Queenstown NZ Season 2010 - The Blog

Getting Around

I cannot begin to explain how much of difference there is without the school holiday crowds. I am really enjoying the small lines. The past 5 days or so has seen me getting around a bit, starting with the Remarkables on Tuesday. The word came through from the mountain that it had been snowing most of the morning and visibility wasn’t great. So after a bit of sleep in and some errands, a peep outside the lounge room window gave us a glimpse of blue sky on the horizon. The decision was made to go to the Remarks. By the time we made it up, the sun was poking through the cloud and didn’t disappear for the rest of the day. Timing is everything. With some fresh cover, the riding was really good. Rocks are still poking through off trail but on couldn’t be faulted.

Wednesday we ventured to Cardrona. The cover was really good. It was really firm on trail with some alright cover off. I think I would be saying it was really good, except for the fact I ate shit early on in the day and never really recovered. For me, it was a really frustrating one.

Cardrona:

The next few days were spent at the Remarks, the weather was awesome but my riding continued to suck. Culminating in a bail on Saturday that was a serious pain in the ass. It’s a feeling I have not had snowboarding in a while, the feeling when you land on you’re ass so hard you feel like you are going shit yourself. Aside from that, it was event central on Saturday with the annual Peak to Peak starting at midday from the lookout at the top of remarks. Competitors make their way to the top of shadow where they ride (ski, snowboard, whatever) down homeward. There is then a bike ride down the Remarks road, a kayak over the lake followed by another bike ride up Coronet peak. Sounds like a little too much effort if you ask me. It was also the first slopestyle. I didn’t catch too much of the event, trying to ride myself out of bad form, but what I saw was really impressive. The quality of riding here has really impressed me this season.

The Remarks (Sugar):

Finally today was Cardrona day at Snowpark, where Cardrona season pass holders (me) ride for free. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse. As I have stated before, I am really impressed with the work Snowpark. For not a great season in terms of snow volume, the snowmaking and features they have available is a credit to the crew they have. The box run especially is excellent, with too many features to suit all abilities to list. The cloud was in and out for most of the morning before clearing and warming up to a magnificent day in the afternoon. The weather was quite ironic really for the way I felt about my riding. The poor form from the past few days continued, before finally, as the sun shone, I was back feeling as comfortable and confident as ever.

Top of Snowpark Box Run:

The next few days I think will be played by ear, with some more small falls forecast I will try to get some runs in when the weather permits.

Is that Remarks shot from the East Face? Or over on the skiers left of Shadow?

It was taken from up on Shadow.

did you take that footage of the rail comp?
i think i mustve been standing 10metres from you filming at some stage, bit dissapointing how the run fell apart…and frig i was cold!
how was that bloke in board shorts and thongs taking photos? i had thermals and stuff on and was still cold!

Snowpark is starting to look the goods hey! wish i was over there now to go for a few runs with you mate, looks sick!

Hey Crackers,

Yeah I did. I did notice that guy, it was super cold that night so I have no idea how he was in shorts. They are setting up a Big Air bag at Snow Park for the night session tonight. Unfortunately not going to make there though.

Mypass or Theirpass?

Some moisture has finally arrived in Queenstown but not with the best results with the rain also hitting the slopes down low. Snow has however fallen up high with Cardrona reporting 30cm of up top. The Remarkables and Coronet have not fared so well with the Remarks reporting 1cm and nothing but rain at Coronet. Cardrona, Snow Park and Ohau are closed for the day due to the high winds this morning. Coronet is open but raining and the Remarkables open but with all lifts (minus the carpets) on wind hold. The weather is not ideal for the Remarkables 25th birthday party today, but with the lifts still on hold, approaching midday, I am surprised they made the decision to open at all. Looking out the window, it seems that the clouds are starting to clear a little but the rain continues to fall.

Which brings me to something I have been meaning to blog about for some time, the NZSki Mypass System. For those they havn’t made it over so far this season, the NZSki resorts (Coronet, The Remarkables and Mt Hutt) have done away with the old school paper lift passes and metal hooks and replaced them with a credit card sized card that you can store in a pocket without the need to display it. The pass is then read by automatic gates that open once the card is scanned. The system is similar to the chip system used in Japan but slightly more advanced. The Mypass allows you to keep the one card, and top it up with days as needed online. The other really good feature of the Mypass system is the availability of your online stats. Your amount of days, runs and vertical metres are recorded when your card is scanned through the gates and available online for your viewing pleasure (image below).

