It's Snow Jim But Not As We Know It

I was awoken briefly, early this morning, to that lovely sound - snowmaking. It looked like almost every gun had a blast at some stage as I could see hints of white all over the resort. By 7:00am only the lower guns were still blazing and as the man made white cloud lifted I could see snow on Merritts, Sponars and around the base of the valley lifts. Friday Flat also received some serious consideration.

The overnight temperature dropped to -4C, the coldest in quite some time. It rained all Friday, Saturday and Sunday. If the temperature had dropped just 3C we could well have seen 80cms of natural snow fall over the weekend. Alas it rained rather than snowed and the rain made it really difficult for the ski patrollers refresher course when it came to standing on wet, slippery grass under Snowgums chair for evacuation practice.

The forecast has overnight temperatures continuing to drop sub zero so more snowmaking can be expected.

I think it was very wise of the company to not have been making snow any earlier, considering we had almost 100mm of rain over the extended weekend period.

So, we have our first snow - not natural but I'll take anything at this stage. We have been spoilt the last three years having had natural falls in April and May prior to season start.

Merritts chair got a work out during the week.

Huge waterfalls cascading down the mountain in the heavy rains
Swaggies and above & below top of Gunbarrel

Ski Patrollers under Snowgums chair with a loooong ladder

Snowmaking on lower Supertrail and the base of Kosi chair this morning

Snowmaking on lower Sundance

After the guns were turned off

After the sun had got stuck in

My new skis arrived last Friday. My first pair of "new" skis in 8 years. These are the skis that I received from winning 2nd prize in last year's the Ski Patrol raffle. Yes, it can happen. A big THANK YOU ROSSIGNOL for donating the prize to the ski patrol. And I promise to buy even more tickets this year. I have my eyes set on first prize - a week for 2 in Snowmass ;-)