Blue skies are a wonderful thing. The sunlight is energising, and instantly improves the mood of all basking underneath.
They also have the effect of temporarily distracting you from the reality that it’s now late July, the snow is really rather crap, meanwhile all the other resorts are doing quite nicely.
Icy, blue groomers are not what this sport is about, and it’s at this stage of the year that you start wondering whether the real skiing will actually open for the year.
Even in snowmaking areas things are getting thin, which was exacerbated by the presence of race courses on the weekend. The lower left was unable to be groomed on Little Buller Spur due to the lack of snow, so in their infinite wisdom a race was held on the lower right, meaning the entire flow of traffic was forced onto the icy, lumpy, grassy section.
Burnt Hut Spur had a creek crossing it, and the trail back towards Shakey Knees was no longer skiable without taking off your skis.
Despite all this we still had some fun, late on Saturday when the cloud came over the greenhouse effect this often provides softened the ice & we had a ball on Wombat, and Sunday was a very social day catching up & skiing with lots of friends.
But the reality is that out of recent years, only 2006 has had less natural snow and we are now in desperate need of 50cm or more to get us off the snowmaking & on to the real mountain.
Here’s some photos from the weekend:
Weather is due late this week, at this stage it does not look like a significant storm, but even 15cm would make a difference. Jane’s Weather has indicated that something is coming but she will not comment on projected snow totals until tomorrow’s maps come out, so I will do the same.
Gear reviews are accelerating, check out my Oakley Airbrake review posted this morning, also I will be taking a number of Volkl skis to Buller on the weekend to check out.
Over 500 Instagram pictures have been hashtagged with the tag #aussieskier since the beginning of the season – if you want a window on the conditions at all the Australian resorts check out aussieskier.com/social, these are also published to our Facebook Page – be sure to ‘Like’ the page to have the pics posted direct to your newsfeed.
