A Week of Contrasts

The week had a bit of everything but the net result was a little less snow than it started with. There was rain and snow and finally sun.

Monday: wet and miserable and I didn't bother going out - I don't do rain. Finally, the rain turned to snow and it started settling in Thredbo Village.

Tuesday: I awoke to the sound of snowploughs on the road in the early morning - love that sound. According to forecasts and studying the charts this looked quite promising. All that exposed grass was recovered with white stuff. But the east coast low that deposited 10-15cm of fresh cover brought what I can only describe as
Thredbo's own version of Sierra Cement - wet, deep & heavy and a real work over for the legs and back. Strangely it was deepest was below Eagles Nest around the mid slopes. Looking for drier snow I found that Karels was an ice mine field.

Wednesday: no wind + no snow that was in the tree tops 12 hours earlier + fog = soft, moist and slow going on the slopes. It was mizzle (mist & drizzle) conditions across the mountain. Best runs I found were High Noon & Exhibition. The off piste was sort of OK. Everything was faster than the day before.

Thursday: it was a return to the clear form of precipitation. It started around 4am and stopped around 7am and the grass had started to reappear again. I didn't go out.

Friday: fresh snow but not as you want it. It was slow at the top and so I stuck to skier's left of Supertrail where the cats, returning the sheds, had re-ploughed after the snow fall. On my first run, upon reaching BunnyWalk I took a line just a couple of metres to the right of my fall line run and wallop - over the handle bars I went. More super glue. Lucky Phil said all he could see was legs and skis. I went a little slower on my second run ;-)

Saturday: I awoke to the sound of snow guns. A lovely sound that I haven't heard for a considerable number of days/weeks. The sun was breaking through the clouds and there was fresh snow in the tree tops from around mid station to the top.

Although I accidentally arrived extra early (8am) at the Kosi lift queue it was already considerable in length. There had been no crowds all week until today. Of course it was the fresh snow, sunshine and being a weekend that was responsible but I had got used to nothing queues during the week.

After a warm and moist day yesterday, the coldest part of the night/morning today was at 7:30am. As we quickly found out on our first run, the base had snap frozen after the groomers had being dealing with the soft wet base. The result was frozen groomer tracks, some death cookies and, in places, a dusting of natural and man-made on the frozen base. My first run was my best run. Thin freshies on World Cup before switching to freshies on Hump Run where I could hear the ice but not feel it ;-) True Blue was like a race course and early runs on Exhibition were nice. The double digit sub zero wind chill has started blowing dry snow around. Wind drifts tomorrow?

I've started with the same shot as I finished last week's report

Tuesday morning - fresh snow

The off piste looked inviting before first run ;-)

Wednesday morning - first chairs on SnowGums as Kosi chair was de-iced

In the background: The backside of the meadows snow depth indicator
and how it looked this morning from Kosi chair

Antons on Wednesday with fresh snow still in the tress

Thursday morning and afternoon as the grass reappeared around Sundance

This morning (Saturday) and the grooming is solid

Bottom of the Hump Run was my first and best run of the morning

Drift net fishing on World Cup ;-)

Forecasts say clear sunny skies and little win early next week. I might just go touring :-)

After numerous complaints and comments to me during the week, I would like to make a suggestion to KT. For the past week there has been a "G" against Little Beauty on the KT "Trail Status" web page. In the past the "G" indicated that the run had been groomed overnight. As Little Beauty hasn't been groomed in a very long time, I can only imagine KT staff have used white-out to block the "G" on their computer screens, not realising that everyone else can still see it. Of course I might be completely wrong and the "G" might now mean something else - it certainly doesn't stand for "Good" and I bet it's gone as soon as someone in KT reads this report ;-)

Just a quickie grump today: wikigrumps/4579700901_2015071710/.