Wednesday, August 6, 2014

New Zealand update #2 - Shredding Mt Ruhapehu

Greetings all! Today and yesterday were spent skiing and snowboarding Mount Ruapehu. Yesterday, the weather was beautiful and clear - a perfect day for it. Today, not so much.


While Jess and Claire were getting a ski lesson, Dean and I made our way progressively further up the mountain with each run. Most of the runs on the Turoa side are Blue/Intermediate level, which were pretty enjoyable. That is, until Dean had a massive stack, half-tumbling and half-flying off the edge of a run - barely skimming a rock with his back on the way down. He's not too badly hurt, but he twisted his ankle coming out of the skis and his left shin is a bit swollen. He got himself checked out at the medical clinic straight after and they've given him a clean bill of health, but it's too painful to ski on with the swelling. So that's pretty much finished Dean's hopes of skiing while we're here.

After Dean's incident, Jess and I tackled the whole mountain as the last run of the day. We took the High Noon Express chairlift to the top (2,322m elevation) and made our way down. The view from the top was amazing:


We finished up yesterday in the spa, relaxing our very sore muscles, preparing to hit the slopes again today.

Today's weather was not great for it. Visibility was poor and gusty winds made it near impossible to get a nice, clean run. On the bright side though, the weather had deterred a lot of people, so the snow was in pretty good condition. Fingers crossed tomorrow is clear again!

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