Adventure Blog Scotland | Snow » 2007

Waves back home

August 26, 2007 on 9:34 am | In Snowboarding | No Comments

As my time in New Zealand grows towards an end for this Southern Hemisphere winter, I am starting to really look forward to getting back in the water back home for a surf. I got a few emails this last week from my surf crew back in Scotland telling me of their epic surf trips over the last few weeks. They have been surfing all over the north coast of Scotland and have had particularly good waves for this time of year. usually the waves in the summer are not very large and pretty few and far between but this summer the swell has been pretty consistant and big enough to be more than a little bit scared.

There are many surf brakes on the North coast of Scotland to suit all levels of surf ability. To start there is the infamous ‘Thurso East’, home of the World Series O Neill Surf Event, and one of the few reef brakes in Scotland that is easily accessible. Along the coast to the east is Sinclair Bay and to the west are numerous beach breaks just a short walk from the road. Most of these are very quiet and it is rare day that there are more than a few other surfers in the water. Add this to the fact that the beaches are stunning and the water crystal clear and it is easily one of the most peaceful and beautiful places I have been to surf. Of course the water is a little on the cold side but nothing a 5mm wetsuit and boots will not coipe with.

I have been thinking a lot about a surf trip we did last autumn to a beach on the North West Coast called Sandwood Bay. Sandwood is generally considered one of the most beautiful beaches in the UK and is definitely remote and peaceful. it is not possible to drive to Sandwood but instead you must take a walking track for around 5 miles accross heather moorland and peat bog. This definitely adds to the peacefulness and certainly makes the whole trip much more of an adventure. We walked in to Sandwood carrying all our surf gear, wetsuits, boards and all so we were relieved when we got there and found some good waves! We found some good fish too and even managed to catch our own lunch. Anyway, I hope to get back there when I get home and am looking forward to those rolling waves and beautiful peaceful beaches.

In the mean time, here in New Zealand, we are in preperation for the first World Cup of the 07/08 season in Cardrona next week. A lot of World Cup half pipe riders have been rolling into town in the last few days and are getting themselves ready for the competition. The British contingency will be myself, fellow Scot, Ben Kilner and Dom Harington. We are all looking forward tot he event and are hoping to get some good results in what looks like a very stron field.

Lesley McKenna
http://www.chunkyknit.com
Professional snowboarder, film maker and ambassador for Visitscotland. All sorts of outdoor sports from skiing to mountain biking and now mixes her time on the Snowboard World Cup Tour with time in Scotland doing these sports.

Milford Sound

August 19, 2007 on 10:39 am | In Snowboarding | No Comments

The weather in Wanaka was not the best in the last few days and the snow conditions in the back country have been very very dangerous due to the very weak layer of snow right at ground level. This has been frustrating as one of the resons we came here is to get film footage in the back country. It is impossible to go out there safely for the time being. I talked to one of the heli guiding operations and they told me that they did some avalanche patrol work last week and dropped nine charges from the helicopter onto snow laden slopes. They caused nine big avalanches. 100% unsafe! New Zealand has an extensive avalanche program, especailly around the ski areas and high passes. The snow conditions here are often unstable due to the fluctuations in weather and temperature. This causes weak layers in the snow where one layer of the snow pack has either melted and re frozen or gathered a layer of frost called hoar. When it snows on top of this weak layer the new layer of snow does not bond well with it. If the top layer becomes too heavy it will just tear away as if it were a large piece of tissue. if this happens, depending on how large the tear is, the whole slope can come down the mountain in a tsnami like snow wave. Weak layers can happen at any level of snowpack but the worst is if the very bottom layer is very weak. If this happens, as it has here now, all the snow that has fallen over the whold season will come down in any slips taking a lot of ground and rocks with it. Not fun.

Anyway, because of the conditions, we decided to do a bit more of the tourist thing and head down to Fiordland in the South of the South Island. We headed to Milford Sound which was the last of the great sea inlets called fiords to be discovered by Europeans here in the South Island. The Fiords are like giant sea lochs with steep mountains either side, carved out when the glaciers retreated after the last ice age around 18000 years ago. They have been used as shelter for boats from big storms for hundreds of years and are now a major tourist attraction as well as home to penguins and fur seals, both of which we were lucky enough to see on our visit. Like the seals that live around the coast of Scotland, the fur seals were just lounging around on the rocks without a care in the world. The pengiuns lived in some scrub land and tussock on one of the gentler shores of the Sound. As well as penguins and fur seals we had a few encounters with the very curious New Zealand alpine parrot the Kea. This beautiful green parrot has red and orange under it’s wings and is very, very inquisitive. The Kea will try and eat anyting humans bring to their habitat, even cars. The one in the picture fancied a bite of my camera before it then tried to eat my hand bag. Pretty funny. I wish we had some parrots in Scotland too!

When we left Wanaka we were very aware of the avalanche danger so when we got to the pass into the Milford valley and saw the signs warning that there was to be no stopping on the road due to avalanche danger we were a little freaked out. We were even more freaked out when we saw the obvious remains of numerous avalanches at the side of the road on the way up although we were driving in the dark. The next day we saw the full extent of the avalanche debris and were pretty awed by the forces of nature so apparent around us. The avalanche in this picture started right at the top of the mountain and carried the snow all the way down past the snow level into the forest below. Scary stuff!!

We are hoping that the conditions stable out in the next few days and we can get out into the back country but for the mean time we are headed back to snowpark and the safety of the park and pipe.

