I Love Snowboarding!

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Five of us (Me, Eric, Anke, Lieke 1 + Lieke 2) spent the weekend skiing at Whakapapa (the ‘wh’ is pronounced as an ‘f’) which is in the middle of the North Island on Mt Ruapeha. I drove an automatic for the first time (majority of cars are automatics because it's so hilly) and we arrived pretty late on Friday night.

So up early on the Saturday to rent all the gear and get up the mountain. Eric and the Liekes had all skied before but Anke and I were keen on snowboarding so we booked a lesson. But before we had an hour to kill so went up the mountain with the others.........Lieke 2 had snowboarded before as well so was ‘supposed’ to give us some help. After spending long enough just getting my boots buckled in we helplessly gave it a go and it was.......erm........a nightmare! The others pretty much just left us with advice of “just go, it’s the only way you’ll learn”. So after about half an hour of falling in peoples way and sitting on our arses, not even able to stand up, we unbuckled and walked back down as we would have been late for the lesson (which we realised was going to be very important!).

The instructor was a right stoner/chilled out guy but in the hour we learnt the basics. The first half of it I found quite frustrating. Just learning how to stand up felt like my knee ligaments were being stretched and twisted but then learnt a different way (leaning forward by digging your toes into the snow instead of bringing your toes up and tilting the board back). Then we went on to just controlling speed by going horizontally down - Sideslipping (heelside) - and after a couple of goes it all began to click as we moved on to the ‘zig zag’ - Traversing (heelside), which is just going down left foot forwarded then transferring to the right. After that is when I really started enjoying it as every time I could feel improvements.

So we spent the rest of the day on the ‘Happy Trail’ which was quite interesting as I moved on from one of the complete novices who was falling in people’s way on the blue run, to a slightly more improved snowboarder who was then getting taken out by the novices instead of the other way around (see picture!>>>>>>>).

At the end of the day I felt I had some unfinished business with the blue slope we went up initially. Still struggled a lot but mainly because it was pretty narrow and crowded and I wasn’t good enough to avoid people which meant I just had to fall on my arse every time it got a bit congested.

We arrived back at the lodge in the evening and crashed out for a couple of hours, feeling totally battered! I can understand why some people prefer skiing because snowboarding really does take it out of you with all of the falling (but those people clearly don’t have the patience and determination of snowboarders!). I’ve definitely found some new muscles in my legs which have never been used before!

Nevertheless I soldiered on the next day but only got half a day in after getting lost trying to find a different resort. Lieke 2 switched to snowboarding and helped teach me a few things so I learnt a couple more turns in the afternoon but it was so frustrating when it all came to an end. Really felt a lot more comfortable on the second day but two days felt way too short. Hopefully we’ll go back again..........

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