The weather during last week was pretty ‘special’ – gusts up to 140km/h & torrential rain meaning Wed/Thu were pretty much a write-off as far as skiing was concerned.
The rain turned to snow around 1am on Friday morning, and by all accounts the skiing was pretty good on Friday arvo.
We arrived that evening and the wind was still particularly strong, I had low expectations about the weekend as I felt the storm was too energetic and would be doing more damage than could be repaired by the snowfall.
As it turns out I was partially right but thankfully wrong also – while the Northside and Summit areas were scoured by the wind, it had blown vigorously into the Bull Run and Federation bowls, filling in all the bumps and buffing them absolutely smooth.
The temperature unfortunately rose during the early hours of Saturday but the winds dropped as well. We headed out not knowing what to expect and were extremely content with what we found – a deserted Bull Run bowl caked smooth in a layer of creamy new snow. It was sublime, in fact one untracked run on Hog’s Back was probably my best for the year. The mountain was deserted and there was virtually no competition for the untracked snow so we hit many of our favourite lines and had a ball.
However the temps continued to rise and brought the rain with it, so it became a pretty soggy affair and the snow turned more glue-like, so we decided to pack it in at about 12:30 which is by far our earliest finish of the year, but we still had some fantastic runs early.
I took out the Suunto Ambit GPS watch for its first test drive, here is what it recorded for Saturday. I want to ski with it a lot more and do some ski touring before I write a review, but if you want to know anything in the interim ask a question on our Facebook page and I will do my best to answer.
No pics due to the poor weather & visibility.
Saturday morning dawned sunny and was bluebird all day. Even though the temps were warm there was a chill in the breeze which meant that a lot of the Southside that froze overnight didn’t thaw unless you were in the edges of the bowls that have the Easterly or Westerly aspects. So Northside skiing was the go and we did a ton of laps in the Grimus area before we decided to explore around Southside and finally Bull Run.
Click here for Sunday’s GPS tracks.
Took some photos but not a huge amount today:
Overall it has been a great weekend of spring skiing, and I’ve decided to sneak in Monday as well, the temperature is forecast to be a little higher with winds from the North which means there is some tasty terrain which didn’t thaw today that should yield some lovely corn snow tomorrow, keep an eye out for the pics and the report.
Tons of Instagrams arrived this weekend with the #aussieskier hashtag – all the resorts were covered and it looked like it was great everywhere. Check them out on aussieskier.com/social
Also it’s looking like there could be a little more snow later this week – will Friday be the 6th in a row with fresh snow?
Saturday’s Tracks: http://www.movescount.com/moves/move7333924
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Sunday’s Tracks: http://www.movescount.com/moves/move7354943
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Monday’s Tracks: http://www.movescount.com/moves/move7379112
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