Sunday 2 October 2016

The Hunt for White October

We had the "unusual" weather phenomenon of what can only be called a cyclone arriving from Antarctica this week. I've never seen anything like it. Of course when the entire state of SA ended up with no power, the politicians started blaming renewable energy - go figure!
Whatever, it meant plenty of floods, cold temps, and lots of snow for the alpine regions - right on cue for the closing of resorts. Again, go figure!
Anyway, we had a rather tense drive up the hill on Thursday night. not because it was in any way dangerous but because one of us wanted chains and the other (the driver) didn't. 
After an early morning XC in spectacular conditions, we headed up the hill and had a nice run in soft snow amongst the trees of Blue Ribbon on Friday morning with the kids getting a ride up on daddy rope tow. Daddy rope tow then got the car stuck in snow and really needed chains, which failed and spun a tonne of dirt into the car and required the removing of a wheel to unwrap from the axle. Fun and games. We also had a very nice ski tour en famille to JB and back in intermittent heavy snow and sun. Then a nice meal at home.
Saturday was pretty crummy weather wise so ML did a bit of painting and I did some drawing. JP rang to inform me that the snow up on the hill was awful, so I suggested he drive down and watch the GF, a cracking game with the Doggies ending up triumphant.
Sunday was sunny and we headed off for a lovely tour out towards Loch. The snow was very sticky which meant that we hardly even needed skins. Balti's ski touring rig simply consisted of loosening his boots on his regular skis (he had a small tour with me up Big D after the Granny and is massively in to skinning!). It was Lucie's first proper ski tour with skins and a Dynafit rig and she did really well, and was enthusiastic.
With a good freeze, we could be ski-touring in to November!  




















































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