snowpool came to the rescue this weekend. While the weather was looking distinctly dodgy (in fact most of my friends elected for a weekend city bound) I headed up to Broken River for the weekend. I figured I’d rather read a book & write my diary up there than down in ChCh anyway!
Euan was also coming along as there was a telemark weekend (a weird form of skiing.. purist?) and he has been learning that (and fast) this year. Picked up by Trevor – a Broken River club member and user of snowpool! at 7:30 – and off up we went.
It started raining when we got close, and snowing as we got higher. After checking into our accommodation headed up to the slopes. Complete white out. I had a few runs – but found it completely disorienting. You pretty much had to guess which way the slope was going, commit to the turn, and hope you were right. If not a hard bump and a shallow laugh later I was ready for the next turn.
So, after 4 runs I wussed out and went to read my book (Gold Wars – quite interesting actually)… Miraculously, when I poked my head out around about 11:30 ish, it was clearing – and we actually had blue skies for the rest of the weekend. Perfect.
So boarded about with Euan for Saturday (here is a pic of Euan in Allans Basin)
That night there was a slideshow of telemarking in Norway – they were doing 30 odd km a day on skiis! Still, looked like a great holiday.
I walked up above the lodges to have a quick look at the sky for the persiads. It’s a meteor shower the Earth passes through every August (up to the 22nd August I think it is).
It was a little cold so I didn’t stay up too long. I suppose they’re visible from the Southern Hemisphere? One would imagine they are!
On Sunday – Matt – one of the guys who I met up at BR before said a group of ppl were heading up Hamilton Peak (a mountain inbetween Broken River and Cragieburn ski fields). It was going to be fresh tracks all the way.
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So Matt, Tom (Czech Republic), Lassa (Danish – who I played backgammon with!) and I headed up. It was a 30 min hike, but well worth it. Hamilton is the peak in the above picture..
The picture above is looking down into Cragieburn Skifield. BR and Cragieburn have an arrangement that you can use either day pass interchangeably. Quite handy really.
Awesome fun boarding. Unfortunately I forgot to tell Lassa that video’s had to be taken horizontally.. (as you can’t rotate them!) so no vids this time..
After a quick break for lunch we did another hike, this time heading left along the ridge and dropping down into Avalanche Bowl?. I took a couple of videos as we did the run twice. The first is Lassa Skiing down, the second Matt Boarding.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJbjHAREHDE]
You can download a divx video better quality here
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obm_EVeeJ7Q]
You can download a divx video better quality here
All in all, an unexpectedly excellent weekend, as the weather really was supposed to be awful!
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