After Action Report [edit]

Well that was most excellent.
Lets get it out of the way early - No. A forty year old snowboarding is not some kind of midlife crises or aging denialism. It is just wicked, dare I say fully sick, fun.

So as previously advertised, on Saturday morning at O'Crap O'clock we set out from the Sunny Coast for Brisneyland International Airport. On the way The ABC Radio News informed us that Christchurch NZ had taken a walloping, awesome. I was travelling with 3 friends who were half way across the Pacific Ocean En Route to Chile when the Chilleans had their seismic excitement. Now they were at it again, but this time it was affecting the quality of my holiday! B'stards. I suggested they could set themselves up for life by Not holidaying on The West Coast of the USA.
Once again my genius escapes most mere mortals.

So we rocked up at the airport and was told by the Airline Staff "We have no comms with Christchurch, it could be levelled for all we know." Out fracking standing.
So long story short, by lunchtime Christchurch was open, we flew out at 1830 ish, arrived at midnight in states of extreme dishevelment, serious fatigue & emergency.

Once again the mainstream media gave the impression that Cantabrians where marauding, splitting skulls and supping on the living goo spilt. (Christchurch is in the district/ region of Cantebury thus people who reside there are...) We saw some minor damage; most older buildings had chimneys fallen or removed, there was cracking in the car park @ Mt Hutt but other than than there was no civil unrest, no anarchy, no looting not even any lynched corpses swinging from power poles. I wasn't so much disappointed as, well you know Ready. I did feel some of the aftershocks. Interesting in a shaky kind of way.

Anyhow we made it up to Methven, sorted hotel, hired gear, grocery shopped and did all them good things you do. Sunday Night we went to the Blue Pub for dinner and didn't bother going there again for the entire trip. The wind got up to over 100Kph and we were stressing that the Mt would be closed, but everything came up Millhouse in the end.

5 full days on the snow. The helmet paid for itself a dozen times over with Epic high speed stacks. One observation is that when the vents in the top of the helmet get jammed with snow in a stack, it melts over the next hour or two dribbling icy water down your back. The onboard tunes rocked. Minor tech fail with an inability to recharge the IPod, but good 'ol Nokia saw me through. Also it seems to overheat reasonably quickly thus I was not able to wear bandito mask or balaclava under the helmet as I couldn't shed enough heat & the goggles kept fogging up. Perhaps I was just holding my mouth wrong.

So all things considered it was an excellent trip. Brother Nuffy contacted some Gastro Lurgy which required him to evacuated the contents of his alimentary canal at high speed at inconvenient hours of the evening, thus never actually got up onto the Mountain. I*Don spent 70% of his time instructing Miss K on the finer points of staying vertical and when he left her to master this, she was bifurcated by a L plate loser - instantly demolishing the scrap of confidence she had spent the whole week developing.

I slashed carved, popped and rocked. I did a couple of little baby jumps and carved down through the Exhibition Bowl at Warp Speed 5.2, or so it felt. I stacked it in many interesting a varied ways, mostly on backhand turns, but that's half the fun. After a Kamikaze gentleman who apparently could neither stop nor turn took my legs out from underneath me, I think my coxix may never point the same way again.

Was it great ? Yes.

Would I go again? certainly.

Would I wait a few days until my legs stop wobbling and my bum stops hurting? probably.

Oh and the Kiwis must surely take the award for Best Hedges Ever. The Brits may have 500 year old heritage listed hedgerows, and the septics may carve theirs into variety of topiary goodness, but nothing I've Ever seen is on the same page as the Kiwi Hedges. An easy 30 meters tall, trimmed to geometric precision and utterly impenetrable. F'king amazing!


EDIT.
Just found how to export data from the lift pass. How cool is this?