Base 2 is Live

That's right people, Base 2, our new dedicated Hardware store with NZ's largest range of Skis and Snowboards under one roof, is now open. It was mad dash to get it ready before the mountains opened but the whole crew pulled together and put in some serious hard yakka to get it open. And the result.... i think the pics speak for themselves

Turoa snow Update

Hey Crew, i've got a new report from our roving north island reporter Kingsley on last weekends action at Turoa, read on

With the forecast earlier in the week looking pretty miserable for the
coming weekend our crew had written off the idea of heading up to Turoa
for our 2nd day this season, but as the week progressed the metservice
updates were looking better. Come friday night the report stated "Low
cloud, winds at 1600m rising to 40km east, winds at 3000m rising 60km by
midday. Rain, with occasional snow flurry above 1800m". So the report
didn't look too flash, but we couldn't help it. We had talked it up all
summer and had a newbie keen to hit the slopes. It was up to him if we
went or not, and he chose to go.
So up at 5.30am and leaving town at 6 with rain pouring we once again
decided 'If it's open, we'll stay'.
Arrived at the Ohakune 8.30 and got our newbie his hire equipment from
Station Lodge Rentals (www.stationlodge.co.nz) and up the Mt road we went.
It was an awesome sight to get to the base and see the lifts running. A
great relief after last weeks walks. So we decided 1 of us would stay and
help the new guy at alpine meadows while the rest of us cruized for the
first biggie. Up onto the 'Movenpick' lift to hopefully get to the 'High
Noon Express', unfortunatly that wasn't running yet, so 'High Flyer' it
was. We skated over and jumped on.
From the 'High Flyer' there is a few runs down and also the terrain park.
So I hit the park for a few small airs, coupled with a few small bails
(ok, maybe not so small bails).
Later in the day the high noon opened and we rode her to the top. -10
degrees or so with wind chill factored in up there. The trails had just
been groomed and the runs were awesome. Not bad for a 105cm base on the
volcano.
The weather began to clear and as blue skies cut through the wind picked
up, but that lasted all of 25 minutes around midday, then they backed off
leaving us with the remainder of the day bluebird.
I must say, later in the day the high noon trails had been taken back to
ice and became no good to ride. From the top of 'Parklane' (Turoa's
smallest lowest lift) there was only 1 trail available to base and that
was continually congested with learners falling head over heels and
blocking it up for everyone else.

Overall, at 105cm the lower mt is pretty much a write off for runs, except
when you need a break in the cafe. The 'High Noon' runs, freshly groomed
are ok, but that didn't last too long. So that just leaves mid Mt, and the
runs from 'High Flyer' are not bad at all, plenty of snow, a few rocks
here and there, then jumping across to the boneyard and as always, is a
nice run, very choppy, but great soft and dry snow built up so it's alot
of fun.

So here we are now with another cold snap covering the Mt and the fields
closed for the last 2 days due to snow. The last stake read was yesterday
with another 3cm added to the base. If this keeps up as forecast we could
see 1.5m pretty soon and hopefully the 2m mark reached within a few weeks.

Keep the snow falling!!!

~Kingsley~

Treblecone Opening Day is a blinder

personally it was a day i had been waiting for longer then most, after a knee injury it had been 23mths since my last day at Treblecone, and it didn't disappoint. After busting thru the cloud inversion that has kept wanaka in perpetual darkness the peak loomed up with only some high wispy cloud above tinting the sunshine, it promised to be a cracker of a day. Once on snow you could see the weather lately has been kind to the snowpack with plenty of good coverage across the front basin and the saddle. The more shaded faces held sweet pockets of dry chalky snow, the main trails stayed fairly firm most of the day. Despite both carparks being quite full the slopes seemed comfortably empty and the cafe had no lines. There was some hold ups with eftpos services due to phone line overloading but overall the service was good. The TC beef burger i had for lunch, although not a bargain at $11.50, was super tasty, I'd highly recommend it, tomato sauce and mustard was the way to go.
My knee held up well to the days shredding and getting some turns in in the sunshine stamped a grin on my face a mile wide. Great to see a lot of locals getting out for first runs of the winter too.
Overall Treblecone Opneing Day 2009 was one of the best i've seen in 10 years.

matt

Opening Day report from Turoa

Our North Island roving reporter Kingsley has sent thru a report on Turoa's opening day action, read on

Hi Matt,
As planned 3 mates and myself headed off from Levin at 6am on Saturday to
hit Turoa on it's opening day. The travel up to the mt was great, the
excitement of that moment when our boards hit the snow once again, man, we
couldn't wait....Lucky for me the car has cruise control, so no unexpected
expenses from the cops. We eventually made it to Ohakune and had planned
to stop for breakfast, but the car wouldn't stop, it just knew we needed
to get to the snow asap, so no breakfast in our tums and we were on the Mt
Road. We finally made it up to the car park and got all set up and off to
the lifts.

Unfortunately the lifts were closed as it was blowing a gale and snowing
something chronic. We decided to head out onto the Alpine Meadow and
figured there were things we could work on. So once we got our feet back
after a run or 2 we spotted some hard-nuts trekking up the trail to the
upper learners area for a bigger run. We decided to join them. It was a
25-30 min trek to get to the top of the Parklane chair. It was seriously
blowing up there so we didn't head any further. We strapped in and away we
went, our first big(ish) run. But it was over all too soon. So the 2nd
trek begun. Before we knew it it was nearly lunch time. Anyways, spent the
arvo down the bottom at Alpine meadows practicing riding switch, ollie
180's, nosepresses and tail presses.
It was a good arvo actually, ended with a hour hanging round right at the
bottom on a little slope in which we built a small kicker and spent the
last part of the day on that.

