I had better post some pretty pictures and a quick update of my adventure racing mission. After arriving in Nice, we hired a car and drove to L'Argentiere la Bessee, where we are now staying for a few more days until the start of the race. Along the way we managed to find a couple of spectacular passes, exciting all of us to come back sometime to do some cycling here. With around 2000m vertical accent and smooth asphalt it is road bike paradise. Caserne de Restefond (near Col de la Bonette 2715m) Col de Vars We also managed to find some delicious baguettes and cheese, although it seems like I am the only one who is really excited...

Walking along the ridge, you can see the slopes of Treble Cone Ski Area on the far ridge Finally I got some school holidays! So after a brief 12 hour run around the hills for the annual Heights of Winter Rogaine   Chris and I decided to head South for a week. We had heard that there was lots of white fluffy SNOW and that there were many big storms coming! We were very excited. We headed down south on Monday in Chris's parents little Rav. The day was crystal clear and we eyed up the foothills as we drove through the paddocks leading to Ashburton and then on through to Lake Pukaki. The night was frosty cold and clear. Inches of frost coated the ground and I wandered down to the moonlit lake shore to see the gleaming peak of Aoraki looming in the darkness, with stars twinkling above. Our cooker decided to stop working (trusty MSR of 15 solid years!) so we lit a big fire and roasted our salmon on that! As it was freezing we huddled into our 2 second pop up tent which was f...