Yes its a well
know fact that I'm bad at communicating.
Ok, not just bad, really bad. I don't do it often enough, well enough or
rar rah rah rah rah ....I'm sorry you were trailing off.
Well on the odd chance that you'd like to see what I've been up to, I've started a blog
hugamathingy. It won't be as witty as Grahams, as in depth as Matt's, or like Rivers at all.
So for those who don't know I decided that work wasn't for me, and took 5 weeks off. The first was to have a week snowboarding, and the next 4 to attend my cousins wedding in Portsmouth, and then travel around a bit.
Well the snowboarding was simply fantastic, Rhys and I drove (Rhys drove I slept) on Sunday morning, and arrived to a bumper day in
Whakapapa. We headed out west and spent most of the day out there, awesome. We caught up with Ben, Kelly, Carl, and Ryan. An I ended up staying at the Sole timeshare for a couple of nights. Awesome digs with a great spa. Monday was
Turoa, and I spent most of the time on the Giant. Tuesday was back to
Whakapapa, and the Waterfall was the run of the day due to the closing visibility. It ended up snowing about 2pm, and about 2:30pm most of the crew could be found in the cafe at the bottom drinking beer. Not a bad end to the day at all.
Tuesday night was a big one. It started out as 4 hours in the spa, sipping single malt on ice, and downing 1 or 10 beers. Then we realised dinner might be the order of the day so we headed down to the
PowderKeg. We were just in time to get some pretty great Pizza. Jesse (one of Rhys's friends) joined us with his 17 year old girlfriend Rose and her friend Rachel. We had a few drinks there and tried to get into the pub next door. We got denied because Rachel and Rosie didn't have ID! Long time since I've been with anyone that has to worry about that. Anyway we made the most of the
PowderKeg, initiated dancing on tables though I'm sure we weren't the first ever to do that).
It ended up being quite a late one (2:30am), and so our start the next morning was slightly hangover delayed. Luckily Rhys is just a go go go kinda guy, so even though the weather looked horrible, and the day before had completely closed in, we headed up the mountain. The visibility wasn't too bad, but the best was yet to come. The day just kept getting better and brighter, so much so that I just had to
Pxt the office (sorry Travis), and Ben & Co back at National park. Luckily I convinced them to get their buts up
Whakapapa, so they got an awesome afternoon in. It was the pick of the week, not many people (they all thought it would be crap), and the best fresh powder.
Thursday was just rubbish, aside from wishfully hoping each snow report update, more and more of the mountain seemed to be closed. In the end it was just happy valley that was open. No thanks. So we
meandered through town, and had a big breakfast (totally organic) that really hit the spot. This got our enthusiasm up and we decided to go mountain biking. The guy at the hire place said most of the proper biking tracks were under water, but that there was a good one off the end of a 4 wheel drive track. Knowing what a madman Rhys is at motor cross, and given that Jason owns his own outdoor business, I thought I'd be left for smoke. It was up hill, and uphills favour the fit, so it was me who burned them off. I had to keep stopping, or just gliding (yes gliding uphill, I am a machine), and waiting for them. Eventually after some pretty grueling up hills we reached the end of the 4x4 track, it went down to a single lane. Well this has got to be down hill we thought, gota be, but oh know it kept climbing. Fallen tree's and increadibly tight spots led us to believe this was not in fact a mountain biking track. In fact it became a pretty lousy walking track as we only managed to stay on it by sighting the odd pink marker. Time to turn back. On the way back down we noticed a couple of detours we had missed. All dead ends. It was raining by now, but we were all soaked to the bone and pretty determined not to just go back the way we came. We found a detour that was 4x4, ah this has to be it. We headed along the detour for about 20 minutes, it was mainly down hill, so not too taxing, but eventually it narrowed. At first it seemed pretty cool, a few jumps, a collapsed bridge that was just bikable, but eventually the path began to disappear beneath our feet until once again we were only spurred on by crazy flip saying "I'm sure just up here we'll hit the road". One last surge up to the top of the ridge where I practically had to carry my bike the whole way while bushwhacking revealed no road. Nope, being sensible and the fact it was now 4:40pm and getting dark, it was time to turn back the was we'd come. This was mostly uneventfull, apart from finding that the continuous uphill that most of it was on the way up, was now level at best, so the easy glide home worked out harder than we'd hoped.
Just as we neared the start of the track where we'd parked the van, we saw two hunters in full camo, guy and girl. We got to the van and put back a well earned Speights. I was quite surprised when the hunters came up and asked us where the main road was. Turned out they were completely lost and had thought they were about to have to setup camp for the night. Not something they'd planned to do when they sent off for a "quick stalk" that morning. We drove them back to their car and they were very happy hunters. We hit the spa again, and were very happy warm people. This time a medium night in town followed, with less shots, but still finishing at 2:30am.
Friday turned it on for us and was amazing. Alas Turoa didn't turn on the High noon express (main 6man chair lift) until 2pm. It was a great day with slightly hard packed conditions under board. With the exception of one wayward excursion out west my runs all went well, and when I found out just how bad Ryans run out far west was, I was much happier. Ben and Kelly kindly agreed to give me a lift, so I returned to Hamilton with a full day to prepare for Brunei.