Close but no cigar

After a 5 star dinner with the Mcdougals (family we are staying with) last night we got a phone call from Jon. He said we had a window of good weather coming in so we decided to give the jump on last shot. We were determined to give it our best and get something done so we didn´t leave NZ completely emty handed. This is probably my fourth time in my life waxing my skis, at least that I can remember. It was an interesting/boring experience
Thnx to Bruce Wells for the wax and the quik waxing lesson.


We got up at 6 AM, went up to the hill, sat in the lodge for like 2 hours cause the ski patrol had to bomb the hill for avalanches. When we finally got on the second lift to go to the jump, our good spirit was chrushed like a water mellon hitting a chick in the face after a slingshot backfire. It was so windy, I actually can´t belive they opened the lift in those conditions. At that point we were pretty much ready to go down, but we had to ski by the jump anyways and it turned out that a big ridge sheltered it from the wind so it wasen´t that bad at all. The big problem was that every minute a huge gust would make it´s way to the jump and that´s pretty much the most sketchy conditions to ski in. Every wind condition is fine as long as it´s consistent. Getting a huge gust right in your face on the take off is not exactly what you are looking for hitting a jump of this size, especially when speed is allready an issue. Alltough it was terrible conditions Jon maned up and hit it first. He overshot by.... probably 10 meters. he was fine though. I maned up after a couple of more speed checks and landed mid knuckle, second time I went a little further but still knuckled. Colby did the smart thing and just said ´´fuck it´´cause he couldn´t really get speed. Jon hit it a couple of more times until the wind caught him and landed him on the knuckle as well. So once again, this shoot and NZ gives once again a huge dissapointment.


Colby got so tired of facebook on this trip that he started a blog.
www.cjwest.tumblr.com Check it out!!!!

It´s our last day today, and we were hoping to get one last skiable day before we went our seperate ways, but no dice. havy rain outside today.

PK