'92, the season of the shovel!

Ruapehu Bulletin, Volume 10, Issue 454, 22 September 1992, Page 3 (Supplement)

'92, the season of the shovel!

BY

Marnie

WOODD

The 1992 winter season at Turoa will probably be better known as the season of the shovel. Turoa shovellers have

broken about 150 handles this year - twice as many as last year. The reason? Huge . snowfalls and bad weather. Assistant Mountain Manager Rob Finlayson said this year had been a bad season for weather but great for snow. "The two go hand in hand." MrTinlayson has been at Turoa for 11 seasons now and said this had been the worst season for heavy snow and bad weather. The skifield has been closed 27 days since it opened 93 days ago, and skier numbers are down

slightly on last year. Turoa has had progressively more snow each year since 1990. "1990 was a good season, 1991 there was even more snow and this year, well there 's heaps of snow," he said. There have been frustrated skiers aplenty at Mt Ruapehu this year, itching to get to the snow, but weather like gale force winds and blizzard conditions stopped them through the winter. "I think New Zealand skiers are more used to extreme weather compared to their counterparts in the Northern hemisphere," Mr

Finlayson said Predicting the weather on Mt. Ruapehu is no easy task. Turoa skifield is about 65km in a straight line from the Tasman Sea. So the situation is an alpine environment getting a maritime climatenot something that continental skifields, thousands of miles inland, have to deal with. Earlier on in the season people were frustrated that when the mountain did open some of the facilities, like the T-Bars, weren't working. Thick ice damaged the T-Bars earlier on. "We have had a lot of

days when the buildings and lifts have been completely buried," Mr Finlayson said. He gave one example. "The Moro Race T-Bar has six metre high towers, at the moment the middle three towers have about one metre showing above the snow and the drive and return stations at the top and bottom of the lift are completely buried, and that's despite many hours of digging and grooming work." Turoa has the only two ' chairlifts in New Zealand whose drive stations are on hydraulic legs. Turn to page 5