Re: Perisher 2012 - Reports/photos/conditions
From the other thread
featherplucker said:
Super slushy out there today, almost everywhere - that is all...
Yes but I had an absolutley wonderful day today, the Salomon Lords come into their own in these conditions.
Not just slushy:Brown
More brown
It rained mud in Canberra on Wednesday night and I wonder if this is the same thing.
That's from Side Salad. It does serve a purpose DWD - a nice spot to get a pic across to the terminal. I like two bits: where it narrows and elbows left, heading far right there is a nice knoll to ride up and then fall away, and then near the end hang a left and there is a nice steep bit just before where te Summit and Terminal load.
I'm glad I decide to go today - I did work work from home most of yesterday while attending to chores, and picking up my skis.
After first giving breakfast to the animals at 4:30 I turfed them out and was away from home at 4:55 sans breakfast myself. Cooma Maccas remdied that with a 10min stop and coffee to go and was through Jindy about 7:05, no congestion at the Barry way roundabout at that time. Stopped at the hitch-hiker spot and gave a lift to a young guy from Breckenridge and we chatted about funny that been there twice the last three years and going back again and about what he did, plus Summit County etc. Got to Bullocks Flat about 7:30. Plenty of time to get boots on, but the ski tube add-on, pit stop etc and was on the 8am tube.
The idea was to work on my
lesons and then finish up with a bit of practice.
Didn't work out like that because taking the tube meant taking a backpack with a lighter top for when it turned warm, sunnies etc so I figured on getting a locker at Perisher to offload stuff only to find no real person to get a key from for a $10 locker like at Blue Cow, just a machine that asked for $11 but warned it did not give change and only having $20s and above I figured on trying my luck.
Front Valley at 8:30 was mighty hard and crowded but I did some warm up drills which kind of did the trick and then got the quad figuring on going to BC to continue there.
what I did notice was the lift configuration mentioned before in the the Freedom Pass thread. By keeping the quad closed till later it causes a lot of congestion on FV and then when people spot the quad going it gets busy over there. Being by myself though the singles queue plus queue side marshall meant no delay.
But after hoping on I looked up and saw folks having to walk up the graded road around to BC so decided to get off at mid station which I did, down Pretty Valley and around to Interceptor. Drills just vanished from my mind as it looked so inviting so I went back down there not understanding why I'd never done it before. It was tops.
Pondering another few runs there I thought no stick with Plan A (modified) so I got the chair back up, across and down Rolller Coaster. That was maybe 9:40am and RC was slushy all the way down. However the lessons have been paying off and I must say I enjoyed it as much as when it has been firm and fast.
Got to the Ridge chair and went straight into the singles queue and riding up thought of DWD's comment a while back so came straight back down Excelerator, figuring the later I leave it the slushier it will be. It was already a tad slushy right at the top but I think I skied it better than any other time and passed most folks. Got to the bottom and the queue had blown out to twice the size it had been 15mins earlier.
I did a Zalis/Terminal loop a couple of times and then did some lessons on Early Starter basically mixing that around until a bit after 1pm, having stopped for a coffee around 10:30, about which I must email Perisher contact us about their inconsistent delivery of the Freedom Pass side benfits, and took a $10 locker to ditch the backpack, helmet and jacket as it was warming up, kept from getting hot by a cool breeze.
At one stage there was someone looping Zalis who obviously liked music to ski to but couldn't afford earphones as he had a small ghetto blaster in his backpack belting out something which, from five chairs ahead, sounded like 80s country pop or something. That drove me back to my drills in quick order.
I mentioned the queue at Ridge, maybe it eased off after lunch as it would have become very slushy down there by then. However the Summit quad was ski straight back on all day. The Teminal quad queue became fairly long for an hour to 12:30 for obvious reasons and for some reason although they had their queue side marshall they folded the single lane and started telling people they should form up pairs which kind of defeated the purpose of having the marshall there in the first place.
A litmus test of the slushiness at BC is the run from the terminal down past the ES cjair and to the quad. That was something but again I enjoyed it, a novel experience for me.
Feeling guilty about turfing the dog out so early at 1pm I figured I better start heading back so went down Pleasant Valley, up there down Copperhead and Pretty Valley which was quite slushy and chopped up but very nice skiing) around to the Telemark T and down FV to be waiting for the the tube at 2pm. I was away from the carpark about 2:40pm and the car said it was 15.5C there, getting home about 5:20pm.
Next Sunday I shall use my 2013 Freedom Pass to give MrsH a free ticket and see about getting back to the 'lessons'.
