Biggest Snowfall of the Season?

Snow began falling late on Thursday night and dropped to village level at 7:00am. The snow continued until around 4:00pm. We received around 25cm up high and 5-10 in the village. Not huge but probably the biggest this season.

First thing on Friday morning, I made the mistake of going onto World Cup and finding out that there was very little base under the fresh untracked snow. I hit a couple of rocks on my first run. Thursday’s rain, which had fallen over even the highest peaks, had done a lot of damage and opened up holes and creeks, while the new snow did a great job of hiding the rocks. I found really nice boot-deep fresh snow off Karels but in the poor visibility I also managed to find more rocks. I was avoiding anything that resembled a bump in the snow but that wasn’t enough. Ronnie finally got my rock hoppers for a major rebuild. I had torn out a lot of p-tex and really roughed up the already blunt edges in just a couple of hours.

Friday night saw the temperature drop to –10C and this really froze up everything that had been skied on the day before. After only one run down a very hard Supertrail on Saturday morning, I joined three friends and we made our way west from the resort. Our target was Mt Kosciusko. Skinning up in the fresh untracked snow was simple but traversing the same was slow. The Kosi cornice looked great but we found variable conditions on our descent – firm and deep soft snow.

As our final destination was to pick up a car at Dead Horse Gap, we climbed out of Cootapatamba and up to the top of North Ramshead before making a line for Bogong. The east facing slopes were much better than the west (now getting very soft and wet in the setting sun). The final drop down to Dead Horse Gap was not the most pleasant. The untracked was very heavy while the tracked areas were getting icy. Wine and nibbles made for a great end to a big day out.

Friday’s snow fall - at its height

Saturday’s target – Mt Kosciuszko

Wazza getting some early out-of-resort turns

Trekking towards Kosi, Lake Cootapatamba, the final climb, the top

Peter dropping off the south ridge towards Jackie below

Wazza’s turn

Those that followed in our wake

Time to go to lunch

Jackie’s zipper line under the cornice, lunch in the valley below

Jackie and Peter below Ramshead, above Bogong and the Roulettes (we think) over DHG

Saturday was probably the best out-back snow conditions this season, while Friday held some of the best in-resort conditions.

Sunday was ordinary – overcast, windy, sloppy lower slopes and not much inclination to do anything. The slopes however are in a much-improved state from last Thursday and more snow is forecast in the next week. Spring skiing is looking decidedly better than winter skiing has.

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