Surely, any day tripper will say a good breakfast and first tracks is too much to ask for!
There’s no better way to enjoy the snow than staying in on-mountain accommodation. It means a 7am wake-up allows you to be first on the mountain after a leisurely breakfast and the only traffic to contend with is the enthusiastic skiers at the bottom of the first lifts to open.
First light on the mountain
We stay at Kahane Lodge in Perisher, which is a Southern Alps Ski Club lodge. It’s a beautiful lodge full of warm and friendly people. The resident managers cook delicious breakfasts and dinners and the views from the windows are beautiful.
View from our room at Kahane
Kahane lodge sits opposite the Lawson, Blaxland and Wentworth T-Bars, and (with the amount of snow we’ve had this year) they’re just a short ski over the creek away.
Skis on at the lodge, with the t-bars a short ski away
Ultimate reason to stay on snow: easy first tracks
Of course, it’s a bonus if there’s perfect weather and a day on the mountain when you don’t have to drive home in the afternoon lets you ski a little bit harder.
Beautiful blue morning
View of theFreedom Chair at Guthega
David ready to take on Olympic
Mum and I on the top of Sun Valley T-bar, loving the view
Enjoying the (short) road home
My favourite times on the mountain are early morning and late afternoon – beautiful light and no lines. I like to chase the lifts as they open and run from them as they close.
Sun going down after a great last run on Mount P.
Once the sun drops over the back of the mountain, the lifts close and temperature drops, it’s time for Après-ski a.k.a schnapps (butterscotch and apple from the Wild Brumby Distillery).
The mountain beat me, but it was a good fightGlass of schnapps on the balcony after a huge day on the mountain
The best part of staying on snow? Getting to do it again the very next day!
Snow gums make the Australian ski fields unique. Their rainbow trunks, waxy leaves and twisting limbs colour our slopes with an unmistakable character.
The branches and leaves bend under the weight of new snow, and glisten under ice.
As the sun comes out, these lively trees spring into the air, appreciative of the warmth.
Even in freezing weather, I will stop to admire the beauty of a snow gum on the mountain, and more than once have brought my bare hand out of its glove to capture a beautiful tree on camera.
The snow is the best day trip from Canberra. We have made it 10 weeks in a row and have got it down to an art.
The day starts at 4:30am when Mark and I wake up to I just can’t wait to be king from the Lion King (trust me, it’s a great way to start the day in a good mood, I couldn’t stand waking up to a buzzing alarm).
We throw on our ski gear, make a coffee (frothed milk and all – I love our Aldi coffee machine) and take our gear down to the car.
I have my car fitted out with far more gear than I had at the start of the season and it makes the drive a lot easier (and safer). Ski racks on the roof give us plenty of room in the Rav4 and driving lights brighten the dark morning drive.
Light starts to break through the horizon about 1.5 hours into the drive at Cooma, and it’s beautiful.
Very heavy, but beautiful fog, on the Monaro Highway
I love the landscape at Cooma – it looks like a Fred Williams painting. The trees could be inky squiggles and the rocks ink blots.
Light breaking at Cooma
Once the light is up over the beautiful landscape it doesn’t take long (pending any powder-day traffic) to get to the ski tube. We jump on that, and just before 8:30am, we’re on the snow. Everything going well, we can get from bed in Canberra to skis-on in Perisher in 4 hours.
This Saturday was supposed to have bad weather (rain/snow) come over during the day, so every moment of sunshine felt stolen. We got the absolute most out of every fair-weather run.
We started marking the perfect corduroy in Centre Valley. Since we’ve been skiing every weekend, my legs don’t hurt/get tired anymore, so I gave myself the challenge of making my muscles ache for Sunday. We headed over to Mount Perisher as soon as it opened and had some amazing runs. It’s so much easier to ski aggressively when you can see the snow in front of you (not the terrible visibility of last Sunday which made me feel like an
uncoordinated baby deer trying to stand up). With the confidence of sight, I surprised myself with how fast I was skiing and how good my turns felt.
My tracks on were the first down The Cleft off Leichardt on Saturday morningMy tracks are up there on Sun Valley
As soon as Olympic opened at 10am we were on the T-bar. When did they start grooming the side of Olympic? I don’t know who made this decision, but I want to give them a giant hug and buy them some chocolate. You’ve heard my enthusiasm for long, steep runs (i.e. Parachute, which is now unfortunately closed), and now I have another run to pine for all week. I don’t know what this run is called, and I don’t care. It’s seriously beautiful.