All in all it was a great day, pity there was no lifts, but hey, trekking
the mt, hitting a small kicker, and being forced to spend time doing
things we usually wouldn't, it was an experience that had to be had.

We left the mt all in high spirits, keen and amped for our next day,
hopefully this time some top-to-bottoms will be run.

Cheers

~Kingsley~

Nike Skateboarding

Let's start by going back to about the age of 12. I have forever been into skateboarding and skaters. I've watched them doing tricks when I was younger, I used to shop at the local Skate Shop Full Tilt in my home town of Streetsville, I've dated them (and my bf now is a skater), I knew my first Offspring Tunes from early skate videos, I have underwear that states, "Date a Skater" - and why wouldn't you? - and I skate - okay i learned at the age of 25 and well i don't do any tricks on my board yet but i'm learning to olly at the tender age of 28, and I use my board as a mode of transportation.

Well where am i going with this? point being however into skate you are or not, Debacle looks sooo freakin good I can't even describe it to you. To be honest the 30+ short videos on the Nike Skateboarding website - are all pretty freakin mean. And if Danny Kass can be happy with Nike, and now Gigi Ruf (with his own signature shoe no less), so can we.

check out the trailer for debacle and the Gigi Ruf signature shoe. Nike is not all that bad.




Peace Amy

Base goes Arctic

Sometimes you put something out there like, hey David can you take some Base stickers with you on your trip and take some photo's, and you think, hey maybe we'll get a pic, maybe not. Then the pics come back, and you go, what the hell??? And so, you go and get the whole story. Read on

Hey Matt

My brother and I are keen on adventure and wildlife, so every year we try to go somewhere exotic.
This year we went (self funded) to East Greenland where we took dogsleds North onto the pack ice inn search of bears.

We then left the dogsleds (because they need to be manned by inuits) out on the ice and headed out on foot in search of wildlife (Bears, arctic foxes, tarmigan, seals, walrus, beluga whales, snowy owl etc). We carried all our own gear in pulks/sleds tied to our back packs

Spent about a month on the ice. Survived 2 cyclones, temperatures dropping to -40 degrees, 120kph winds, 1.4m snow fall over night and towards the end the melting of the pack ice which very nearly had us stranded

Epic adventure and great fun

Sadly there is no organization to link as it was just my brother and I. Also we don't do it for any foundation or company. We just go to try and understand our global concerns about different creatures and if we are lucky enough to conclude anything from our results we try to document it in the biological literature
Anyway, it was our absolute pleasure taking base to the far North. We love you guys and your gear

Thanks again
DAVID

Thank you David, and your bro, for living life to the full and inspiring the Base crew. You obviously take on the world in a way that we all aspire to.

So remember don't just wander through life, get out there and grab it by the scruff of the neck and take it up the hill for a shred.

Peace and Good Beats
Matt

New Snow!!!

Yeah, first snow in town for the winter today. There was a nice frosty layer of snow on the ground when Wanaka woke up this morning and then it cleared to a nice sunny day, still cold though which is great for the snow conditions on the mountains.
There really is nothing better then waking up in a mountain town to fresh snow on the ground.

Bring on the snow yo.
matt

chimp on a segway

Okay this vid is a bit hokey but makes you wonder about animals and their capacity to think, learn, adapt, etc.

You'll notice in the video the chimpanzee eventually doesn't need to be prompted to get on, he just wants a piece of the action himself.

This clip boggles my mind.

Enjoy!



Peace Amy

BaseNZ online and on tv

Basenz.com

we've been doing our own thing, and we've been doing our own version of the collaboration. We're stoked to be part of The Erin Simpson Show's "jumpin june" contest. Viewers can win passes to mountains, bungees, and to shop with us and win some great Rossignol Snowboards!

We've got some great things in the works for the winter, so come check us out online!

peace, amy

Rip It!

Hey Team,

sorry about the tardiness in posts, has been hectic in Base land with plenty of action on site where Base2 will take up residence in a couple of short weeks. Lots of new gear has been turning up and we are expecting to see K2 Skis, K2 snowboards and Ride Snowboards all arrive tomorrow, yeah. I must say i'm pretty excited to see the new K2 boards, i'm so ready to go snowboarding.
But that's not what i'm here to tell you about, i'm going to fill you in on an excellent documentary i watched online over the weekend. It's called Rip: A Remix Manifesto and it's a look at the world of copyright and how it affects music film and television. I found it to be very revealing, it points out some very serious flaws with our current copyright laws and shows how indebted we are to all the popular culture that has come before us to create what we have today. I find it extrodinary that multinational companies can copyright music or images that they or those that produced the work copied from older works themselves. The great thing about this film though is how it is being distributed, it is in selected cinema's but is also available to watch online at http://www.opensourcecinema.org/ chapter by chapter, you are also encouraged to download the film yourself and remix it, adding your own images or music, then to upload your work to http://www.opensourcecinema.org/ so it can then be cut back up together to make a new version 2.0 of Rip: A Remix Manifesto
The Documentary centers around one of my favourite artists Girltalk. Girltalk is a mashup artist, someone who takes small parts of songs and tweaks and layers them creating new music in the process. It would have been good to see some other mash up artisits like 2ManyDj's get in there, but this is mainly a US based film, though there is a great section about Baile Funk in Brazil which is awesome.
The first chapter is posted here, i recommend checking out the whole thing.

peace and good beats