World Heli Challenge 2010
It was awesome to be back in NZ again for the 2010 World Heli Challenge! It was a great feeling to turn up to Lake Hawea for the opening party to see so many familiar faces from 2009 Heli Challenge and to meet so many more! The competition had a one week window to run this year instead of the 2 week window we had last year. We had some weather come through on the first weekend but it cleared for us to get off the ground on the Tuesday the 3rd of August. We flew up to our Freestyle venue but unfortunately the weather that had come through hadnt been as kind as we would have liked, the crunchy and unstable conditions did not allow us to run the judged event as planned. Putting this aside we all took full advantage of being up in heli accessed terrain on the most magnificent day and hit a big kicker that we built, and played around on anything we could find.
On the Thursday we had another beautiful flying day so we flew up to a new face to hold our extreme day competition. We arrived to our venue, it was big that was for sure! It had a lot of options and fun looking lines to ride but as the case with the freestyle day the conditions were tough!!! We all got lifted to the top to check it out, the snow was crispy to say the least. I wish I had rethought my line while I was up there but decided to stick with the steep face that I had planned to ride.....My board got hooked up on my first turn and I fell...bugger!! ( I ended up in 6th place). I dont know if anyone was really stoked with their run but we all got down unharmed. We only had the one run that day. Although we did not get the powder runs of our lives like we did in last years Heli Challenge I definately still took away so much from this incredible experience. We can't control the weather, but Harro put on an incredibly fun event regardless. What the snow lacked, the rally cars, the helicopter rides, the Corona and Jagermeister sponsorships, the Deer Muster, the Beach trip, the nights out at Lake Hawea, and most importantly the athletes I got to meet while there made this event what it is.....AWESOME!!!!!!
There is some footage and photos to check out on www.worldhelichallenge.com