The Ninja is a powdah snob. Who knew?

Welcome back Ninja Fans!

I hope this blog finds all of you happy and well in your various locales. At the moment the 'bunnies' and I are relaxing after several hours of some 'hardcore' riding.

To give you a brief run down on the trip so far....... Firstly the trip up here was as simple as it gets. A $4 train ride to the airport, a flight that went pretty quick and then a 2 hour bus ride led us to the magnificent accom that Karate has already blogged about. As an added bonus, we can quite literally walk out the main entrance and 10m is the first lift up -- brilliant!

Lesson #1 on Sunday wasn't too painful and was very much a case of waking up the muscles I haven't used since the inaugural HBFC tour to NZ nearly 6 years ago.

Lesson #2 was a lot harder, an afternoon of sunshine the day before without snow lead to conditions being quite icy -- probably not the best time to be moving to steeper slopes to practice turns at higher speed. We also had a much larger group for lesson #2 which included a crabby old lady who didn't play nicely with others -- she was a reasonable skier on the slopes, but was completely incompetent when it came to following instructions from the teacher and then was enough of a bitch to whine and abuse Ester (our teacher our told her to pull her head in). I am ashamed to say this lady was also from Perth!

As a result of the ice my muscles and my non-enhanced knee let me know all about it that afternoon...... I may have also been spitting dummies faster and harder than your average ninja could throw shurikens. Thankfully Karate and Kelly managed to dodge most of my whinging!

We then had a few inches of snow yesterday afternoon, last night and even now there is the odd flake or two falling.... the net result was that the skiing was incredibly easier and much less painful for all of us. So much so that Karate and I went up the mountain, not quite to the peak (most of the runs down from the peak are a little too steep!) and tackled the 'Holiday' run. 2880m of green powdahery goodness.

One of the steeper slopes we encountered.
Yes I was crapping myself.

Despite the extra powdah we were both pretty knackered by the time we got back to the lift -- about an hour after we started the run. Despite the somewhat hard work involved in getting to the run, it was actually really

 

Believe it or not I was happy to be sitting down
for lunch

good once on there as not many people had used it so we had almost pristine pow to ride on.

After lunch we journeyed back to the slopes we had learnt on just outside our apartment. It was quite amusing as both Karate and I both ripped down the slope barely thinking about breaking/slowing down as it was very tame in comparison to what we had dealt with earlier (which we were both pretty stoked about too I might add!)

A few things we have discovered/learnt so far;

1) Don't go on 'holiday' unless you are comfortable going fast -- especially if you board as there are some long sections that are quite flat that you need momentum to traverse. I actually felt sorry for one poor sod who had to walk almost 50m with his snowboard

2) Karate shouldn't go in front of Ninja when gaining said momentum as she doesn't stay in front very long and just gets in the way (I am sure one of my engineering fans will be able to provide the relevant physics law).

3) Kelly shouldn't be asked to escort little'uns on chairlifts as that can result in said little'un not getting off the lift and heading back down ( I just wish we had video footage!).

4) Ninja's body takes it as a challenge when there is a whisper of cold and is so far has produced more than enough heat energy to beat off the cold.

5) Sitting in sweat sodden clothing is not fun. No, not fun at all.

We hope to ascend one of the other slopes tomorrow, so stay tuned for more pics!

The inactive? volcano near Niseko