2017-2018 Southern/Northern Hemi Snow Season
Great read & epic photos Craig & co. Spectacular scenery. Good mission :-)
x2 Rabs.
Good stuff Craig, you're quite the adventurer.
Craig , I've never been snowboarding so I didn't understand a lot of your story , but I got the gist of the whole camping on top of a remote mountain deal.
Pretty much looks like the coolest thing you could possibly do.
Stoked for you and a bit jealous to be honest.
Photos were amazing.
Thanks guys.
Like you said Blowin, even without the snowboarding, the hike and camp up top in the Snowy Mountains is just mind blowing. Nothing like it, and to have no one else around, just you and the raw nature of it all feels quite primitive.
Two more images thanks to Hugh who we ran into ontop the ridge.
Have a close look at the second image, way down in the valley near that gully you can see me starting to head back up, with my two mates further up in the bowl. Gives you a great idea of the scale of things out there.
Craig, how long did it take to get back to the top to drop in again?
Mad pics though- cool.
Not too long, up there probably 45m-1 hour. We ran into trouble getting out on the skin track on a run bottom left with it icing up. Could hardly get an edge in and had to boot pack out. Sorting crampons for that exact scenario.
Well, since my last posts, we've seen two massive dumps of snow and the boarding's been epic.
Last Saturday was the deepest lightest powder I've had in Australia, doing mini-golf laps through the trees, sublime..
Looks like hell fun.
What's a mini golf lap ?
Ah, like mini tours, 45mins up and around before dropping. Instead of the big 3.5 hour hike out to the real good stuff.
Nice!
That carve is a great shot. Bet it felt even better.
After a fun but not epic resort day Thursday at Thredbo, four of my mates headed out towards Mt Twynam very early Friday morning while I smashed out work in Jindy.
The plan was for me to head out mid-afternoon and find two of my mates in the Twynam saddle region while the other two headed back to chase swell Saturday.
I set out solo about 2pm, ran into my two mates just before the Illawong crossing and after a quick chat continued up towards Twynam with fading light. I've done the traverse a few times, but solo there was some slight urgency to get to the top before light faded. I gave myself 4 hours which was plenty of time.
I got to the top in 3 and saw the last 5 minutes of sun, casting it's deep pink shadow across the Main Range before slipping away to the west. I made my way towards the saddle and found my mates tent positioned in the most breathtaking place, on top the world with hardly a breath of wind.
We cooked up dinner and spun yarns as the stars lit up the nights sky.
The nights sleep was super cosy and not at any stage did I feel the cold even with the -6 temps outside.
My mates had bagged a few lines the day before and we took out time to get moving Saturday thinking that the sun needed to soften a little of the snow.
Little did we know that the freshening NW'ly was blowing pow into some beautiful stashes inside the ridge-line and bowls just around from Tenison Woods Knoll, and our first run was into beautiful ankle to shin deep pow.
The skin out was hell as the cold temps kept the slushy skin track from the day before icy and near impossible to keep an edge in. The bootpack was the only way out.
Up top we ran into a few other guys, Dave being one of them and we lapped a similar aspect a little further around the corniced ridge-line. From here we skinned back up towards the corniced ridge thinking we could get an easy way back up to the top, but it got too steep and a bit sketchy right near the top, so one more run was taken from an exposed position, back down into the bowl before skinning up the ridge and back to the tent, onwards home.
One rookie error was taking wrecked skins out which I stored incorrectly after Alaska. They worked fine but left glue on the base of my board which got progressively worse with each run, affecting the boards performance severely. The run from Twynam back to Illawong was hardly doable with the board not sliding on any gradual slope at all. It took at least an hour just to make that simple down-hill route home. One thing to learn for next time!
Here's some shots from our trip, mostly by me, but the last two are taken by Tristan Fitzherbert Smith.
Yours truly..