The Burton New Zealand Open 2007

August 14, 2007 on 9:29 am | In Snowboarding | No Comments

The 2007/2008 snowboard competition season kicked off last week with the Burton New Zealand Open competition at Snowpark. The NZ Open is the first in a global series of Snowboarding Open events sponsored by the snowboard company Burton. There are six in all, one in NZ, one in Australia, one in Canada, one in Switzerland, one in Japan and the final one in the home of Burton Snowboards, Stratton Mountain resort in the USA. At each event there are two disciplines, half pipe and slopestyle and each competitor can score points depending on where they place in each competition. Most riders specialise in slopestyle or half pipe but there are a few who do both or at least occasionally do both. The male and female with the most points at the end of the season win the large cash prize of 100 000$ so there is a lot to ride for. The launch of the Burton Global tour brought world class riders from all over the world. The half pipe field was especially strong with Olympic gold medal winner Kelly Clark, TTR Womans Champion 2007 Torah Bright and World Champion Manuela Pesko all competing for the top spot in a field of over 50 women. Torah Bright came out on top in the end, with Kelly Clark and Manuela Pesko taking second and third place. The mens pipe was dominated by local ripper Mitch Brown who took the win easily over Scott Lago forom the US and Ryo Aono from Japan. Torah Bright also took 4th in the Slopestyle the previous day but the main news of the slopestyle day was the first ever Burton Tour win by GB slopestyle ripper Jenny Jones. Jenny rode stron all throught the practice days and clearly won the semi finals. Unfortunatley the weather, which had been temperamental all week, took a turn for the worst and the final had to be cancelled meaning Jenny took the win on the semi final result with Austrian Claudia Fliri in second and Hana Beaman, US, in third. Mason Aguirre took the mens slopestyle first place, with Alessandro Boyens and Dan Brisse in third.

I had a pretty successful first comp of the season, making it into the semi finals then placing 10th, just missing the final of 8 by a few points. It is always hard to step it up in the first comp of the season but I managed to land a brand new run with trick cominations I had never tried in a comp. This is always a great feeling and is a kind of sign post that you are on a progression.

The Burton Open series is part of the TTR snowboarding series which is a global snowboarding tour. The TTR tour gives the world ranking of thousands of riders and crowns the world number one man and woman snowboarders at the end of each season. The tour is made up of half pipe and slopestyle events so is very much an all round tour. As well as the TTR tour there is the FIS World Cup tour. This is made up of the Olympic disciplines of half pipe, boarder X and alpine. At the end of each season there is a World Cup overall winner fro each discipline. Pretty complicated!!

The next competition on the Burton global tour is the Australian Open which is at the end of August and the next competition for me will be the FIS half pipe World Cup at the beginning of September. There are a lot of National Teams here training in the pipe and slopestyle course getting ready for the next competitions so I am sure snowpark will be a busy place for the forseeable future. I will be working on perfecting the run I stuck the other day as trying to add a few new tricks into the mix. I am also hoping to get a few days free riding in on the new snow that fell in the last week. However, the avalanche risk is very high right now so I will have to wait for things to settle down. I spoke to a guide earlier today who told me they dropped 9 charges today and set off 9 avalanches. Scary stuff!!

fresh tracks at Treble Cone

August 5, 2007 on 10:06 am | In Snowboarding | 1 Comment

I got the first true powder freshies of my New Zealand trip this week at Treble Cone Ski Area. It snowed for a few days and we got up early the next morning to beat the crowds to the summit of the mountain in the search for un-tracked powder. I went riding with Juliane Bray, a fellow World Cup rider and Kiwi ripper who kindly gave me a tour of her home mountain. Ju and I are planning a trip to India next winter with Chunkyknit Productions to investigate life in the Himalayas and especially how it is to be a woman there. We are trying to do as much back country riding before then as possible so we get as much experience as possible before we go to the back of beyond. We are also planning to do a fairly high level avalanche course in a few weeks time at Treble Cone so it is good for us to get a good feel for the current snow pack and watch how it develops in the next weeks.

Avalanche risk is always a factor when heading to the back country and you really can not have too much knowledge or experience when it comes to dealing with avalanche terrain. Avalanche terrain is found where there are slopes of a gradient 25 degrees and steeper but occasionally even on slopes less steep than this. Slopes around 30 to 45 degrees are usually the most avalanche prone and there are lots of factors that can effect this, like snow conditions, general weather conditions, wind directions, temperature etc, etc. Avalanche phenomenon can also be found in Scotland and is often caused by large wind cornices cracking under their own weight and setting off slides. We spent a few weeks filming in the back country in Scotland and found some pretty impressive cornices. Here is a picture of me in Jacobs Ladder, which has a very large cornice at the top of it. The other picture is a line in the back of Treble Cone which has no exit. Juliane and I had been thinking about doing it but then a skier beat us to it. You have to stop half way down the line and traverse out to the right or you will fall off a large cliff. A pro skier died in an accident there a few years ago. It is always really important to know exactly where you are going when you are riding back country and to know if the slope you are on has a safe exit as well as taking heed of avalanche conditions.

There is not much avalanche danger for us this coming week as it is competition week at Snowpark Resort with the Burton New Zealand Open taking place throughout the week. The finals for the half pipe and slopestyle are next weekend with the various qualification rounds during the week. There are 5 Brits in the contest and all are riding well. Jenny Jones is a top favourite for the womans’ slope style and Ben Kilner is tipped in the mens’ pipe.