The photographic evidence

The first jump


See that waterfall? We were in the canyon below it.



Before going to New Zealand, I believed the word "canyon" was a noun. I found things get much more interesting when it is used as a verb. For instance, "Would you like to go canyoning with me?" "What?! Are you crazy?"
It turns out I am.
Queenstown is the adventure capital of New Zealand, if not of the entire Pacific. The adrenaline-fueled spirit is so insidious you find yourself thinking about doing things you wouldn't otherwise consider in a million years - like jumping out of airplanes, riding through whitewater rapids on a small piece of plastic and rappeling down a canyon in the snow.
The latter was my choice of activity.
My mom told me about canyoning years ago, explaining it as sort of scrambling down rocks with a bit of rappeling and swimming. She said they do it in New Zealand. I have to admit that this was when I decided I wanted to go to NZ. Lord of the Rings and the testimonial of my best friend only sealed the deal.
So just days before my two months are up, I booked it. At this point, I'm on kind of a tight schedule, as a I have a flight to catch, so this Thursday is pretty much my one and only chance - a dodgy proposition in a place where the weather changes faster than celebrity hairstyles.
Thus I was pretty disappointed to awaken to not just rain, but Queenstown's first snow of the season. I called the canyoning place and they said it was a go, however. An hour up the road, our guide admitted he couldn't actually guarantee we were on, but we're drive two hours up the road and have a look-see, huh? By this point, something else had come to my attention, namely that the mountains around Queenstown were fairly smothered in snow and the thremometer read 6 degrees C.
In my initial daydreams about canyoning, I pictured sunshine and a bikini, needless to say. Our party of 6, plus two guides, rolled up to the carpark at the foot of the trail, which, like the mountains, was covered in a foot of fresh powder. The guides just kind of looked at us. One cleared his throat. "It's up to you guys whether we go. It just depends on the group at this point." After we'd all made some noise about bucking up, the Canadians sealed the deal with "For God's sake, we're from Canada!" That's when our guide admitted he'd taken groups when there was snow only "up there, not so much right here."
The die had been cast, however. We suited up in polypropylene and two wetsuits, resulting in what I imagine will be the only photo ever taken of me in a wetsuit in the snow.
I realized the excursion was going to be perhaps a tidbit more hardcore than I had vaguely imagined when we peeked over the bridge into a steep canyon and the guide indicated that we would be entering said canyon by jumping off a 10-foot cliff into a small pool of snow melt. I gifued the adrenaline might keep me warm. I might have lost my breath before I even hit the water on that first jump, numbly padding to the side and creeping across slippery rocks, my carabiner clipped to a rope. Then we slid down a chute of rock, hooked up to another rope and scuttled across a slimy rock face where one of the guides hooked us in and we rappeled down to a a waterfall. And two precipitous plunges and a few rappels were still to come. On most of the jumps, our guide coached us to land sort of sitting in a Lazy boy style so that we wouldn't go too deep. Apparently, those were the deep pools because on this next one, he wanted us fully horizontal when we landed, which of course went against my every natural impulse. I made it, though alpine water shooting through my sinus cavities gave me a wicked case of brain freeze, to say the least.
Ultimately, I was sorry to see us scramble out of the canyon and restore our bodies to their usual temperatures and adrenaline levels. All in all, a great trip which I would never recommend to most of my friends (ie: all of the ones who hate the cold, are afraid of heights, afraid of water and generally think I share my family's whacked sense of what is "fun").