Day 1-3 of our Alpine Retreat

DAY 1

Conditions have been perfect since our arrival - sunny and still – and we have achieved several things since settling in. Our first job was to dig out an access to the chalet entrance from the heavy drifts of snow. Next was to store the gourmet food supplied by Whare Kea’s Chef James. Some foods can be kept in the chilly bin on the south side of the building, in affect the vegetable chiller.

With absolutely pristine snow in every direction we began right away to make a sculpture to the north west of the chalet, carefully skirting below the sightline to keep footsteps out of the camera angle. We worked hard in the sun with snow shovels but after several hours the sun weakened the structure and it collapsed.

We reconstructed it working on till dark using a headtorch and the benefit of the dropping temperature to finish the finer work ready to photograph in the morning.

It will to be the first part of a three part concept. The physical work primed our appetites for the first of Chef James’s pre-prepared vacuum packed meals: Seared Aoraki Salmon with chick pea ragout., with Coconut panacotta with passionfruit sauce as dessert.

With nine more days to focus on creative work it was a good start to the project. 

DAY 2

Light pouring into the chalet in the morning had us setting to work early to carve the frozen sculpture into its final form to photograph it against a dramatic dark sky beyond Mt Aspiring.

We prepared to climb up the ridge to the north where our guide had been the day before. We had seen her figure on the skyline: what a site for a sculpture. She instructed us on the use of the transceivers she supplied us with and supervised our preparations and we climbed with crampons and ice axes to the highest point on the ridge visible from the chalet.

We built a substantial sculpture and discovered later it could be seen from way below at the chalet. Another good days’ work meant we could relax a little, play some music and linger over another wonderful meal.

DAY 3

With continuing good weather we got an earlier start to climb Dragonfly Peak behind the chalet. This steep north facing slope would be soft and unsafe in afternoon conditions for us to be on and in fact was too steep for Philippa so she returned to “safer ground”.

James the pilot arrived by helicopter in increasingly poor conditions to pick up our guide and resurrect the webcam and connect us to the internet and suddenly we were connected to the outside world by a router but on the other hand completely on our own. However the range of communications - a radio telephone, handheld personal radio telephones, the satellite phone and the internet wi fi and Farmside telephone – plus personal locator beacon and transceivers would mean that we were isolated only in some ways.

Arrival at the chalet

Digging out the entrance

Philippa with our guide

First sculpture in progress

Dragonfly Peak

Sculpture just visible from the chalet