Fully aware that this is anybodies race, we decided to head out on 2 hours sleep, circulating the sleepers and drivers in the back! We got out the house much faster too because we’re learning from our mistakes that there really is very little time to hang around to meet the slopes closing times. We started our thir dna final day off by darting across the country to get on Gloucestershire Ski & Snowboard Centr eat the 10 am opening, only to get there and find out that there had been a visit from another team at 9:30…sneaky sneaky (we regret not thinking ahead and trying that one ourselves!) This slope was a strange one combining both dendex and snowflex half way down one of their two slopes. The result was a steep incline of snowflex that had been worn down to wood in places which made all 4 of us fall flat on our faces, and then the soaking wet dendex catapulted us to the bottom (it was raining). All in all, we only gave this a rating of 2 carrots because the staff didn’t really seem that enthusiastic and the slopes bizarre combination of materials was getting a bit old and was covered in wet leaves. We got the impression it wasn’t very well loved 
Next we headed down to Avon Ski Centre, Bristol, swapping drivers because the lack of sleep forced shorter turns on the wheel. We liked this slope for all sorts of reasons! The centre itself had alpine styling and it was surprisingly tall (made it steep for a painful fall or two!). This, and the lengthy lift over a bridge gave the impression of being a bit more… “alpine”? We could see this being even better on a nice day and not raining down on us! Unlike some of the simpler straigt courses this also curved around two corners which forced you to practice your carved turns more which is good! Dendex made this REALLY painful when it went wrong though! Ouch! We gave Avon ski centre a very respectable 4 and a half carrots. I awarded them the extra half a carrot because the staff were pretty...
Glostashur!
Rain now getting heavier by the minute we pushed on down to our first 50 pointer. Hooray! If you ever try to find Clifton Sports Centre, please, please enter from the north of Exeter rather than do what we did and make a tiredness induced satnav mistake and end up having to drive through the entire town. Exeter was traffic HELL. All the roads crossed over each other with seemingly no structure whatsoever and each was packed to stand still with cars. THIS IS NOT GOOD IN A RACE!!! Amazingly this is the first real traffic proble mwe came across in the entire three days but ironically today is the most impossible route… So losing an hour in the depths of exeter may be our undoing when it dcomes to the results!
Eventually we found the slope, after accidently driving up a field, but the woman there VERY kindly let us on an hour and a half before the next available slot. She earns carrots for this 
The run itself was as average as they get really. Nothing bad about it, but nothing that stands it out above the rest. A simple straight gradient with our first ever rope lift, pretty short and in the middle of nowhere. We actually prefered the simple rope lift to the nasty wakeboard-esque lift handles but we figured this is only really any god for a couple of runs. Give it an hour and you wouldn’t be able to use your arms any more! Two and a half carrots? Yeah, Exeter needs a bigger slope and less traffic!
Pouring rain
Frustratingly for the entire team, because of the traffic problems, our insanely tight schedule (and pretty impossible from the start) had to be altered as we went along. This meant Plymouth was out of the question, losing us another 50 pointer! So we decided to pop dow to torquay, grab another cheeky 50 points and then see what we could do along the way back to Milton Keynes, where we have to be at the finish line for 7pm at the latest else we may as well have stayed in bed!
Torquay Apline Ski Slopes was in the middle of nowhere! This was kind of good because it meant the slope was huge but it also meant we felt a bit like we were on crystal maze, making our way through intercommed coded security gates, several locked doors and dead ends, a few flights of stairs etc. Hard to judge this one really because while the gear was unloaded we fiddled with the satnav (our best friend and worst enemy) and to our horror, if we ignored any of the four possible slopes we were thinking of visiting, we still wouldn’t get back to Milton Keynes till 6:30… This was our final slope whether we liked it or not! Overall we only awarded it 2 carrots because of the confusing access and lack of signs or people!
Again...rain (torquay)
And so ends our frantic final days slopes! I’m writing this in the car as we pin it back up the country to a final run at Milton Keynes. Miss satnav lady is predicting 6:26 but the weather is getting worse and worse so we can barely see the roads. In a few hours we’ll have the results of the first ever Snowball Rally! Mood in the car is optemistic because we know the end is in sight and we’ve ever stopped hitting slopes. Everything we’ve heard from the slopes indicates we’re hitting a lot more slopes than others…. but its the ones we havn’t heard of that we’re scared off! We’re a little disapointed in ourselves because I think we all assumed 37 would be achievable. Once opening times were revealed and the car hit the road though, we’ve had to accept its probably physically impossible (unless we’re proven otherwise). The scariest thing is this being the first ever competition. We have absolutely no idea how well we’ve done whatsoever! Fingers crossed!
Jackrabbitt Tom
