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Scotland in Autumn

September 27, 2007 on 10:29 am | In Uncategorized | No Comments

I arrived back from New Zealand this week to find Scotland in the first throes of autumn. It was strange to leave New Zealand in spring and arrive in Scotland in autumn. I was snowboarding last week and am now planning a wee surf session at the weekend here. I am lucky enought to have arrived just in time to see the trees in their summer garb before they begin to change into their autumn colours and then loose their leaves. I really love this time of year in Scotland. It is often the best time of year to go mountian biking as well. The perfect plan for my up coming weekend is a day surfing on Saturday on the Moray coast then a day mountain biking on Sunday around Aviemore. I am planning a mountain biking trip up Glen Einich as this is my favourite place to see the Spey Valley from. This is a great afternoon or morning trip and takes around 2 hours to get up to the loach and a little less to come back down. It is easily made into a day trip by taking either the track to Loch Morlich or the track to Invereshie on the way back down. I like to take the Loch Morlich track and then, on reaching Loch Morlich, take the track past Badagouish and over to meet the back road that runs from Coylum Bridge to Boat of Garten. Another option, which makes the day into a long one, is to take the track that runs through to Nethy Bridge from Glenmore Lodge. I always remember to check the weather forecast before I go and have a plan B for half way if the weather looks like it is going to tun nasty. It is easy to get caught out and at this time of year the weather around Aviemore can be very harsh. The last thing I want is to get caught in a sleet storm 4 hours from home!

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.

Banks Peninsula

September 12, 2007 on 12:38 pm | In Uncategorized | No Comments

I am now into the last week of my stay in New Zealand. The winter is slowly turning to spring and the blossom is appearing on the trees. The snow is starting to melt and the nights are getting longer, just as the nights back home start to draw in. I have been down here a while and have not had the chance to visit my Scottish friends in Christchurch so last week I headed up for a quick visit. They live in Little River which is a very small village on Banks Peninsula which is a volcanic protrusion just down the coast from Christchurch. As it is pretty much a volcano which has grown over with vegetation and had the crater filled up with sea water the scenery is spectacular. The actual crater has an exit into the sea in the harbour of Akaroa, which was originally settled by the French. It still has a very quaint colonial feel to it and many of the shops there still have French names. We got some of the best fish suppers I have ever eaten in Akaroa chippie. We then headed to Okains Bay where there was once a large whaling industry and settlement. Okains Bay is a beautiful long sandy beach which reminds me a lot of the beaches back home. It was totally deserted except for a very large sea lion bathing itself in the sun!! From there we headed back towards little river which is on the other side of the crater to Akaroa and up to the top of the crater edge so we could get a view of the whole peninsula. We were lucky enough to be there on a clear day so we got s view right down the coast towards Mt Hutt and the Southern Alps, which were shining white in the sun. We were also lucky enough to be able to hitch a ride on a quad bike to take us up the track tot he top of the crater. Here we are with my friends daugher, Isla, who is named after that remote and beautiful island back home.

Cardrona Half Pipe World Cup

September 3, 2007 on 12:07 pm | In Snowboarding | No Comments

For the first time ever, the FIS World Cup half pipe tour came to New Zealand, to the resort of Cardrona. The FIS World Cup Tour runs from September to March, taking the athletes all over the world from the Southern Hemisphere and back to the Northern Hemisphere and usually kicks off in Chile in September. This year the boarder X riders all head to Chile for their kick off at the end of September, while the half pipe riders came down to New Zealand for their first competition. Many of the competitors came down to New Zealand early to train in the Snowpark pipe with only a few of them arriving just for the World Cup so there has been a competition atmosphere here for a few weeks now. The riders who compete on the half pipe tour travel the world together so we all know one another pretty well and are on the whole good friends. That does not stop us pushing one another when it comes to competition day though as there are valuable World Cup points up for grabs as well as a heafty prize purse.

Cardrona had done a great job of building their half pipe, especially as the snow conditions fot the last few weeks have been challenging to say the least. The competition had drawn some of the big names from the snowboard world including in the female section, World Champion Manuela Pesko, X Games winner and Olympic Silver Medalist Gretchen Bleiler, Lindsay Jacobellis, Tricia Burns, Soko Yamaoka and many more as well as, in the mens’ section, local ripper and NZ Open 07 winner Mitchell Brown, Swiss ripper Rolph Feldman, Finnish flyers Annti Auti and Risto Matilla, and many more. The standard of the riding in the training was very, very high indeed and the pressure towards competition day soon began to rise.

The qualification day brought some pretty heavy winds with it and it looked like we were going to face a day of delays. After a few time postponements the event went off roughly to plan and both the girls and guys got two qualification runs each. I was very happy to make the ladies final, which was to be the next day, in 7th place along with Manuela, Lindsay, Soko, amongst others. The next day the winds were even stronger and had swung round so that they were now blowing accross the pipe instead to straight down it. This caused some major problems for us pipe riders as we got blown off of one wall and on to the deck of the other. There were some very strong runs being put down in the ladies final with Manuela and Lindsay landing back to back 540s and back to back 720s in the same run. I was happy to land a run with a back to back 540 combination and a 720 to cab 3 as well but I felt I could make it all higher so the next run I charged as hard as I could and got some great amplitute. Things were going very well until a gust of wind blew me into the flat bottom off of the back side wall, causing me to catch an edge and hit the ground backwards faster than you could say backwards. That was my run over so I would have to keep the score from the first run as my final score. In the end Manuela won with Lindsay in second and US ripper Claire Bidez in third. I had to settle with 8th place which is a great World Cup result but a little frustrating for me as I feel my second run was definitely going better than my first. That is just the way of snowboarding though and often you crash in at least one of your runs. The mens’ competition was taken by Japanese rider Ryo Aono, with Russian ripper Iouri Podladchikov second and Rolf Feldmann in third. All boys were throwing down 900s and 1080s and Ryo even tried a backside 1260!

All in all it was a great strat to the 07/08 season and a great debut for Cardrona on the World Cup scene. The next World Cup half pipe will be in Saas Fee in November.