walking in a winter wonderland

Late on Friday night I was asked if I wanted to go to Hanmer Springs the next day with a couple of my good friends. I love spur of the moment things! Hanmer Springs is the obligatory winter day-trip/weekend thing to do if you live in Christchurch - I must have talked about going there many times before on this blog. But this time was a little different, because storms were expected and it was expected to snow in Hanmer... and it's been a while since I've been in Hanmer when it snowed.

So we set out on Saturday morning... It started off looking like this:

but by the time we got close to Hanmer it looked like this:

It was coooold! But the weather was fine and the snow was beautiful, powdery and dry, and we decided to start by climbing Conical Hill:
It was rather nice walking up through the forest:
and taking silly pictures:
At the top, we had a snowfight! Hooray! :

Afterwards (of course), we went to the hot springs the town is named for, and soaked in semi-natural thermal pools while it started to snow around us. If you ignore the part where you dash between pools, barefoot, and dressed only in wet lycra, this could be heaven. Unfortunately, as it started to snow more thickly, we decided we should leave, just in case we got snowed in.

Back to Christchurch, where it was ghastly weather and even colder, with the added factor of wind chill. Earplugs at night couldn't dim the howling wind and rain/sleet/hail pounding on the roof... but that's not so bad when you're cuddled up in bed with several layers of bedding and an electric blanket!