Back to the Blogosphere...

Since late in April lots has happened in my life, it has been a time of massive transition. Currently, I’m taking a break from snowboarding; given all the head injuries I’ve had I’m not sure that racing is the right thing for me right now, or in the future. Though it feels like I’ve been up in the mountains nearly every week getting my shred on (albeit far from the race course)!! 

2012 is going to be remembered as the year I became a randonee snowboarder.  What the hell is that you ask? It may take me a few posts to make sense of this. So let me start at the start.

During the midst of my return from overseas depression I purchased a splitboard & skins from Nick, a friend of my good friend Jock Gunn. I have done some backcountry touring on snowshoes, with only hiking boots/crampons and a trip or two on a borrowed board, but I am pretty keen to get serious about taking my carving turn to more adventurous surrounds. The new board was made by Nick and  although not as high performance as a Kessler race board seemed to serve my purposes pretty well – it is a cheap way for me to try out and work out what type of splitboard will be ideal in the future.

The first trip me and the board went on was fairly tame. It was decided that due to horrendous weather, lack of knowledge of whether the gear would work and perhaps a dose of laziness that my first splitboard experience would be in bounds at Mt. Buller. I headed up one Sunday afternoon to be greeted at the base by the dynamic chauffeuring combination of Ollie and Wooly – two dedicated Melbourne University Ski Team members and wonderful friends. That they had a bit of a green tinge, perhaps due to a few too many nights at Buller, seemed to bode well for my Monday/Tuesday weekend. At least if the splitboarding wasn’t ideal, the dance floor was there to be carved up with plenty of awesome friends!

Sunday night was a feast of delicious throw-it-all-in-frittata at the palatial surrounds of Watkin’s house, with aforementioned touring buddy Jock Gunn (JG).  

This prepared us ideally for an adventure to the summit of Mt. Buller on Monday, a turn or two in chutes one and two and even a little trip down Men’s Downhill. The board and skins worked!

However my skin-sition was fairly slow.
By the time I had changed from Walk Mode to Ride Mode the boys had devised a way to hang off a pole with an ice axe...

and got a shot of JG front flipping whilst holding said axe...

I think I need to speed up the skin-sition, if for no reason other than to prevent them hurting themselves! 

Port anyone? Celebrating me FINALLY getting the bindings back on my board!

At this early stage of experiencing my board I was pretty conscious of the fact that performance is lacking when you saw a snowboard in half. There is an immediate need to remedy the noodle that is created of the board. I think the first time I mentioned that I needed some hard boots was after some pretty horrendous turns down Little Buller Spur.  I had seen my coach in Canmore, Mike, set up his splitboard with hard boots and this seemed like an ideal fix. Better touring performance uphill and improved responsiveness downhill were the spoils of such a transition, however the concept definitely is rather new to Australia and would require some development.

We started that mental process with a quiet camomile tea after a fairly big dance session. There were some awesome ideas thrown around! However, all needed a little clarification over the following weeks!

Thus the train started rolling on the tracks of my life as a randonee snowboarder…