Hotham 09 – Day 4 – Powder day

After a late night with Pip, who was not very well at all, I was a little slow getting out of bed this morning. Most other people were up and moving, ready to hit the slopes, before we were even eating breakfast – which was a shame, as there had been another 14cm of fresh snow overnight. The “early risers” enjoyed the first few runs, while the less “early risers” enjoyed the view from the top level of the chalet. Nick still wasn’t fully recovered from an asthma incident the day before, and spent most of the day in bed, but Pip was determined to get out on the slopes at least for a few runs while she was feeling OK. Unfortunately, my gloves were... [Read More]

Hotham 09 – Day 3 – Mountains of snow

We awoke on Day 3 to 20cm of fresh snow blanketing the resort – a nice change to the worsening conditions we had experienced the day before. It was still snowing as we were eating breakfast, but from inside the chalet the weather looked rather pleasant. It was a bit of a slow start for most, with the majority only hitting the slopes around 10am. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t quite as nice outside as it looked from inside, but a bit of complaining later and we were all over our problems. [singlepic id=959 w=320 h=240 float=left] Tess, Ed and John took the side door of the apartment and lived the true “ski-out” lifestyle – although it was probably harder than something like this should have... [Read More]

Hotham 09 – Day 2 – Wild weather, big bad organisations, and some skiing

Note: this is the second time I’ve written this post, so this is the somewhat abridged (and possibly slightly more negative) version. Thanks a lot Apple Mail and Gmail – you guys work great together. Not. Day 2 started at a more reasonable hour – 7:00am wake-up for most of us, although Ed had been up since 4:30am surfing the internet. We all got up relatively quickly, had a nice shower in the ever-cold bathrooms of the motel, and were ready for breakfast at 8am. Not before Ed had waved (although nobody noticed this) to the passing bus carrying Nat, Tess and Astrid which would beat us up the mountain by 3 hours – after leaving a good 14 hours later than we did. [singlepic... [Read More]

Hotham 09 – Day 1 – To the snowfields!

Day 1 of the 2009 OnSno.com Australian Ski Adventure started as early as normal; 4:30am was the prescribed meeting time, at the usual (but very secret) starting location. While for once, Ed, Pip, John and I were on time, the remainder of the crew was not. Kim and Max arrived at 4:39am, literally seconds before Ed’s finger was to dial their number to question their whereabouts. At this point, we hadn’t seen or heard anything from Nick – but did blame his lateness on Astrid’s ability to never be early. A quick phone call later, and we soon discovered that both Nick and his volunteer driver Jock had taken Ed’s advice a little too literally about the location of the meeting point, and had actually... [Read More]