<Rant>

While the system itself is quite good and works a treat provided the card is stored in a pocket correctly (not next to a phone camera etc), I do have issue with the way it has been implemented at the Remarkables. My issue lies with the gates only being available on the Alta and Shadow chairs and being absent on the Sugar bowl chair. Whilst the vertical metres added by riding the sugar chair would not be much, it means that if you say, ride the Dirty Dog Terrain park all day, you will essentially only have 1 run added to your mypass account for the day by riding the Alta chair to get up to sugar. The only way to get your runs is to ask the lifites to scan you with handheld. So why is it like this? Is it because NZSki thought it would be negligible in terms of Vertical metres so there was no benefit to it? I doubt it. The only reason I can think, is that, because the only way to get to sugar is a long walk or to ride the Alta chair, chances are you already have a valid ticket so won’t be cheating the system. So then why implement the mypass system?
a) It is a lot cheaper to have a system automatically scanning and identifying customers than a liftie patroling the line with a handheld scanner
b) Because of the need to register your mypass and enter personal information, NZSki has the ability to report and profile on the age, nationality, sex etc of their customers and the lifts they use to assist their marketing efforts.

I’m not so naive that I thought the system would be purely customer experience initiative, however I am disappointed that the omission of Sugar as part of the mypass system is such blatant evidence that perhaps customer experience really doesn’t have anything to do with it.
</Rant>

In the time it has taken me to write this, the weather is clearing so I’m off to get my fix of slushy wet stuff.

Short and Sweet
Apologies for the delay in updates, its been a hectic few days. After the rain of last week, conditions were really average, unless you like ice skating, then they were excellent. As the week progressed and the sun shone down, the spring like conditions were back. I do love boarding in spring conditions, I’m not really used to it in early August but what the hey. As much fun as I was having, I was also keeping an eye on what was happening on the hills back in Aus and couldn’t help feeling a little jealous.

In saying that, there is no place I would rather be at the moment. Friday night saw the ParkLife invitational Rail Jam held in Earnslaw park. An awesome event that saw some awesome riders battle it out. Australia’s own Jye Kearney took out best trick with a draw for first place between NZ’s Nick Hyne and the Joe Mac from the US. Personally I thought that Jye was a little unlucky but I’m no expert.

Saturday did see some decent snowfalls hit the South Island, with the resorts in the Canterbury region fairing the best with Mt Hutt reporting over 1 metre for the weekend. Again, Wanaka and Queenstown resorts did ok but not really the massive dump everyone is wanting. Word is it was absolutely chaos on the roads down from both Coronet and the Remarks with many coming undone in the slippery conditions and huge delays in getting home.

We made the trip to Cardrona on Sunday morning to get some pow pow, only to be greeted by zero visibility all day. The riding was still fun, although really difficult. Rach spent the day in the Nikita Chickita girls freestyle camp which seemed really well run and a great day for the girls. not just because of the sweet goodie bag and prizes they received, but the coaching seemed awesome. The next is being held again are Cardrona on the 4th of September for those ladies interested. It seems well worth it. Today also marked a first for me, the first time I saw Ed Hardy Outerwear on a mountain, I threw up in my mouth a little.

I have taken a rest day today with a massive week ahead. The burton open is this week and i am also planning a trip to Ohau and some night riding at snowpark so i am sure that I will be providing much more frequent updates this week.

Ohau Rad

What a couple of days! With some snow over the weekend we made the trip out to Ohau on Tuesday. For those unfamiliar, Ohau is a little snow field about 2 1/2 hrs drive out of Queenstown. I say little as the resort itself has only 1 chairlift, 1 carpet and 1 t-bar. But don’t let the lack of lifts put you off, the terrain and views available after only a short hike up to the ridge is stunning. Also being such a small field, the amount of people around the steal your lines is pretty much non existant, not only off piste but on. No annoying lines of ski kids, groups of learners sitting in the middle of runs, it was like heaven.

Hiking Ohau

The fact we had fresh snow and blue skies only added to the charm of the place. There is not much of a terrain park but who needs it when there is so much natural untracked terrain available? It consisted of a beginner fun box and rail, a couple of more advanced rails and some kickers.

The atmosphere on the mountain was so laid back and fun I was a little bit sad when it was time to leave. For those that don’t mind a hike and serenity, I seriously recommend a visit.

