First time at Turoa

Sunday 20th of September

It was time to try Turoa and time to do a single - day trip. We left at 05.25am and got to the Turoa carpark by 09:15am. I was impressed with the less than four hour drive time considering we had a couple of toilet and food stops along the way.

We glided into carpark 5, changed and walked the short distance to the lift areas. We had already purchased our lift passes at the 'Snow-Centre' so all we had to do was get onboard the Movenpick chair and head on up. We had planned on meeting Adrian (freshtracks) so a quick txt and we headed up the chair.

The terrain looked vastly different to Whakapapa and quite rocky down low but nice and open mid mountain up. A txt back from Freshie and we made plans to meet at the Giant so Murphy and I rode down thru the boneyards run to wait for Adrian. Unfortunalty I had quite a large off half way down and really banged my left forearm and side - **ouch** - . This did have the effect of slowing me down a little because anytime I fell forward I would bang my already tender left forearm. Even a small off was quite painful.

Adrian showed us the Yahoo run that takes you down to the Highflyer chair and we did this 3 or 4 times. It is a really cool trail with a narrow flatish section that allowed me to practice my carving before the first of the 'steps'. Its fair to say I did the falling leaf move down the 2 steeper steps, confidence was very low. And when I did try and carve on the steeper sections I would sometimes catch an edge and can out (again). I was ok once on my toe side edge but flicking between heel and toeside was a bit haphazard.

After 4 runs down Yahoo Adrian showed us down the 'Why Nots' a run with some nice walls and ridges to bounce off. I was still taking it pretty easy nursing my aching and bloody left forearm and sore rump! All the while Murphy was blating ahead - why wait for Dad ahe!

After a break at the snow-flake cafe we were back up the Giant and bombing it down the Boneyard. A great run and one of my favourites at Turoa. After negotiating Clarrys Track to the base area we changed and headed back home. It maybe a 4 hour journey but we beamed all the way home, stoked with our days riding. Certainly the best day so far!!!