OnSno.com

Today was our first official day on the slopes, after most of the adventurers decided not to venture out into the wild yesterday on our arrival. The house we were staying in, while nice to be made of timber, certainly had a few disadvantages in that any footsteps upstairs were well and truly well-heard below in the bedrooms. This meant that most of us were awake not too long after 7:30am. I decided to try and stay in bed as long as was physically possible, but by 8:30am decided it was time to stop fighting the noise and embrace the sunshine outside.

A nice day on the slopes

Lifts officially open at 8:30am, and a few keen skiers were out on the slopes not too long after this (of course, this was after forking out plenty of dollars for a lift ticket), but reports back from these people were not overly positive. Excluding the Big D, there were six runs open – one of these being Mother Johnson’s Return (a simple track). Not much to look forward to in anyone’s opinion really. Conditions, however, were reasonable, all things considered, and the nice weather certainly helped to forget some of the other issues that were plaguing the mountain. I was the last to leave the house not long after 10am and joined the others on the slopes. We tried our best to avoid the crowds, but this was relatively difficult considering the three chairlifts operating on the main area of the mountain. In the end, we found ourselves skiing Snake Gully – normally a blue run, but today, it had been reclassified black.

During the course of the morning, Pip managed to be completely collected by an out-of-control skier (perhaps lucky he wasn’t a snowboarder), threw her ski pole as a javelin (towards the man responsible), and exchanged some heated words – but apparently it could have been much worse if he’d been skiing a little faster.

Imagine, looking a little worse for wear

Those who had started earlier stopped for lunch first, while Dave and I skied a few more on the Snake Gully ice – however, we too, soon, gave up and headed back to the village for some lunch. Today we had lunch back in the house; all 10 of us. We still had no dining table (which we had been promised the day before), but the couches were proving to be more than suitable for a midday relax. Emma made the quote of the day during lunch, after Pip let slip a word perhaps not so suitable for young ears, she responded: “I thought you would have used all those words on the skier today!” The warm sun (the thermometer said 8C – yikes!) was enjoyable enough that I didn’t hit the slopes again after lunch – most of the crew did, but it was for a very limited period.

Pip, Emma, Bronte and I ended the day with a coffee at the Chill Bar, Hotham Central, and just after 3pm Nat and Tess arrived from Melbourne. Mike had his first ski lesson in the dying hours of the day, and to the surprise of some, came back fully-functional (including the use of both legs). Not long before he and Sally returned, we received a make-shift dining table – we were half expecting it to come with an allen key. Chairs were an optional extra that were not included…

We ate dinner in tonight – a quality Butter Chicken crafted by Dave – and spent remainder of the night reading books, watching TV or playing card games.

Tomorrow is set to be a similar day to today, particularly warm, ending with a huge amount of rain. All reports seem to say, however, that after the rain has destroyed anything white that might remain on the ground a big dump of snow is expected to come from early Wednesday morning. We’re certainly hoping that this is the case, and even that the rain tomorrow is nothing more than a bad dream – but again, only time will tell here.

Have a look at today’s images here!