Excitement building on the Olympic T-bar
No time for a break, we headed over to North Perisher and then Blue Cow to make the most of the mountain. I love the runs off the Ridge Chair, but equally I love riding it and watching the mogul skiers. If doing the moguls isn’t impressive enough, they do flips! Check out this video.
At the top of the chair the beautiful views fill in for the entertainment, and then long, scenic, leg-burning runs take me down to the bottom.
Great shadow at the top of Outer Limits at Blue CowGreat view at the top of Outer Limits at Blue Cow
Being human and all, Mark and I took a break for lunch. We met up with some friends and I suggested we eat at Guthega Pub. I had talked up the food and the view, but when ee went there at 1:30pm, the staff said the weren’t taking any more lunch orders. We didn’t want to miss out on the great view, so ordered some German beer and mulled wine instead. The liquid lunch filled the belly, and as usual, good company can make up for almost anything!
They wouldn’t serve us any food, but the drinks, company and view were good
We skied until we got kicked off the mountain and jumped on the tube home. I met my challenge – my legs were sore. The long, dark drive home was broken up by a delicious dinner at Bredbo Woodfired Pizza. The pizzas were delicious, and being the first solid food we’d eaten since breakfast, they were demolished. We were home by 8:30pm and crashed on the bed. We get a lot out of our 16 hour day trips to the snow.
Driving lights come in handy on the long road home to Canberra.
Perisher offers night skiing on Tuesday and Saturday nights, and the few opportunities I have had to do it, it has been bad weather or I have been exhausted.
Last Saturday when I stayed on snow at Perisher, I had started skiing at 9am and had the last run on Mount P at 4:20pm. Needless to say, I was exhausted, but it had been such a great day that I didn’t want to stop. I left my smelly ski clothes on at the lodge and at 5:50pm I clicked my skis back on and sailed down to front valley.
I usually avoid Front Valley for the inherent danger of skiing through a swarm of beginners. I can avoid hitting them, but they make no promises not to hit me. Devoid of people and freshly groomed, front valley is actually a pretty fun slope.
I was first in line for the Village Eight Express when it opened at 6pm and made fresh tracks on my section of the corduroy mountain. I never realised how soft groomed snow could be before it has a chance to get crunchy in the early morning.
All in all, night skiing is great and I will certainly do it again next time the opportunity arises. It’s worth clicking the skis back on.
Perisher said that the new Freedom Chair would unlock Guthega. I’m not sure if it’s the Freedom Chair, or the dumps of snow we’ve had these season, but Guthega looks better than ever in my eyes.
Top of the Freedom Chair
It is home to my new favourite run: Parachute. Many people say Perisher lacks good, long runs. For the most part, I agree. Perisher has great variety and heaps of space, but the ratio between time spent waiting for and on a lift and time skiing downhill is, unfortunately, weighted toward the lifts. When there is plenty of snow, Guthega tips the ratio back toward time spent zooming downhill.
View from the top of Parachute at Guthega
Parachute can be accessed by taking the Carpark Double Chair and then the Blue Cow T-bar. The Freedom Chair also takes you to the top for your first run down.
Squiggly snow gums at the top of Parachute
It’s long, it’s steep, it’s lined with trees and the view is amazing. Groomed, this run is liked heaven; ungroomed, it’s a challenge; not heaps of snow, it’s closed.
View from on the way down Parachute at Guthega
There needs to be a lot of snow for Parachute to be all it can be. If it is opened and covered, I will fly down with a smile on my face and eyes darting between my line down the mountain and the breath-taking view of the Main Range. If there is not enough snow and Parachute is closed, there are still good, long runs on offer. Woodpecker and Wombat’s come off the Blue Cow T-bar as well and are great for making some nice carve turns.
Another reason I am enjoying Guthega is the food. Guthega Alpine Inn has the price tag of on-mountain prices (i.e. it’s hard to eat lunch for less than $30/person), but at least you are paying through the nose for good atmosphere, great food and a spectacular view.
