Our friends Down Under are getting the goods!

Just came back from Thredbo yesterday evening.  For early season that was a great weekend.  Around six or seven inches of snow on the hill over three days (plus the snowmaking tally) and a ski demo day to boot.  Lots of fun.

Skis waxed and edges tuned and ready to go..... the keen (earning their turns) have been out for about a month already....

We hit the opening weekend over three weeks ago.  Pretty good for the opening bell.  Work commitments mean I'm not sure when we'll be back down, although for sure we'll be down there again.  It's only a 330 minute drive (with good traffic getting out of Sydney)  

Yep, it's looking good.  I'm off tomorrow for two weeks in Thredbo, followed by another two weeks mid-August.  The much cheaper (if you got in early), season passes make it better value too.

Here's the link to check Thredbo conditions.  http://www.thredbo.com.au/mountain/

Perisher has 44 of 47 lifts open already and a base of 82cm of natural snow. Best it has been in July for a long time and 150 plus snow guns help!  Last weekend we found fresh stashes all over. Back this weekend and continuous until mid September when our 30 something day local season should give us a total of over 70 when our 7 weeks in Crested Butte and Telluride is included.  

Aussies are happy now..

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trekchick 

I would love to see Trip Reports from those who live in the Southern Hemisphere.  That is an area we've been lacking for a bit and we need an injection of snow fun!!!

Trekchick, who's got time for trip reports - we're skiing :)

check out www.ski.com.au 's forums or facebook's aussieskier.com for plenty of pics

Lil Vet and I are off to Falls Creek (aka 'Flat Creek')  this week sometime, TC. Lil Vet has to learn to drive ....and watch out for hazards like kangaroos, wombats and speed cameras. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=447943128570738&set=a.121185347913186.12935.111614212203633&type=1&ref=nf Here's a link to tonight's sunset pic at Falls Creek

Saw this .... and I never realised that Warren Miller translates his films into english just for us :) http://youtu.be/PhlZUQp-Y0M 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trekchick 

A couple months into the season, wondered how the snow is shaping up. 

The ,lower hills (5000') of Buller, Baw Baw and Mt Selwyn aren't faring well. The snowgods bring fog in on weekends like clockwork. It's poured with rain and there's a lot of very unhappy people as punters with toboggans take up slopes. Politicians are getting an ear bashing as the skiable area gets jammed with snowplayers, 30 minute lift lines, and heaps of empty chairs going up because punters can't organise themselves. Line-jumpers abound.

The higher hills have a respectable base and wider runs more like bowl skiing, but its thin cover on firm snow but perfectably skiable. The clouds are low so the sun is out, and best off all, the higher hills are 'only' 5 hours drive from the city (compared to 3 for the lower hills) so there's no crowds.

One friend at Buller got 2 runs for his 2x 3 hour drive, we got a full day for our 2 x 5 hour drive, and for almost nothing extra we caught the bus the hill and I had 2 x 50 minute naps. Another friend flies from Melbourne to Sydney to Cooma, rents a car and skiis Perisher (a 8 hour drive from Melbourne) for weekends. Is he a nut? Well he racks up frequent flyer points and gets free business class seats to Tahoe where they're returning in 2013 for a month. So if you think you're hardcore and you want to ski in your old age, tough up and get a really fuel efficient car coz climate change looks real to me. 

Hopefully the 2012/13 season in Norcal doesn't mimic Mt Buller's as claimed by old patrollers from Squaw. 

PS: I can't find that youtube video

Thredbo has been receiving small-but-regular snowfalls lately and looks in tip top shape.  Heading down this coming Friday for a four day weekend, so I'll report back (with a few photos) next week.  We were lucky to find somewhere to stay - the place is nearly booked solid.

Just bought a used pair of Head iXRC 1400 Chip RF as a short carver.  Gave them a going over on Sunday; cleaned up the topsheet a little, sharpened the edges, hot waxed the bases, and they're good to go.  More importantly, I brought back a pair of 184cm MX78s (with Marker Comp 16s) from the US in March.  Looking forward to trying them both.

Watch this space ...

[Edit]   Hmmm ... the pics had blue skies when I pasted them.  Seems they're updating along with the snow cams.  Cool!

Friends in their eighties just decided 'that's all folks' and cancelled their 9 day booking at Mt. Buller. The natural just hasn't come, and I blame Al Gore. Sheese everything was fine until he invented stupid climate change :)

Lapping the limited man made runs doesn't excite them - it'd be like only doing a very crowded Squaw Creek Run (only 1/2 as wide) that's chocabloc full of beginners and people out of control.

They figure this be their last year skiing in Oz and have their eyes set on Europe or retiring to their beach property.

Have a look at the map on the Resorts page for falls creek, and you'll see FC is midway between a) Buller & mansfield town  and Jindabyne town and Thredbo & Perisher.