Ohau

After Ohau, we drove to Wanaka with the original intention of night riding at Snow Park, but after a full day of riding and hiking Ohau, there was no way my legs would have managed, so we settled in for the night to check out the opening day of Competition at the Burton Open and do some riding at Cardrona.

The weather turned it on again on Wednesday with nothing but blue skies at Cardies. The snow was great and with all the international riders and beats blasting from the Monster Energy Drink truck and Jager Bus, the atmosphere was like nothing I have seen on a mountain before. It was another super fun day. With my legs still suffering from the day before, I took it easy most of the day and just soaked it all in.

I will add some pics and updates on the open in the Burton Open Thread currently running here -> https://www.boardworld.com.au/forums/viewthread/911/

The next few days will be totally dedicated to the Open with the finals for Slopestyle tomorrow and the halfpipe on Saturday. I can’t wait. Lets hope the weather doesn’t turn to shit as forecast. There were some flakes falling as I left today, but the snow level is predicted to rise and turn to rain tonight - Fingers crossed.

Awesome mate, it’s looking really nice! Stoked you’re having a great time exploring the mountains over there. Really looking forward to your updates on the NZ Open.

Yeah it has been awesome so far. A pretty average winter in terms of snowfall but the mountains are making the most of what they have got. It’s time to start earning some money so I’ll be starting work next week, it’s gonna be hard after 2 1/2 months of being a bum.

Better Late then Never?
Wow. What a few weeks. It has been ages since my last post due to a combination of things, Business and laziness. It all started with the burton open and a few full on days of driving. To save you all a lengthy novel of a post, I will try to summarise the last week and a half.

The Burton Open… What a buzz. The level of riding at this event was phenomenal. I think I severely underestimated my ability to report on, photograph and travel to and from Cardrona daily while soaking in the atmosphere of the event. I did manage to give some thoughts on the qualifiers for slopestyle and halfpipe, but never made it to writing my view of the finals….sorry Boardworld.

I’m sure everyone is now well aware of the results so I will not go there too much, but will more talk about my thoughts o the event, starting with slopestyle. I have always found slopestyle more entertaining than Half Pipe when watching webcasts previously, but was a little disappointed with seeing the slopestyle finals live. I think it may have been due to both the weather on the day and the night before but never the less, it was almost impossible to keep track of a complete run. The action from the 75 footer was amazing with the ultimate shit your pants moment being Mikkel Bang flying of the side of the big kicker straight for the waiting photographers and yours truly. I don’t think i have moved so quickly to get out of the way.

As I mentioned was originally more eager to see the Slopestyle than the half pipe initially but how my opinion changed seeing the half pipe finals live. It was an awesome contest in perfect weather. The action was much more spectator friendly and because of this, increased the atmosphere compared to the slopestyle. The story of the Open has to be Taku Hiraoka. The 14 year old Japa can shred! Taking out the pre qualifiers and qualifiers to finish second and beat Louie Vito is an amazing feat for such a young kid. 

All in all, the open was a success in spite of the weather on some day, although tiring. I also managed to develop quite a nice addiction to the Monster Energy drinks on offer… that’s some good shit right there!

Pretty much straight after the open, I started working for the first time this season, hence some of the reasons for my lack of blogging. Not so much that I haven’t had time, more so that my body has taken a few weeks to adjust to doing something other than snowboarding for over 4 hours at a time.

In that time, what has happened? No too much unfortunately, the season that never really got started has continued. We had a few days of snow, followed by more spring like conditions and the past couple of days has seen some ugly rain doing damage to what cover we have had. I’ll be heading up to the remarks tomorrow to see the damage myself, but from what I have heard it is not great.

The past few weeks did bring the best days riding I’ve had for the season back to back. The first at snowpark followed by the next day at Cardrona. You know those days where it just clicks. That was snowpark. For anyone looking to progress their park riding quickly, snowpark is definitely the place to go. Most of the features you will find in any other park, but just the repetition, lack of crowds and really shilled atmosphere makes it so much better for progression than anywhere else I have ridden.

Today is probably the first day off I’ve had since starting work that I haven’t been riding. It was spent at Alpine Aqualand for a relaxing swim and a soak and the learning of a lesson: Don’t attempt flips in the shallow end of the pool. So an early night for me tonight to sleep of any side effects and back on the board tomorrow. I will post again (much sooner this time) to keep ya’ll up to date with the goings on in this fair town of Queens.

Peace!