After our late arrival at the caravan, it wasn’t surprising that Hez and I slept in a bit later, not waking up until nearly 9am. With all the covers, extra blankets and doonas, along with wearing several layers of clothes and having turned the heaters on full blast for the whole night, we woke up absolutely roasting!
Today was not particularly good weather wise, in fact Hez’s boyfriend Dylan (who works at the resort making snow) called us to tell us that the conditions weren’t great and that we might not want to ski today, but we decided to give it a go and it was good enough for the likes of me! Hez drove us up to the resort from Jindy, and the drive took us up and up through the Kosiosko National Park. I was quite surprised that there was no snow to be seen as we climbed, but I figured that eventually we would come across some! It turned out that there was indeed snow, but not as much as they’d want at this time of year – for that reason only four of the many slopes were open, whilst Dylan and all his colleagues beavered away making snow to speed up the process and get more of the slopes open, in time for the peak season and school holidays about to start that weekend.
When we arrived at the resort, despite the fact that it was really cloudy, I could see the slopes hiding behind the haze along with lots of little black dots moving slowly down! We parked up, got our stuff together, put our kit on and headed to the ticket office. It seemed busy – the school holidays hadn’t quite started although it looked like there were quite a few children whose parents had made them bunk school to get to the snow a little earlier than the masses.
Once we’d bought our ski lift passes, it was time to get clipped in (Hez onto her snowboard and me onto my skis) then make our way to the lift to head up the Front Valley slope. I was a little worried that the lift only went to one place – the top of the slope; you couldn’t get off part way up, so it meant I would have to go all the way up and come all the way back down again by my own efforts. What was particularly worrying was that I couldn’t see the top. I hadn’t been skiing since 2008 and that had been the first time in decades, so I wasn’t sure I was going to be Eddie the Eagle Edwards – although actually I am not sure if I would want to be!
I was pleasantly surprised by my first run down – despite the low visibility caused by the low cloud and the fact that the slope was teeming with people, on skis and snowboards, hurtling past me. I took my time, went at my own pace and made it the whole way without falling once! At the base of the slope I was very excited and keen to carry on! Hez was really sweet and took the slope at the same pace as me, to make sure that I was comfortable – we did the Front Valley slope several more times as I built up my confidence, tried a few different turns, went a bit faster and generally found my ski legs! I was loving it and even more happy that despite pushing my boundaries, I still hadn’t fallen over!
After a quick coffee and pie break, we hit the Front Valley slope again and then went to a neighbouring slope, Goat’s Gully. This one was far more scary than the Front Valley slope – for starters it was higher which seemed to mean that the visibility was lower (I guess it was higher up in the clouds?!) and the first section of it was much, much steeper. There were several icy patches too, which freaked me out when I hit them (probably because I had an epic crash in Switzerland where I hit an ice patch which sent me flying off the side of the mountain, leaving me tangled up and dangling in the crash net over the ravine below!), but somehow I managed to keep it together and didn’t fall or crash at all, let alone epically! There was also a set of moguls which the snowboarders were enjoying doing tricks on, I just concentrated on getting over them in one piece, which I did. Eventually, I made it to the bottom and took a moment to regain my composure, whilst also feeling pumped with adrenaline!
The adrenaline meant that I agreed to go back up to the top of Goat’s Gully, but this time rather than going the whole way down, we did the first bit (the steep bit with the icy patches) and then took a little diversion off piste to a point at which you could follow a route which led to the top of the Front Valley slope (which I felt much more comfortable with!), then headed down that.
We noticed a change in the temperature and soon realised that the snow falling was no longer solely the snow being made by the massive fan/hose combinations, but instead it was being supplemented by real, actual snow from the sky – good news indeed for skiers! After a few more runs down the Front Valley, each time with me getting progressively faster and more daring, we decided to call it a day, as the visibility was getting worse, as the late afternoon meant that the light was now beginning to fade.
Once back at the car, Hez and I started our way back to Jindy, picking up a hitchhiker in the carpark before we left. Now before anyone reading this begins to panic, there was no danger involved in this – he was one of the instructors at the resort, wearing his uniform, name badge and the like, plus we had seen him teaching a bunch of kids on the slope (often the staff live in Jindy which is a 40 min drive away from the resort, so transport can be a problem if they don’t have a 4x4). We chatted to him on the journey and discovered he was a fellow pommie, from Gillingham.
After we’d dropped him off, the first thing we did back at the caravan was to get warmed back up in the shower (over the course of the day, the outside temperature had varied between minus 6 and 0, so we had gotten quite chilly!), then got wrapped up in warm clothes and headed into the town. We had a mooch around the small selection of shops and found somewhere to have dinner. Our plans to cook at the caravan had been scuppered by the fact that the oven wasn’t working, so instead we had a pizza at one of the few eateries, which turned out to be a fantastic idea as the pizza was great!
We whiled away the rest of the evening back at the caravan with a few drinks, watching tv, chatting and nibbling on the snacks we’d brought with us. We decided that considering the rubbish weather, we’d still had an amazing day and looked forward to what the next would have in store for us!
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