Hotham 10 – Day 2 – Washout!

Looking up the valley

Last night brought floods of rain to the mountain, and after a quick check of the conditions, we soon decided that it wasn’t quite as urgent to get up and moving as perhaps had been encouraged in the past. Luckily the morning wasn’t quite as chilli as may have been the case at the Bogong View on previous occasions (it probably helped that it was 10C outside as well!). We didn’t hang around long, however, before picking up the freshly waxed skis and grabbing some breakfast in Bright. Some of the Bright locals advised against heading up the mountain, saying “there’s nothing but grass and rocks up there”, (but what you could do in Bright for a week is beyond me).

The drive up the hill was uneventful, although we did see some scrapings of snow much lower than we expected – however, this seemed to be a bit of an anomaly as most of it disappeared as we went higher. The reports had said the natural snowdepth was back to 12cm – hardly enough to even give the ground a white cover – while the man-made level was reported at 69cm (of course, last measured nearly a week ago…). We were a little depressed with the outlook, and as the accommodation wasn’t ready, we decided to head 10km down the other side of the mountain to Dinner Plain (we would regularly hit the slopes as soon as we arrived, but the conditions/weather were just not that appealing – it was quite a “washout”). Although we would normally avoid Dinner Plain for lack of skiing, excitement, and general things to do, today we had only a few other choices. A quick stop past the only Dinner Plain ski run, then we made our way to Rundells Restaurant for a warm place to sit, relax, eat some lunch and watch the minutes slip by. Luckily for us, it had started snowing a few minutes earlier, and so we ate lunch praying that it would continue all night.

A nice fireplace at Rundells

Probably the most interesting comment from the entire time we spent at Rundells was made by Ed, who stated that the people working there should just “blow up Bright” in response to the locals trying to convince everyone not to go up the mountain. Let’s just say the waiter was a little surprised by that suggestion. After almost convincing a number of people to hand over $1,000 cash for him to check them in to their accommodation (he had offered them “The Penthouse”), we decided that it was time to head back to Hotham – luckily our accommodation was ready on our return. I had spent most of the afternoon searching for any ‘Hotham Snoweoke’ events this week, but had so far failed to find anything of the sort. Shame really.

Michelle, Emma, David and Bronte had decided to brave the conditions and hit the slopes, but the rest of us spent the next hour unloading the cars and settling in to the place we’d call home for the next week. Although it was a little smaller than normal, and missing a few essential items (like a dining table), there weren’t any major issues so we spent the remaining hours of daylight watching the snow fall (off and on) outside.

Some snow falling

Dinner tonight was cooked by Nat who, strangely, was back in South Australia. An impressive effort I’d suggest. The remainder of the evening was spent, between the 10 of us now in the house, checking as many snow predictions as possible to try and work out the plan for the rest of the week. Nobody got any closer to knowing what was going to happen – other than perhaps a large amount of rain on Tuesday, and potentially a big snow dump on Wednesday. The truth to those predictions remains to be seen.

Hope the wild weather has settled down a little back home – but if there’s more rain on the horizon, make sure you send it this way with a few less degrees of warmth!

To see a few more images from today (including one of the Dinner Plain ski run in all its glory), take a look at the gallery here!

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Scott

Web designer, graphic designer, coder, scripter, photographer, musician, performer, entrepreneur (and the list goes on) based in Adelaide, South Australia. Scott loves to experiment with new ideas, and OnSno.com is his creative dumping ground.