Hotham & Falls Creek are 2 hours more on the road than Buller is.

Hoitham & Falls  are higher and get slightly different microclimates compared to Buller.

The snowgods are vicious and evilly plonk clouds on Buller on the weekend just to annoy everyone.

The snow gods are indeed capricious.  Today is a bluebird day at Thredbo, yet for the last four days (when we were there) it was cold, windy, foggy, rainy, sleeting, hailing and (occasionally) snowing.  One of those trips when you get wet down in the valley, snowed on half way up the lift, then cop a blast freeze cycle towards the top (with a free dermabrasion treatment thrown in) and then all the snow and ice shatters off your outfit when you stand up off the chair.  The first 100 yards of the run were in fog - skiing by braille and dodging beginners (who were frozen in more ways than one) - before the viz opened up and allowed people to get skiing.  Ah well ... at least we were skiing.

I'll post a few pictures when I get them downloaded.

Well my annual corporate race was given the green light, + a little thing with exposure to 10,000 parents and kids. (It coincides with a US-Canada-Alaskan travel expo in Melbourne so there'll be a lot of eyes looking to travel to the northern winter.) Woohoo, I might be a freeskier yeybut being a 'tax deductible' skier is the next best thing!

OK, here we go.  These are from a week ago - before the recent snowfalls.

A couple of examples of snow sculpture.  It was (Veuve) 'Clicquot in the Snow' week, so lots of orange outfits and bunting around the village.  This work was just behind Kareela Hutte on the way up the main quad chair (Kosciuszko Express).  That's Kareela's 'truck'.

Getting a bit revved up over the Olympics.

Turn left from the Olympic signage and you see the mid station.  My first post (post no. 2 above) is a photo taken from that chair just as you emerge from the trees on the other side of the station.  As you can see, the weather was a tad dreary.  It got worse the next day, but that wasn't a day for taking out the camera.

Taken from the Gunbarrell chair looking down at the beginner's slope - Friday Flat.  For about the first forty five seconds of this chair you get to watch the antics of the 'never evers', which can be fun.  We've all been there at one stage.

Further toward the top we get to see some of the more challenging terrain in the Glades.  The attitude of the chairs gives an indication of the wind level.

Of course they can't all be gorgeous, bluebird days.  But giraffe dude lightened the mood for a bit.  And the guy next to him seems to be wearing a hat and a tux.  Don't know what the guy in front did to his hood.

So, that was the latest trip.  At this stage we're planning to head back down in early September, and perhaps we'll get some sunny early spring skiing on that trip.

In terms of the new skis; Head XRC 1400 Chip RF, really fun skis, less turny than I had anticipated, a 14.3m radius ski that prefers medium turns over tight turns, damp but with good energy out of the turn; Kastle MX78, this one's been well documented hereabouts, just a great ski, 20m radius in 184cm means it takes on everything with a great deal of poise.

Mt Hotham was bedlam last week with cars stranded for 6 hours due to a dump and perhaps because people didn't have snow chains or can't drive in snow: hey, we're not used to snowy roads like you guys. Buller's line  to the tollgate was banked up for miles as well on the bluebird Sunday. It's dumping again this weekend in time for Interschools racing, the 2nd Inaugural William Angliss Team Challenge  and the Buller Knights awesome Wild West party.

What a weekend!

On the way up, we were running late - I had to get racing bibs to Race Dept before they closed. A tree fell - without warning - on the car in front, and the driver was in between the tree's forks, snug, safe and shaken. She was cut out by locals who had chainsaws. Cars 'parked' for miles - and Semi trailers came to a rapid and unexpected halt -'parking' in the wrong lane as they overshot the 'parked' cars. Ambulance etc were called and we cleared the road of the tree, and were on our way.

The lovely tollbooth people at Buller let us up free. The taxi service loaded the gear to Race Dept and then we went and set up banners and stuff before retiring for a really delicious dinner at the Ski Club of Victoria. A huge eye fillet and sticky date pudding was $30! I shouldda have the Barramundi (fish) for desert.

At 7.am the lift company opened the chairlift for us, and 138 racers had the sealed-off slopes to ourselves

We ran the race in fog but luckly it wasn't peasoup thick. The sun tried to peak through, but it couldn't cut the mustard.

There was a very large turn out for the Presentations (and my team ol buggers won our age group :)

Sunday started clear, fogged up and transformed itself into a blue bird day. We caught up with a lot of people, networked, and set up a stall for the Interschools racing this week. The crew from William Angliss came up to take over, and we headed off but a huge car accident (2 fatalities at least) at Bonnie Doon caused a 4-5 hour delay so we wandered into a new upmarket bar/pizza place in Bonnie Doon and we finally got home around midnight.

What a weekend!