Winding Up the Wind

The subject on everyone's lips this past week has been 'the wind'. There were a few small snow falls and the visibility has wandered from very poor to excellent but there has always been the wind.

The wind started up the day after my last report and at times the wind chill up top was below -20C but the snow remained squeaky dry.

Tuesday the wind blew more snow off the slopes than on and yet Lindsay and I searched all over for those short elusive wind drifts that had a lot of bouncy hard packed (if not icy) sections above and below.

Wednesday morning arrived with the announcement of 5cms of fresh but the quality wind-blown meant it was 10-15cms deep in many places. My second run was from the top of Karels in untracked snow, across the glazed flat section to the deep untracked wind blown on the Rim Run then down Swaggies in delightful dry powder to Cannonball and finally onto True Blue where, although ungroomed, 5+cms of untracked fresh completed a great run. From here Jamie ran me ragged with repeat runs down Cannonball and similar lines until there were no more untracked turns.

After such a great day I was disappointed with Thursday. I didn't enjoy it at all as I was having issues with the wind-slab on the upper mountain and I just couldn't get it together and pulled an early plug.

Today the temperature up top finally clawed its way out of minus figures. The good side to this has been the softening of the ever-expanding polished concrete sections within the resort.

Wind drifts forming on Karels on Tuesday

The wind forming tidal waves over Eagles Nest yesterday

Funnel Web

Cannonball

The Bluff

Antons

Michael's Mistake

A general look at the resort yesterday afternoon

And finally the Meadows snow depth indicator
indicating little change

The forecasts don't give much hope of any major improvements, forecasting a repeat of the past week. This leaves Kerry's birthday dump (August 15th) in some doubt, unless the next system slows and brings more than what is currently forecast for Monday. We live in hope. I think I will go touring tomorrow.

Get well soon Pam.

Those other issues: I've had a pretty rough summer that (except for just a few short visits) led to me being away from Thredbo for the best part of 8 months. Despite that, as far as I can see, nothing has improved in regards to the body corporate at Squatters Run, which has led to a whole new set of grumps, the first of which you can read at: wikigrumps/4579700901_2015040404/.