Best Snow Of The Season

It has been a mixed week with every conceivable weather condition culminating in today's 20cm deep freshies up top.

On Monday the entire mountain was covered in a layer of ice - thanks to the rain freezing. Then new snow fell on top of it making narrow windblown fingers of fluff.

Tuesday was sunny and six of us did Dead Horse Gap. It was by far the best out back ski I have had all season. The snow got better the lower we went and the final descent was on firm smooth base with 3-5cms of light dry on top - simply lovely.

We only got part of the forecast snow and rain this week. Gale force winds were the name of the game on Wednesday. Many lifts were on wind hold but Antons T-bar provided access to some great windblown. I could travel from Antons to Wiamea in seconds-flat. Stretch out my arms and using the 80kph winds I was travelling up to 40kph on the flat. Wiamea was OK but the lower section had a lot of sastrugi.

Late Wednesday the rains began again, just in time for the Rip Curl freeride comp behind the tennis courts. Yesterday I decided to stay in bed as the rain kept tumbling down.

Then around 9:30pm last night the snow started falling and by this morning there was a layer of dry white across the village. The Kosi queue started early but there were freshies to be had all over. The grooming had finished early before much of the new snow fell and so Supertrail, World Cup, True Blue and much more were groomed flat with about 10cms of dry windblown on top - just awesome. After two top-to-bottom runs I dived into the Basin where vis was 5m maximum. The Rim Run had boot deep dry snow.

Here I found Mrs Chook and later Marion. There was hardly anyone else in the Basin, not surprising as the vis was so bad and the wind-chill was around -20C. It was cold but the snow was great and we got untracked run after run. When Kasee arrived in Eagles Nest for coffee, he said exactly what we had already said, "that it was the best snow of the season".

Ski Patrol then suggested I do FunnelWeb (my first time this season) and definitely worth the run.

Duncan returning after a fun Monday morning

Top of Karels T-bar on Tuesday morning

Janece and Alan following Marion, Jerry and Linda out of bounds

Jerry and the variable snow up high

Untracked wind-packed powder below tree line

Linda at the bottom of DHG

Marion's last turns before the bridge

Preparation and start of the Rip Curl Freeride event on Wednesday night

Untracked groomers this morning
tracked very quickly

FunnelWeb late morning
Lynne on the thinner exit

The extreme cold and bad vis prevented me getting any photos of our deep tracks off the Rim Run this morning.

It is still snowing and blowing and -6.1C up top :-)

I have now tested my new Rossi skis in boot deep powder and every other conceivable condition. Although stiffer than my old K2s, I love the Rossi skis. Rosco and Traktorman will have to try them out.