Delicious lunch with a breathtaking view at Guthega InnView of the dam from Guthega Inn
I am reluctant to write this blog, because part of the reason I love Guthega is that it is away from the crowds. Though I hardly think traffic driven to Guthega via my blog will be measurable, the real reason I keep making the traverse over to Guthega is that skiing there I am constantly aware that I am in the Snowy Mountains. It doesn’t feel much like being at a ski resort, but feels like being in nature – which is high up there in the many reasons I love the snow.
I’ve had my own boots for a long time (which are the most important piece of gear to own, in my opinion). I hadn’t bought my own skis for two main reasons: they are tricky to transport and the technology advances every year. As we would be skiing regularly this year, it made sense to buy skis to avoid the cost and time of hiring them every week.
I searched long and hard for the perfect ski for me, visiting stores and reading countless reviews. I first had to decide what type of skier I am. Am I an all-mountain or on-piste skier? Do I like a hard or soft ski? Do I want to go in the park? Do I attack the mountain, or want a ski that turns for me? Will I be mostly skiing on powder, slush or ice?
As usual, I wanted to be in the middle ground. I would describe myself as a skier who wants to ski everywhere on the mountain, who wants to attack the black runs and cruise down the blue ones. I like to explore in the trees and fly over jumps in the park. If there’s powder, I’ll be the first to make tracks on it, but realistically I’ll mostly be skiing on ice and slush.
I hit the web hard, finding On the Snow‘s YouTube reviews to be particularly useful. In my research I was surprised at a few things. I was particularly surprised at how wide skis have become underfoot. I thought 90mm underfoot was a powder ski, but this was placed across all categories. I also learnt about tip and tail rocker, which borrows technology from water sports to offer superior float in the soft snow and increased ease of turn initiation with less chance of catching an edge.
However, there is only so much you can learn about a ski from a shop or the internet. You need to get it on the snow and make some turns.
The first weekend we headed to the snow, I went via Jindabyne Sports and saw they had a beautiful new pair of last year’s Volkl Kenja skis on sale. I hired Kenjas for the day and got them on the snow. Although there wasn’t much to ski on, any opportunity I had to get a good turn in, the Kenjas never let me down. They really held onto a turn, flew over any jump, floated on the slush, glided over ice, and just felt great!
I was going to demo a range of skis – but when I found the one, I knew!
My 163cm Volkl Kenja skis have an 18.2m turning radius, and measure 127 – 87 – 106. They are a much wider ski than I have skied on before, but they feel anything but bulky.
Also, they are so light! The marker bindings barely add any weight and mean I am not too burdened for the dreaded trek to the car in the afternoon.
The moment I decided that Volkl Kenja were the skis for meMy new Kenjas in plenty of snow
My first winter in Canberra has been characterised by one wonderful thing: snow. No it doesn’t snow in Canberra (well actually two weeks ago I did excitedly watch through the window at work as snow flakes fell and melted on the ground, but that’s not a common occurrence).
It does snow a lot just two and a half hours away in the oh-so-beautiful Snowy Mountains.
I’ll go back a little. I am a very keen skier. My parents had the generosity to put me on skis at the tender age of two and I would have kept the skis on since then if the obstacles of distance, money and time didn’t keep them off for most of the year.
When Mark (lovely fiancé and snowboarder) and I decided we were moving to Canberra, we thought it would be the perfect opportunity to get down to the snow as much as possible. We learnt of the value-for-money Perisher Freedom Pass and forked out the cash to get one each. It was about $750, and so if we skied seven days in the season, the pass would be worth it.
Well we’re nine weeks in to this fantastic season and we’ve skied 12 days. We haven’t missed a weekend and are perfecting the day trip from Canberra.
There is much to say about this season and our participation in it and I intend to top up this blog with posts like fresh flakes on a patchy cover.
In a nutshell: the season initially looked grim. In June, an article in The Conversation had me seriously worried that there would be no snow, which was upsetting because 1. I wanted to go skiing, 2. Mark and I had wasted $1500 between us and 3. Global warming is a serious problem! We went up anyway and dodged rocks and grass on the small amount of the mountain (namely, front valley) that was open.
View from the quad chair on 14 June
On the mountain we heard a buzz that at big storm was coming, and it did. Monday brought “snowpocalypse“, which I wanted excitedly via social media. Although problem 3 (global warming) is still a huge issue, problems 1 and 2 were abolished my the mountains of snow. When we arrived at Perisher the next weekend, the mountain had been transformed.
Meseemeese 