Brindabella Adventure

On Saturday 30 August I went up to the Brindies with a mate to see if we could reach the rapidly diminshing snow that had been teasing us from Canberra since July. As we thought there'd be a fair walk in, we also decided to pack the mountain bikes in to reduce the slog factor.

It turned out that it was only 4km to very solid snow on the road near Mt Ginini, so we threw the bikes into the bushes and got skiing. The old ski run on Mt Ginini had such good snow we decided the extra effort to get to Mt Gingera, our original goal, was not worth it. pics below

Snow on the road, looks good but a bugger to ride on, about 1k from were we changed to skiing

Mt Gingera (from Mt Ginini), ACT's 2nd highest. But the snow had really gone from its NE aspect

Me on theGinini ski run, looking back toward Canberra

heading back tothe Mt Franklin carpark, old ski runs of Mt Franklin visible in the background. Gotta get there in decent snow one day...

10th - 12th of August Report

What a weekend. Saturday night we had 9 people in the house and a pretty good party, except for poor Sid who bailed on monday morning due to the flu. My mardigras skate boots perform excellently and I am now the proud owner of a skating set up, prolly about time since I'm going for my Level 2 nordic certification this year.

Sunday was reported to be a great day, especially in the afternoon. But Monday was amazing, 20cm of fresh, blue sky and 120mm underfoot skis. I borrowed Carls DPS Lotus 120s and they were a revalation, I've been having that a lot with gear of late. Once I started to drive those skis they performed fantastically in the chopped up fresh and smearing is a whole new world. One run at Eyre I would straightline, then smear sideways to scub off speed, getting a face shot, before straightlining again. Marvin fell more in love with with his AK Rockets and Carl did amasingly well on his new touring boots in challenging conditions.

I had too much fun for taking photos.

Sid at Falls

I went off to Falls Ck from 3-8 Aug, staying in a club lodge courtesy of a mate of mine who's a member there. A lot to be said for ski-in ski-out accomodation. I did a couple of days on the hill, enjoying some fresh snow (and crud) and very good groomed runs, some gentle bc just out of the resort area, and a bit of skating to top it off. Snow was deep, dry and held up well all week. A couple of photos from the phone camera below.

Wallaces Hut - a feature on the xc course used for the Hoppet

A nice hill just outside the resort - when riding the lifts on subsequent days it was nice to see our own ski tracks

An attempt at an arty shot on the somewhat foggy bc day