Ski review: Blizzard Bonafide & Nordica Fire Arrow 84 EDT

I tried out a couple of skis yesterday from the latest range of skis on the Turoa ski field at Mt Ruapehu. The conditions were a mixture of hard packed, soft, crud and a little bit of ice but not a huge amount.

Blizzard Bonafide 2016 - 173cm - with a 98mm waist width I was looking at them in the context of an all mountain ski that is suitable with powder. These skis really wanted to move and skied well over a mixture of snow conditions but I found they were a bit hard to turn. The difficulty turning may have been due to me not being sufficiently heavy to drive these (~75kg) or maybe just not having much experience with a ski of this width. NZ$1399 (without bindings).

Nordica Fire Arrow 84 EDT 2015/2016 - 176cm - these skis felt great and natural to ski as soon as I headed off. I also felt a great sense of stability on the hard packed snow and felt these went well through a mixture of snow conditions (although the Bonafide was a bit smoother through the crud). With quite a stubby nose and next to no rocker, these were very responsive to turn but I expect they won't be the best in too much soft snow. NZ$2199 (with bindings).

Deep powder in Niseko

With the help of somebody who had been here previously we were acquainted with some ridiculously deep snow in Niseko. The majority of the time you couldn’t see your skis and the powder was knee to shoulder-deep high.

My tips managed to break through.

We also had some more good meals out; a Hama pot (which had lots of shellfish, many of which I didn’t know what they were) and Ramen.

Skiing (inc Après skiing) at Niseko

After a couple of nights in Sapporo we caught a bus to the Hirafu Village which is one of the villages at the base of the Niseko snow paradise. In addition to the bus pass we also purchased a package for 8 hours skiing/boarding on the mountain for a heavily reduced discount.
Hirafu is the largest of the villages at the base of Niseko and the roads / footpaths can be a bit icy.
Niseko is known for having some of the best powder skiing in the world. For our first couple of days the weather was abnormal with beautiful blue skies, great visibility and semi-soft dry snow (which was still better than the snow 90% of the time at Mt Ruapehu). The majority of the people at our accommodation were however complaining about the weather though, since it meant a lack of fresh powder.
Night skiing is on every evening and it’s not a small part of the field. It is a mammoth area and there are a lot less people around. We went up when there was some light snow coming down and it was superb.
I didn’t bring my skis with me to Japan since they are too short and not fat enough for the conditions. This has meant I’ve been able to try out some different skis.

• Solomon Shogun - good all round ski, little bit of lift in powder. Very small rocker. More effort to turn than I'm used to. Probably not great on ice.
• Solomon Rocker 2 - huge rocker, loves deeper snow, manageable but not great on hard packed snow, skis quite short because of the large rocker.

On the mountain itself we have been impressed with the quality of the food which has also been well priced. I had a Chicken teriyaki set one day for 1200 yen (about NZ$17)which had chicken teriyaki, vegetables, rice, miso and a small potato salad. There are also options of tempura, sushi, ramen and more. We even skiied to the Hilton one day for lunch.
What has been really interesting is how Niseko doesn’t feel like Japan at all. It is like an Australian ski village; there are so many Aussies here. Everywhere speaks english as the first language and many of the staff in places don’t know Japanese.
Off the mountain there is an excellent après skiing scene and “The fridge” (officially known as Gyu+) is our most regular haunt. It is a great cocktail bar with drinks such as Hot Buttered Rum, Hot Apple Pie, Espresso Martini, Ume Mojito, Unpasteurised Sake. It also has a superb entrance and great ambiance inside.
Wild Bill's is more of a pub than a classy establishment, but good fun. We also found a table upstairs to play table soccer at with an old workmate of Chris’s and their other half.
Moon bar is also similar but quite a bit smaller and they have a free pool table.
In terms of restaurants there are a good selection in Hirafu although you do need to book at many. We had a good Giant Red Crab meal, ramen, burgers and more. There are a lot of options.
There is an International Money machine in Hirafu at 7 Bank located at Yama Shizen on Sasayaki Ave. There is also a good Onsen that overlooks the ski field at Yumoto Niseko Prince Hotel.

NZSki is making great use of RFID to enhance customer service

I went skiing yesterday and was impressed with how NZSki is using RFID to enhance customer service.

I started the day by going into the Queenstown Snowcentre to buy a ticket for the bus up to Coronet Peak. Instead I found I could buy my ticket for skiing as well, which was great. The queue was short and when I got to the counter I was asked if I had used NZSki before. I hadn’t, so the person serving me proceeded to ask my name, took my photo, and casually asked me where I was from.

Before I knew it, a plastic re-usable pass for the mountain had been printed for me with my name on it, a reference number and the fact I was an Adult and Male.

NB: Reference number blanked out in picture.

After a 25 minute bus ride, I was at Coronet Peak and then proceeded to the chair lift. What I then found was that at every chairlift and t-bar I went to during the day there was a gate to go through where you needed to hold your pass up to (typically there were 5 gates, one for each seat). This worked fine through my jacket, however for the first gate since I had my cell phone in the same pocket it didn’t work, but the liftie let me through anyway.

I also noticed that as each person went through, the liftie had an iPad that had pictures of who was coming through each gate so they were doing checks to see that people weren’t using other peoples passes.

There were also top-up machines located at both the snowcentre and near the ticket offices up the mountain, where you can use buy your ticket yourself without needing to go to the counter. Similarly, you can also buy your ticket from the comfort of your home through registering and logging in online (more about that later).

The whole process worked well and helped to keep the flow going (not that there was much of a queue today; it was in fact almost non-existent).

I had a superb day on the mountain. The conditions were excellent, beautiful blue sky in the morning (there was a little bit of cloud in the afternoon, although this was minimal and there was still unlimited visibility), no wind, great snow and almost non-existent queues. My legs and feet were a bit shocked by the exercise, but I still managed to do a decent number of runs.

Once I got off the mountain I went to the nzski.com mypass website, entered the reference number on my card and then proceeded to enter a username and password. Some details such as my name and city were already populated. What was also nice was the statistics displayed, showing how many metres I had descended and how many runs I had done (NB: this will be missing my first run, since they just let me through).

There are also leader boards of who has descended the most in the day, season etc. and who has done the most runs.

Today I went back to this site and purchased an afternoon pass for The Remarkables. It was all very simple to do.

I was impressed with how well RFID was used to enrich the customer experience.

<Cross-posted to http://gianouts.blogspot.com>