Winter Classic Round 2

It seems Tuesday race days are somewhat cursed for weather, with the snow gods having a bit of a giggle at us! Tuesday rolled around again this week and just like clockwork the heavens opened and we got 12cm of new snow overnight. So the marshalls had a busy morning trying to scrape the new snow off the racing lines! The course marked out next to the t-bar turned out great, with some great times being put in by everyone involved.

The poor racers did have to sit and watch the rest of the mountain get tracked out, with the snow being absolutley beautiful top to bottom, nice and light and fast! Some great turns were to be had out to skiers left of the t-bar, where you could just keep going further and further gettig fresh lines every run.

Anyway back to the racing, the Browns A-Team came 3rd overall this week, with our main man Timmy O-Rock (Tim Cafe) making a sneaky appearance and posting the fastest time of the day! Super impressive skiing by the young olympian!
Second fastest member of the Browns A-Team was Kylese Zaiger, she puts her great time down to all the telemark skiing she has been doing recently.

Browns B-Team had a solid race this week with them taking the win in the B-Division with all the team members putting consistently fast times in. Stand out was Damo "wannabe ski racer" Myers, who managed to complete 2 runs for the first time ever, and as a result beat Richard Stokes for the first time. Rich put this down to the lack of pole planting in his run, which made him loose his rythm.
Bad luck this week again for Simon "Fatcat" Gray who crashed out again, resulting in a DNF. Simon is still one to watch though and definitly can put time up there with the big boys when he wants to.

Results to follow

Winter Classic Round 1

The first round of the 2010 Winter Classic racing at Coronet Peak took place last Tuesday, the results are in and finalised, and both Browns A-Team and B-team put in solid performances. The results are up below for you to scroll through, notable performances were from rookie winter classic racers Kylese Zaiger (K-Bomb) and Big Steve Puletaha (Shogun).
Big Steve, who is famed for looking like a character from NZ movie "Boy", was our only snowboarder on the team and his usual laid back, relaxed and "gun it in a straight line" style of boarding paid dividends once we managed to persuade him to turn through the gates. Quote of the day also goes to Big Steve who was standing at the start gate ready to go and then turned round to the rest of the team and said "so I have to go around the gates...right?"
K-Bomb who was in the Womens A Division, a former ski racer in the USA, had huge pressure on her shoulders to perform, with the reason for her being employed at Browns being based on her ski racing history. If she didn't deliver the goods, her job for the rest of the season would be in doubt. But boy did she deliver, beating all the rest of the team apart from our Olympic hero Tim Cafe, and placing 2nd overall in the Womens A division.
Other notable happenings were Damian Myers crashing out of both runs, remaining true to his usual form, Ronnie Wood putting in some great times despite pole planting in each turn and Tyler Kitchen doing really well despite buying womens ski boots.
Until next week....

Winter Classic Racing 2010!

Next week will see the start of the 2010 Winter Classic racing at Coronet Peak. Many businesses in Queenstown sign up a team and a fierce (yet scoail) battle begins for the next couple of months to see who is the fastest through the gates, and fastest behind the bar!
Browns Ski Shop loves the winter classic, it is a great event which we embrace every year. Look out for weekly updates on this blog, along with photos of this years race outfits!

A bit of backcountry wonderfulness

At a time of year when the mountains are packed with tourists and we havent seen much snow for the last couple of weeks, it is nice to know that with the right gear and a little hard work you can get yourself to places where no-one has been and the snow is still pristine.
A few of the Browns crew decided to go backcountry during the middle of the school holidays, to escape the madness.
A quick check on the avalanche advisory website showed that the current danger is low, so we were confident we were going to have a safe day out there, but usually when the danger level is low the snow conditions are not that great, but we were pleasantly suprised! We found some beautiful freeze dried powder stashes on north to north east facing aspects. The runs weren't long but there was no rush to get back up and hit them again as we were the only ones out there. It was a great day for the soul and made me realise why I live here again!

Queenstown Winter Festival hailed as best ever!

It seems this years Queenstown Winter Festival has been hailed as the best one yet by a recent report on www.snow.co.nz, read up about it here

It's a great time of year to be in Queenstown, with lots of amazing events taking place, local's really get involved and embrace the week of snow filled fun!

School Holidays!

It seems we are in the middle of the 2010 school holidays period of the winter season, this is always typically the busiest time of year for Queenstown. This year it seems busier than ever before as the Australian school holidays and New Zealand school holidays have all been condensed into a three week period, as opposed to 5 weeks last year. This has meant some pretty long lift cue waiting times and lots of the rental shops in town stretched for equipment, including the mountain. Surely it would make sense for the government to change the dates of the New Zealand school holidays so that they don't overlap with the Australian ones, and therefore businesses in town could enjoy a 5 week period of steady business as opposed to 3 weeks of bedlam!
Whatever happens, we are thankful for the Australians coming over and spending large in Queenstown. It is a great time for local business to flourish, but a bad time for locals to enjoy the mountain, but hey we have it for the other three and a half months of the season I guess!