Due to the huge snow base up at Mt Hutt this season and wanting to limit off snow-time between our NZ season and northern hemisphere, Nick and I took the opportunity to run our own spring camp up at Mt Hutt after the mountain had closed.
Obviously with no chairlifts operating, we used a snowmobile to get up and down the slope ensuring a super fast turn around and of course the added bonus of a bit of fun riding the snowmobile.
– Jono Hay assisting with picking up the beast at Rainbow.
-Who needs chairlifts?
We had 4 huge days on snow with a heap of runs mixed between GS and even a day of perfect SG. Using the natural night snow freeze and around 10x 25KG bags of salt, resulted in a perfect surface to train on, even though the temperature reached 10 degrees one day!
After the alpine training I would move over to the ski cross start that Mt Hutt assisted to build for me, along with some manual shaping. This was great to get a lot of time on a steeper start section (which I identified needed more work) and a large Wu0-tang very similar to the Sochi Olympic course.
-Fish the groomer driver working his magic on the Ski Cross start.
-Men at work
-Maybe we can use this snowmobile next year?
It was a great camp that provided extremely valuable training before we head away overseas for the northern winter and the last push to gain Olympic Qualification.
-The 5am wake ups made for spectacular sunrises across the Canterbury Plains
Special thanks to Rainbow Ski area for allowing us the use of their snowmobile. Make sure you go and ‘like’ their facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/skirainbow
Special thanks to Mt Hutt for the use of the slope and building the perfect Ski Cross start section and feature. Make sure you go and ‘like’ their page. https://www.facebook.com/mthutt
Huge thanks to everyone who helped make this possible;
-Thanks to Jono Hay for all his time in setting up the snowmobile and being ‘coach’ for a day.
-Thanks to Tim Cafe for being an awesome coach during the camp.
-Thanks to brother Sam for his sometimes hairy snowmobile driving.
-Thanks to papa Chris for picking up the start gate from Coronet.
-Thanks to Michael Bushell for the use of his trailer.
-Thanks to David Grogan for lifting those heavy Salt bags!