I met a Kiwi woman in Europe in 2001 – in the mountains. After we’d been together for two months, she said: “This is great but, if you’re serious, I’m moving back to New Zealand.” We lived there for 10 years, but we moved back to Europe at the end of 2015.
Ohau, in Maori, means Windy. It’s pronounced O-how. The stickers all read “Ohau I love to ski”, or “Ohau I love to snowboard”. It’s a tiny resort right on South Island’s Lake Ohau, due south of Mount Cook, New Zealand’s highest peak.
It’s an adventure just getting to a New Zealand ski resort, let alone actually skiing there. There’s not a lot of infrastructure in the Southern Alps. You have to make your way there up windy roads, often with no barriers.
On paper, Ohau looks about as archaic and one-dimensional as it comes. It’s got one chair lift and a couple of little drag lifts for beginners. Even by New Zealand standards, it’s quite unknown. But in late July, August and September, Ohau has something very, very special.
Ohau is where I took my kids to learn to ski. It’s super easy and safe, but there’s lots of different terrain and it all just rolls back to this one lodge. You know that whatever happens to them, even if they have to slide, they’ll end up head-down at the bottom of the hill.
If you’re interested in free-riding, this lift accesses a ridge line that you can then hike as far as you want in either direction. The top half, on most days, gets really good snow and, on really good days, two or three times a year, it gets epic snow that runs right back down even beyond the chair lift. This means really, really good runs and they all look out over this pristine, turquoise lake, with the colours that you only get in the South Island of New Zealand.
At sunset, Mount Cook’s south-west face reflects the sun and fires it back across the lake. If there’s no wind, you get this incredible reflection of all the mountains, and this sort of pink-purple diamond of Mount Cook reflected off the water.
The entire resort is run by one family, the Neilsons. Louise and Mike are the parents and their sons and daughters do various things at the lift, the restaurant or the lodge. The lodge sits right on the lake, with wonderful 1970s architecture. It’s all wood but really well-insulated, with glass around the north and east sides, so you can look over the lake and up to Mount Cook.
You haven’t got any choices in Ohau, so it’s gotta be good. You’re an hour from the nearest town but there’s everything you want there: hot tubs, mountain boats, walking, skiing and snowboarding. And the food, included in your accommodation, is all locally sourced and really good.
There’s a week in August when the US ski team use Ohau as their base. The lodge only has 100 beds, but 70 of them will be filled with ski techs, ski testers and a couple of big-shot racers. But they all spend their time on one piste, which they prepare for racing, and the remaining 30 guests share the rest of the mountain. On that week, it can feel deserted, like your own private ski resort.
New Zealand is like a miniature world. On the southern tip of the South Island is Fjordland, which is just like Scandinavia. Then there are the Alps, which are just like the European Alps; the west coast is like Chile or Peru, with temperate rainforest; the east coast has plains, like Argentina; then Nelson, in the north, is unlike anywhere else. It does a great impression of other parts of the world in these micro environments, then adds a bit of New Zealand on top.
• Ski Sunday returns to BBC2 in January 2017
