And now for somewhere different. I'd been wanting to ride up at Porters all season, but was waiting until they had all the lifts open (severe lack of snow up there - only a 40cm base!). Finally, it looked like time to go, with 24cm in the last 24 hours, and closed yesterday bcos of Mr Lanche. Got up far too early and drove on out, not the best thing having to drive on perfectly straight roads first thing in the morning - need something to concentrate on.
Mondays are 2 for 1 lift passes, handy if you've got someone to ride with, not so handy for me. Still, only cost $50 with my nzski pass. Seems very remote up there - barely any sign of life for the last 50km! First impressions were "hmm, well there's powder, but there's also a lot of rocks". No wonder they'd turned the webcams off. Up the first T-Bar (1km of pain), over to the second (shorter but damn steep), then 3rd wasn't open yet. Powder was pretty dry, but barely any base at all. Got back up and the 3rd t-bar was just opening, so I was the 8th person this season to get up there. Well I hadn't noticed the better stuff up to my right, so came down thru this bowl. A bowl of lightly-covered rocks. On my new board. Arseburgers, time to get the rockhopper out.
Well anyway, there really wasn't that much to ride in the end as there's just not enough of a base (or any at all on one side), so spent the rest of the day riding...the cat track. Great. Is that really worth going through the pain of 3 t-bars for? Core-shot to rockhopper, it'll live though. One box in the park. Home time.
Another below average day. I'm waiting for a miracle to happen because I've had enough of all this. My riding's gone to shit, I'm sick of riding on my own, I'm sick of driving, I'm sick of rocks. Someone remind me why I'm doing this? Actually I don't know if anyone's reading this anyway. At least the new series of Spooks is on tonight.
Some pics anyway:
