Trip Report Untele-whippet and telecrag wander about first week of August

[telecrag]

@Untele-whippet has further to drive, so I will go first, with my version of events, and photos from a GoPoo, as my camera is 2.5kg and just no.

After a night of fire and conversation last Sunday night, thanks to @dawooduck, we left a van and drove up to Guthega Powerstation, and commenced to hike. I was resplendent in new boot liners, yay! That didn't hurt at all! After about a day, we got to the Horse camp turnoff

After about another day, it was skis on, finally!

Whites is copping a hammering of visitors, we skied past

Onwards and past the Hilton

And onto our camp for the night

A bit of weather came in overnight, and we woke to a weather day.

I begged, perhaps even screamed, and convinced @Untele-whippet to bunker down in a hut, so we headed out into the abyss, searching out snowbridges, and the whiteness of the pass, some really hard and technical skiing up the top.

After a night drying kit etc, we awoke to another day of whiteness

Vis was shit, but the snow was great, we went out and had some turns here and there

Snacktime!

Thursday was the day

We went and poked about, the snow had turned a bit, but we found a few turns

I jumped off little lips

Time to hit the FrognToad

More bridges, route finding was, ah, different to usual

Past Mawsons

Time to head upwards again

Then down to the Hilton again, and on up to the pass

We attained the pass, at which point I mentioned that I hate skiing in the rain, so maybe we should push on by headlamp and get the fk out. We decided, as mature adults, to ask the internet to decide for us, thus absolving us of any need to make a decision. @Snow Blowey offered some sage advice which we followed. And so my day today started like this

 

[telecrag]

A tad bleak

Boots on!

The ski down to Whites was actually nice

But there were technical sections after

 

[Boodwah]

Awesome, thanks, jelly.

 

[DJM]

Cool trip lads!
Route finding sucks the big one in thin cover hey.....

 

[Angus_McCrory]

Very tricky conditions. You did well

 

[GS]

V nice, enjoy while you can.

 

[dawooduck]

Awesome walking about madness and some lovely skiing far from this crazy 2020 world.

See ya'all again for some fire side laughs.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

Good stuff.

 

[Majikthise]

That loop can be a fun enough navigational exercise in good weather! Great trip.

 

[skifree]

Awesome Crag report.

Do we need an Unreport?


Yes we do

 

[Chaeron]

Does my Dark Victorian heart a power of good to see this titanic struggle!

 

[Zimbooo]

Doooofus question..................why so much distance between tents? One of two have bad farts?
Greatly enjoyed your report. Thanks for sharing.

 

[telecrag]

Backcountry Cuisine!

 

[Untele-whippet]

Awesome crag report.

Do we need an Unreport?


Yes we do

Tired.
7 hours of driving rain / raining drive.
Tomoz.

 

[telecrag]

Love your work mate, like I said on FB, first trip like this for me in 15 years, very grateful, and looking forward to the pics, I know you got some good ones! I have had a heat pack and whiskey already.

 

[chokenchickin]

Great trip and pics.

 

[Townsend]

Great report! You did well in some very average conditions

 

[Untele-whippet]

The Unreport Part 1
I was enrolled in the Rossignol Ski Camp at Thredbo this week to improve my untele technique and then next month be skiing with @climberman in Mt Cook NP but along came Covid and erased those plans.
So what to do and stay away from potentially virus ridden resorts.
Having already booked time off from work I asked the equally virusphobic @telecrag if he’d like to accompany me on a week long antisocial circumnavigation of Jagungal, hopefully camping out and avoiding plague ridden huts.
And thus the plan was hatched, all we needed was abundant snow and a good weather window!

@dawooduck kindly invited us to stay in our vans in his paddock, so we could get an early start on Monday.
The weather for the week looked interesting and what abundance of snow there had been was severely rain depleted the previous week.
We ground up and up the road from Munyang and put skis on after about 2 hours of walking.
My fairly new Tecnica Zero Tour Pro’s walked almost as good as normal walking boots.....amazeballs!
We met a group of 3 coming out from Mawsons who gave us the goss on conditions and that there were 12 people socialising at Mawsons!
We continued up into the Kerries, bypassing Schlink Hilton and set up a sheltered camp near the very open creek.
I sent our camp location to +1 on the Garmin InReach and she sent the updated BOM and Weatherzone forecast
The predicted storm arrived overnight and we woke up to gale force winds, driven snow and little viz.
We’d already modified our route, knowing there was no skiable snow north of Jagungal and we were confident no one would be at Tin Hut, so we opted to ski over Gungarten Pass in a gale force blizzard ing whiteout navigating by the InReach GPS.
We found the barely formed cornice in the white room with about 1 metre to spare but that didn’t stop me catching an edge while sideslipping down with a full pack and performing a lovely downwards somersault.
Anyhoo, we skied by Braille and GPS to an empty hut.

Rime man on Gungarten Pass

Drying out the tents in Tin Hut laundromat.
The weather remained fairly brutal for 36 hours and unappealing for travel so we ate, chopped firewood and chatted.
The snow quality was fantastic but the viz crap when we briefly ventured out.

Wifey messaged via the InReach Thursday’s forecast which looked like a pearler, so we set the alarm for 6, planning on hitting some lines before setting off.

The alpenglow on The Kerries was magical and the skiing with views to Jagungal were fantastic even though the snow quality wasn’t as dry as Wednesday, but we could see!

 

[Untele-whippet]

Part 2

My fav pic with @telecrag doing his thing a million miles from Covid with Jagungal in the background.
We had decided to cut short our 7 day to 5, knowing that the weather was going to weird out on Friday with potential rain or heavy wet snow, so we were headed to camp on Schlink Pass for a straight forward bailout the next morning via Mawsons Hut and the Kerries.

As we approached Mawsons I couldn’t believe the lack of snow, the northern slopes were shrubfests and the upper Valentines was raging with no snowbridges at all.
I’ve never seen it so bad in 40 years of touring in this area in August!
Very depressing.
Anyhoo, we had fun and interesting route finding and it was a cracker of a day, even hot!

We had lunch at Covid central Mawsons, avoiding it like the literal plague and then followed a really good set of tram tracks up towards the Kerries.

But who knows where they were going but certainly not where we were going, so having got suckered in for a lazy option we rerouted.

It was a really lovely ski down the valley of the Kerries with superb views to the MR but with depressingly low levels of snow.
Once on the Munyang road we headed up to Schlink Pass were we considered whether we should ski / walk out in the dark to avoid a potential morning rain sufferevent with the impending easterly system about to unload.
We had reception on the Pass for the first time since setting out so TC suggested we consult the weather gurus on the forum about the incoming weather system before making a decision whether to camp or run as it was getting late and we’d been on the go with packs for 6.5 hours already.
Thanks to @POW_hungry and others for some info, we camped before escaping in the morning after some early morning snow then foggy mizzle.

On the way down we met 2 large 8-10 groups of snowshoers heading up to stay in huts.
WTF, so much for social distancing in s pandemic!

A great escape from an abnormal world with a great mate.
I found the Tectons were really great on my Karhu Guides as I could transition between walk and ski mode easily without taking my skis off, which is fantastic in rolling terrain with a pack on and for yo yoing. Recommend!
Am really feeling for the VIC’s this year.

 

[DJM]

Awesome trip and lovely report! Great travel companions make it all the sweeter. See you on the flipside.

 

[CarveMan]

My fav pic with @telecrag doing his thing a million miles from Covid with Jagungal in the background.

Shot of the winter for me!

 

[Untele-whippet]

Awesome trip and lovely report! Great travel companions make it all the sweeter. See you on the flipside.

Have a great trip bro.

 

[GS]

Fantastic pics and great yarn.

seems the snow has caught the COVID bug and is socially distancing itself this year

 

[crackson]

In hindsight, do you think a mtb approach would have enhanced or detracted from the fun of that trip?

 

[telecrag]

Not enough riding in it I reckon, and would have been sketchy on the out. I have done it without the skiing, and its a good ride, you can go through to Geehi. I have used the bike for approach to ski the Brindies a few times, last was 2008 (last time I have skied the Brindies) hope to do it again.

 

[ecowain]

Beautiful!

 

[Mister Tee on XC Skis]

A great trip, superb photos and a distinct paucity of snow.

 

[hipo]

How to earn and live a dream

 

[telecrag]

Few more, have to make the most of it this season hey, might be my only go.

Come on dude, lets hit the pillows!

That morning

@Untele-whippet has one of me looking like a snowboarder too, it was a bit crusty (no offence to snowboarders, but you do throw your arms out!)

Eating out

 

[telecrag]

Boardercrag

 

[GS]

Boardercrag

We have lift off...

 

[Interruptedbyfireworks]

Boardercrag

I see you’re bringing along your mates there. Classic rookie snowboarder mistake