Thredbo 2 August 2010
Sunday forecast was for good snow. We decided to head up the Snowy Mountains Highway on Sunday afternoon to see it first hand. There were periods of calm, periods of light snow and periods of very heavy snow. After mucking around on some side trails i dropped Mirandah back at her car and continued on to Thredbo. It was snowing at Pender Lea on the way up on Sunday night. I decided to do some truth testing on the amount of new snow being reported by the resorts. Drove up to Dead Horse Gap where there was light snow. I made it 25-30cm next to the "Dead Horse Gap" marker log, an area i guessed would have been grass before the snow started. The snow got heavier on the way back through Thredbo and it was coming down a bit harder at my camping spot.
I woke up early monday morning expecting it to be snowing but was greeted by partly cloudy sky. By the time i got up to Thredbo the sun was out. There was no wind. So much for bad conditions in the forecast. We considered heading over to Leatherbarrel Creek but a re-check of the forecast called for Blizzards. Trusting the BOM, it was a resort day. As i got my gear together in the car park the wind picked up and the clouds rolled in again. Seemed the forecast was going to be correct.
Sunny skies and Fresh Snow - Thredbo looking sensational.
Upper supertrail area.
Funnel Web and GCB areas.
Met Brian Wilson in the car park then we took our place in the queue for early lifts at Gunbarrel. It didn't look good. Still 10 or more chairs to load at 8.25am and the cable wasn't turning. 8.30am came around and still no action. At this stage the lifties informed us that there was a tree over the cable and that the lift wouldn't open for 20-30min. The rush for the bus was on. By the time we got over to the kosi lift our chances of scoring virgin runs were dashed.
Anyway we decided to head straight to the funnel web. We ended up being about 4-5th down for the day. Wilso skied it well, i struggled - that was the story of the morning. After half a dozen runs in a few areas i decided that i needed a blank canvas to work with so i convinced wilso that Stanley's was the place to go. Not so. The partially filled creek up high should have been a warning but i knew better. We ended up getting a dozen goods turns each in some very deep snow. However, lower down the deep snow had fallen on bare ground (or shrubs). Anyone who knows stanley's knows the 'shrubs' are big long flexy things that lie flat when they get loaded with snow. Turned out there hadn't quite been enough snow to fill in all the holes and the result was a very spongey incomplete cover with large crevasse like 2m holes everywhere in between pillows of pow. After getting about 100m down the creek it was clear we were not going to be able to ski to the car park so we decided to boot back up to Merrits. The vegetaion was a little friendlier on the slope up to Merrits but we were still sinking up to our thighs and getting caught up in bushes and rocks underneath. We eventually made it back in bounds after about an hour of slogging up the hill.
Wilso slogging it up to Merrits. The video is taken looking up a steep slope. The rear view doesn't do it justice. It wa sup to the thighes.
After that were were both shagged and over it. We called it a day. Bit of a shame because the snow was really coming down all afternoon.
I had a very good drive home via The Alpine Way. The snow was the heaviest i have ever seen past Dead horse Gap. The road had 20cm+ of snow on it in places. Trees were breaking under the weight of new snow all over the place. There was the odd idiot who attempted the rad in a Falcon without chains, needless to say they got stuck and couldn't go forward or backward.
A bit of snow driving and havy snow over the weekend.
The snow was falling down to about 800m on the western side of the range and the rain lower down was very icey also.