A Visit To The Dark Side

The blue-sky days finally ended with dark clouds rolling in on Wednesday. There has been some rain but not nearly as much as earlier forecast, although I did skip going out on Thursday due to the inclement conditions. Today there was sago falling up at Merritts while occasional rain showers passed through the village. Yes I skied a couple of runs.

Yesterday, when the worst of the weather had been forecast, I went with Annie to the dark side (aka Perisher) for the ACT/Southern NSW interschool alpine ski races. It has been a long time since I last skied in Perisher so it was my first chance to ride the V8 8-seater chairlift that replaced the more familiar duplex t-bar of the distant past. I always thought the duplex delivered too many people to the top of the Front Valley but now with much of the Front Valley slope gone to large jumps for the occasionally boarder or skier, the masses pumped to the top by the V8 means non-stop Pitt Street conditions on the remaining Front Valley slope.

Yes, the snow is bad there too but I must admit I was quite surprised to see how much snow-making has been added to the myriad of traverses and short slopes. Due to the weather conditions the snow was wet and sloppy - the same as in Thredbo. The very interesting thing about Perisher is the fact that we never had our tickets checked, not even once. We did see a ticket checker on our first ride up the V8 but our tickets weren’t checked and from that point we never saw another ticket checker, not on the V8, the Perisher quad or any of the T-bars we rode all day. A bit of a waste of 2-day tickets, we certainly didn‘t need either.

The trip up and down did evoke a host of memories (all a bit nostalgic actually) of the many weeks and days I spent skiing Perisher as a much younger and less cynical individual ;-)

Annie made the decision to drive from Thredbo to Perisher, avoiding the Ski Tube. A good decision as we arrived only 10 mins later than we would have if we drove into Bullocks Flat a the time we were passing and we saved a wad of Pesos at the same time

Things aren't good at Perisher. Many runs and lifts are closed and I was told a heap of staff were laid off last week. Free lift rides probably wouldn't help either. Guthega is closed and rumour has it that Smiggs and Blue Cow aren't close behind. This of course says something very positive about Thredbo with all its top-to-bottom runs due to the massive snowmaking system.

Upper Supertrail earlier in the week

Bottom of the Basin, almost seems appropriate

Wednesday and the in-coming change has ended the string of blue-sky days

The queue for the V8 on the dark side

The interschools' racecourse on Front Valley

Hannah & Lucy awaiting their first run for Bega High

Perisher car park almost chockers

Pitt Street conditions on Front Valley for the punters

My old favourites, Olympic and Sun Valley both closed.

The forecasts are wide and varied and some are calling for a lot of snow tomorrow and into the new week. Considering we haven’t so far had the possible 20cms some forecasts predicted for today, it’s anyone’s guest how much snow we will see in the next week. My guess is for 50cms by Wednesday morning.

As I write this report the weather station says -2C and 1kph of wind. Me-thinks the wind-speed measurer (anemometer) is not very reliable as the wind is whistling around my balcony up in the 60kph range.

Waiting for the white stuff.

PS: The Saturday flare run and fireworks presented a very tasteful anniversary for the slide thirteen years ago.