Snowie Meli
30-09-2009, 01:52 PM
I have not had a chance to jump on snowatch since that AWESOME killer of a weekend. Ok let me start by saying I'm SO glad I was there it was by far (in my view) the best weekend of the entire season!
We (me+1) have PB season passes, but decided for $66 a day and everything blanketed in white we would kick off our Sunday at Thredbo. (after all we well and truly used our PB season pass with over 35 days of skiing this season!)
I don’t need to go into how good it felt to be doing nice long leg burning runs again! (Compared to PB) Cannonball/Bluff were sensational, words could not describe smile.gif I didn’t mind cutting in very low and having to walk out it was SO good!
Anyway back to the real story, we were on Anton's and decided to Traverse over to Waimea, decided it would be a great run with all the powder we were having. HOWEVER, the visibility was poor, winds were blowing a gale and the fact we had not been at Thredbo for a year probably didn’t help the situation. With the wind blowing us UP the hill and in the direction of the high traverse, we somehow managed to get a lot higher than expected and completely missed waimea, we ended up in Stanleys, which is a very far skiers left of Mertis. (on a good day you can see it from the chairlift)
We found ourselves on a very narrow ridge which was VERY VERY STEEP, I'm not kidding when I say this thing was bloody steep. The river was gushing below us and very soft snow just crumbling away under us. At this point we rang someone who is VERY familiar with thredbo (I might add, gale force winds, no visability and heavy blizzard - I was feeling a bit uneasy at this point). He informed us it was a very very long walk out if we skied down - and perhaps quite dangerous to ski without properly accessing the area first. Anyway we decided it was best to hike up this very steep ridge and make our way back to the resort boundary if possible.
When we took our ski's off we realised the snow at this point was more than waist deep, it took a lot of strength to get out of that rut and just "float" on the snow a bit. It was so steep we used our ski's as a wedge point in the snow to hoick ourselves up the hill. It took about 30-40 mins to get up the ridge (thankfully we had not gone too far down), but finally we made it. I got quite scared at one point because the snow under my foot vanished and I was left clutching onto my skis hoping not to slide down!
Anyway not too long after that we walked up and across toward where the resort should be, and I saw the cruiser chairlift - Can't tell you how relieved I was!
We never once jumped a rope or went passed a closed sign, but because we went so high off the track we missed all that!
[ 30. September 2009, 01:19 PM: Message edited by: Snowie Meli ]
We (me+1) have PB season passes, but decided for $66 a day and everything blanketed in white we would kick off our Sunday at Thredbo. (after all we well and truly used our PB season pass with over 35 days of skiing this season!)
I don’t need to go into how good it felt to be doing nice long leg burning runs again! (Compared to PB) Cannonball/Bluff were sensational, words could not describe smile.gif I didn’t mind cutting in very low and having to walk out it was SO good!
Anyway back to the real story, we were on Anton's and decided to Traverse over to Waimea, decided it would be a great run with all the powder we were having. HOWEVER, the visibility was poor, winds were blowing a gale and the fact we had not been at Thredbo for a year probably didn’t help the situation. With the wind blowing us UP the hill and in the direction of the high traverse, we somehow managed to get a lot higher than expected and completely missed waimea, we ended up in Stanleys, which is a very far skiers left of Mertis. (on a good day you can see it from the chairlift)
We found ourselves on a very narrow ridge which was VERY VERY STEEP, I'm not kidding when I say this thing was bloody steep. The river was gushing below us and very soft snow just crumbling away under us. At this point we rang someone who is VERY familiar with thredbo (I might add, gale force winds, no visability and heavy blizzard - I was feeling a bit uneasy at this point). He informed us it was a very very long walk out if we skied down - and perhaps quite dangerous to ski without properly accessing the area first. Anyway we decided it was best to hike up this very steep ridge and make our way back to the resort boundary if possible.
When we took our ski's off we realised the snow at this point was more than waist deep, it took a lot of strength to get out of that rut and just "float" on the snow a bit. It was so steep we used our ski's as a wedge point in the snow to hoick ourselves up the hill. It took about 30-40 mins to get up the ridge (thankfully we had not gone too far down), but finally we made it. I got quite scared at one point because the snow under my foot vanished and I was left clutching onto my skis hoping not to slide down!
Anyway not too long after that we walked up and across toward where the resort should be, and I saw the cruiser chairlift - Can't tell you how relieved I was!
We never once jumped a rope or went passed a closed sign, but because we went so high off the track we missed all that!
[ 30. September 2009, 01:19 PM: Message edited by: Snowie Meli ]