Manganui Ski Area - Taranaki, New Zealand

Sunday, 29 August 2010, 10:41:01 a.m....so sad to say? Well, its been a frustrating month of weather to say the least, with scuffs of snow hitting us but in no real quantities to enable us to get operation. Even our top tow has insufficient cover, and with rain events giving the mountain a work out, what snow we accumulate gets washed off. I talked to the Safety Services Corrdinator Nic Fountain on Thursday night, and he seems upbeat through what is obviously a frustrating season. He was off to Ruapehu the following day, to take a couple of participants in the MSC local Avalanche Awareness course through a day of field work, since our snow here is not as interesting! ...On a positive note, I managed to catch a session of the NZ Mountain Film Festival at the Arthouse Cinema. I walked away satisfied and wanting more. The kids even enjoyed their time at the arthouse cinema and certainly enjoyed the set-up there. Their favourite was 'Unfinished Business', a spof about constructing the top half of table top mountain in Captown South Africa, to make it a truely alpine, and the pros and cons of that, with rockclimbing and kite surfing in there. They gave a saying that this generation can relate to...“unfinished is the new finished“. Also, we recently received funding from Stratford District Council towards our SSC's wages... In this trying season obviously our cash flow is down; these are the seasons where members' subs help us survive, and are much appreciated. So where does the money go? I'll give a summary breakdown of our major annual expenses in the upcoming e-newsletter issue, due out next week.webmaster