So I know its been a while, but better late than never they tell me... Last weekend we got a hold of Hotham (Google Earth link for the exact spots) with a decent amount of snow, a nice change, but with some damm windy weather. Not to worry, we ditched the whole lift ticket thing as we always do, and headed into the SlackCountry as its known. You can see some of the exact spots we hit using that link above, but its nothing special as I forgot to turn it on sometimes, but you'll get the gist.

Sal, Aidan, Em and myself all headed around the corner, and hit up a bowl we love. It was a little icy in the exposed spots so we had to get into the trees to find some lines. After a few runs around there, we ventured further into the trees to slowly traverse back around the far side of the hill to get back to our lodge, making some runs as we went. Deeper into the trees, we found that the wind had scoured all the fresh snow off the top and we were getting into large and larger sheets of ice, and it was getting more precarious as we went. Sal and Em were starting to struggle to lock in the edge required to traverse, and it was all getting a bit terrifying for them, with a damn long slide down into trees below certain to do them a very serious injury. With Sal taking the first slide, and Em following suit, it was all getting a bit shit. Em slipped down into a tree, and decided it was all over, so I unclipped in a safe place and kicked steps to retrieve her board and get us all in one place so we could hike up the same boot pack. On my way back to my board, I missed a step and took a slide myself. Unable to make any impression in the ice, I was a passenger and there was only one tree that would stop me take a 150m slide into certain serious injury. Sadly that tree was far enough to allow me to get a bloody good clip, and the impact was taken by my hip and ribs as I was flat on my belly. Em's board continued on, with my goggles, and I was in a shit state... My leg followed that board down the hill whilst my body stopped, and I count myself lucky to have a full set of intact ribs, but it was just one of those things... Maybe a risk, maybe bad luck, certainly bad management. Lesson learnt.


Em and Sal edging into the top section of trees.

Aidan playing photog.

The Google Earth link...

After a hard ass day, it took a bit to keep me awake...



A skidoo thats in need of attention....

Tasty and oh so close!


After an hour of cutting steps, getting near the top. May not look steep at first glance, but Em is just about climbing a ladder at the back there...

Sal lining up to get the hell out of here!

Once I pulled myself back together and untangled myself, Aidan skied down to find the board and goggles (thankfully wedged hard into a tree) and then had the dubious honour of hiking back out to us. From there, the snowboard boots had little effect on the ice, and ski boots didn't kick a big enough hole, so the shovel came out, and we cut steps for a long time...!

But we made it back, had a laugh, popped a few pharmaceuticals to make my leg work for a while, had a beer and a laugh, and lined up for the next day! Which was a good deal nicer than the sheet ice of the day before! Hitting up behind the lodges, were people obviously think its too much hard work to walk 50m for deserted fresh snow, we had the place to ourselves and tracked it out. Moving onto Cherokee's, we found a huge open bowl, again to ourselves and completed our weekend in style!







So it was a killer weekend, and some good tracks were had. During the week, we also got the Red Baron roadworthy, and it was sold too, so its smiles all round- Scuba Steve now takes pole position in the driveway, and its happy days!