28th July - 18th August 2014
The best day of the season so far came on my day off which was rather convenient. It was a Monday that didn't have the best forecast originally but was a bluebird day in the end. Blue skies, no wind and the quietest day of the week made for one fantastic day. I went snowboarding in the morning with Wannes before meeting up with Rachel, Sarah and Vicky for a delicious snowflake burger.
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| Selfie of me, Rachel and Wannes |
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| Current profile picture |
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| Imagine the Lord of the Rings song when you watch this |
My arse by the afternoon was rather sore from all the heavy impacts it was taking whilst I was attempting to snowboard. I switched to skis for the rest of the day so that could up the highest commercial lift in the southern hemisphere, the High Noon. The view from the top is ridiculous. It was such an epic day and I enjoyed it so much.
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| Long way down |
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| Wannes chilling |
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| So good! |
The next day Hamish and Rose came up for a ski and, as I was finishing early for my shift at New World, I had a hour to join them on the hill. Rose managed a particularly special wipeout when she got some air and slid on her back for about 10 metres. it looked spectacular!
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| Rose |
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| Ha Ha Hamish |
On a particular slow day we had to find some inventive ways to entertain ourselves. I was out ticket checking and I had a snowball fight with some of the lifties. Another of the lifties decided he was tired and made himself an armchair. He never got around to making the footstool.
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| Nice armchair |
Anyone for dodgeball?! I've never played before but I signed up for our work competition. It was teams from all departments on both Turoa and Whakapapa sides. It was fancy dress so our team name was Ballroom Dodging and went as formal as we could! We thought we were very unlikely to win the competition but at least we might win the prize for best dressed as we were literally the best dressed.
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| I wasn't ready |
As predicted most teams were quite good and we were not. It wasn't long before we were down to one team member in the first round after 4 of us including myself had been either hit by a ball or someone had caught one of our throws. I didn't have enough power on one of my throws and I was caught out.
So it was Wannes left against 4 people which looks unlikely.
Ok now 3 against 1, still not good.
Oh wow 2 against 1, this is surprising.
Oh my god its 1 on 1.
YEAAAAAHAHHHH
Somehow Wannes pulled off a one man show and actually won the first round for us. It was an incredible performance. We had nothing to lose now that we had made it to the second round, already one better than we thought we would get! Almost the same thing happened in the second round except this time it was me that was left to bring it back from the clutches of defeat - yeah, don't think so! We lost but we were proud of ourselves anyway. Well, of Wannes!
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| Our team doing there best! |
We sat back and watched the rest of the teams and it eventually became Turoa verses Whakapapa in the final. I was really into it by this point and shouting my head off at any potential infringement. Joey, on Turoa side pulled off an amazing one man show that was even better then before to win it for his team and our side of the mountain. It was epic!
We didn't even win best dressed which I think is a travesty!
The second weekend in August brought with it an awful lot of rain which meant a couple of closed days and when the weather finally did clear there was absolutely no snow left at the base area. It was a massive washout. All the trails on the lower mountain were gone and all the upper mountain trails were saturated. I watched some of snow flow past me in the raging river which was way above its normal level!
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| Washing away all our snow! |
On one of these closed days I went for a walk on the Old Coach Road which is one of the more scenic walks around this area. It runs along the path of, crazily enough, an old coach road where you would once meet a horse and carriage or two.
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| tis nice |
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| The Old Coach Road |
There is a tunnel along this road which was used for a railway line until they modernised and straightened the track.
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| Tunnel |
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| A few nice looking trees |
The highlight of this journey was the old train bridge. It was a feat of engineering back in the day and still looks rather impressive with the national park forest in the background
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| Bridge |
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| Still a bridge |
We are consistently good at the quiz now with a couple of third place finishes but we had one particularly successful week where we won 2nd place and also Wannes won us a round of drinks at the first physical challenge. Needless to say it was quite a good night.
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| Physical Challenge |
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| Snow in town again |
After a few closed days and a couple of snow showers we opened for the weekend with some clear skies. Saturday evening surprised us with an excellent moon rise and sunset whilst we waited for an hour for a bus back to town.
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| Moons coming up |
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| Suns going down |
After being closed the previous weekend it meant that it was really busy for my day off on the Sunday. I usually go up on the Monday when its quieter but the forecast didn't look so great so I risked the Sunday. I attempted snow boarding for about an hour until the beginner area got swamped and I switched to skis. The upper mountain was busy to and after waiting for over half an hour for the High Noon I decided to give up and hike to the summit.
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| The only way is up |
There was already a few people doing it so I just needed to use the footprints as steps but it was so hard! It was more the altitude than anything else. You get out of breath after 5 or 10 metres and have to stop. I was carrying my skis too which slowed me down and water might have been a good idea too.
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| Long hike |
I'm not sure how long it took me because I didn't time myself but it must have been at least an hour and a half but it was definitely worth it! The view was simply awesome! Once I had got my breath back I took our my camera and took which I think is the best picture I have ever taken!
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| The summit |
The actual summit of Mt Ruapehu is a few metres further up but you specialist equipment to get up there and I was pretty much there anyway! After a few very cold minutes I put my skis on and attempted to ski down. This was easily the steepest run I've ever done and the top was full of these solid chunks of ice the size of large pebbles so that was a bit sketchy but after that it was soft snow all the way back down to the ski area. I carried on down to Snowflake Cafe where I grabbed a burger and a very much needed glass of water before heading home on the bus.
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| Selfie! |
It was third time lucky when we finally managed to have our department meal after a few cancellations. We went for a Mexican (my first ever!). We were all squashed around one table because the place we were in didn't have and big tables and the the ones they did have were fixed. It was a bit cosy with all 14 of us on a 8 person table. After dinner there were a few prizes handed out and I won one for fixing the safe draw all the time! It was a for a free burger and it made my day!
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| Muscle Man! |
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| Snow in the chain bay |
The rest of the week was like a constant blizzard. The whole week snow just kept coming. Just when you thought it had finished, it started again. We were closed on Tuesday and Thursday due to the conditions. They organised a staff trip to Wanganui on the Thursday but it was a bit last minute and only two of us went.
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| Wanganui |
I went straight to McDonalds after we arrived for a much needed Quarter Pounder Meal and for desert I crossed the road to get some KFC! I also considered an afternoon snack in Subway but resisted. The main reason I went to Wanganui, apart from the fast food, was to go to the bank where I had 2 cheques to cash totalling just over $1000. One for taxback from New Zealand and the other was my Superannuation from Australia. It didn't even cross my mind that the latter was in Australian dollars and I got an extra $80. Winner!
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| Central square |
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| Quite a high Wanagnui River |
It started raining quite heavily as we left Wanganui and it caught up with us a couple of hours later and fell as heavy snow in Ohakune. This made for a fun walk to the poker night we had organised.
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| SNOW! |
One whole metre of snow fell over the week and it transformed the ski field completely! The most shocking was the two metre high wall of snow that surrounded the car park from where they had moved it out of the way.
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| So much snow! |
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| Just wanna jump in it! |
The weather cleared on over the weekend resulting in the new best day of the season and quite possibly the best day ever! The mountain was even more stunning with all the fresh snow, the weather was perfect and all that fresh powder was a ridiculous amount of fun. I met up with Hamish, Rose, Wannes, Rachel, Kirsten and Mark and we mucked around all day. Rachel's unique style of skiing was awesome. Screaming and arms flailing about everywhere was absolutely hilarious! The marketing team did a bit of an advert which really shows the mountain at its best.
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| Top of the Noon |
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| Wannes showing off |
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| Rachel not so much with the showing off |
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| BEST DAY EVER! |
