Perisher 22nd June 2010

I had my first ski of the season today and I loved it. Perisher turned on a beautiful morning with plenty of sun and some fresh man made snow to enjoy. (Things must be bad when you're happy about fresh man made! The future of skiing in Australia??)

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, it was nice. It would have been even nicer if I had grabbed both of my poles from the cupboard instead of one of mine and one of my wife's. About 10cm difference in length between each pole made for a slightly odd feeling!

So the snow was nice anywhere where there is a snowgun, and crapola anywhere where there isn't. There truly isn't very much natural snow on the ground at all, as the following photo attests

I greatly approve of the Happy Valley t-bar extension. The old t-bar load was right here

After a few runs down Goats Gully I got sick of the increasingly sticky snow on Yabby Flat and jumped on the Skitube up to Blue Cow. The run down to the bottom of the Terminal and Summit was quite slushy already by the time I got there. Zali's was the complete opposite - rock hard and pretty damn icy.

As you can see, it was really busy. The Ridge chair was turning and I saw a couple of ski patrol guys jump off it so I'm thinking they might be thinking about opening it in the next few days. I have no idea how much snow is on Excelerator, but perhaps they're thinking about lower Rollercoaster for the weekend.

Away from the snowmaking there's a really long way to go. I can't see Guthega being open for a little while

The sun was starting to leave just as I left. Nice and overcast in Jindabyne now.

I also made a little video. Please don't judge the editing - I'm seriously lacking decent software! Given that I published it in HD the quality isn't great either - if anyone has any tips on the best software for editing video and publishing to Youtube without any loss of quality please let me know!

*****Updated better quality video*****



To the forecast, and things are a little bit good, a little bit bad. This morning The Frog predicted 5 to 10cm on Friday and 2 to 5cm on Saturday. Weatherzone predicted <2cm on Friday and 2 to 5cm on Saturday. Beyond that... hmmm.... We really need more of the natural stuff so I hope that The Frog has gotten it right for this weekend.

I don't have a season pass this year and I'm working a fair bit so I don't know when I'll get up there next, unfortunately. It may not be until after the school holidays.... I will tweet whenever I post something new.