After almost six months, my snowboard gear finally arrived in New Zealand last week. I immediately got myself onto a trip to Awakino with a group from university, and had a great couple of days, involving a steep and fast rope tow, headtorch snowboarding on saturday night, and a couple of hours splicing the rope on the ridge tow on sunday in a freezing wind and 5 metres visibility. Hopefully the first of many trips to the ‘kino.