Snoblog 2006: Thredbo

Well, I'm back from a week at the snow and I've been nagged to blog it up and post some photos, so here it is.

We left for the snow in the wee hours of Sunday the 16th of July, not 24 hours after I had gotten more than slightly inebriated at my 22nd birthday party. In between those two events I had worked a 3-hour shift and was understandably tired by the time I had arrived at Central for the coach's departure.

I soon met up with my 'crew' (or 'homies' or 'dizzles'... what does that even mean?) for this year, consisting of Jim, Morgan, and Phil (a girl, don't be deceived by the name) from last year's really small but awesome trip, two of Jim and Morgan's friends, Kevin and Alex (or 'Apte', being his last name), and Phil's snowboarding buddy, BD... affectionately known as DD, ED, EB, JJ, or George W. Delays were the order of the day, and it took quite some time to sort out the Sydney Uni people from the Ski Kaos people (our trip). After randomly running into Bradshaw (from uni), who was on his way to Star City, we soon started loading the buses and were on our way south.

Morgan wtfpwns Apte

Due to my very busy couple of days prior to the trip, I managed to get a fair amount of sleep on the bus trip down and woke up for the McBreakfast stop in Cooma. Before too long we hit the slopes on what can only be described as very disappointing conditions. Little did I know that the trip would be filled with many experiences, both good and bad.

Rain and pain

The sight of the snow upon arrival at Thredbo was not a welcome one. The cover was incredibly limited, and almost immediately after we started riding (or skiing, as was the case for Jim and Kev) the rain came. It would have been all dandy had it been a few degrees colder but as it stood, it was above freezing so the precipitation was rain instead of powder. I fear that my curse of bad weather had followed me around once again.

Monday... ok so the picture looks better than it actually was

It wasn't a very pleasant start to the trip and continued on to the next day. In fact, it was raining so much on Monday that a great majority of my so-called 'waterproof' clothing had been completely soaked. The bad luck didn't end there. While at the High Noon intermediate terrain park, Phil failed to get enough speed approaching the funbox and somehow twisted her knee, an injury she was to carry for the next couple of days. Fortunately, she eventually recovered.

Tuesday

On the topic of injuries, a lot of the sounds heard from our section of the bus throughout the week had been groans of pain. BD had bruised his hip (or thereabouts), and I carried on the tradition of leg injuries (Liza also messed up her leg on last year's trip) by spectacularly face planting on the picnic table in the terrain park after hitting the kicker too slow. It was probably similar to this but instead of slamming into the funbox face-forward, the side of the picnic table caught my shin (quite painfully) and I flew smack-bang onto my side, culminating in a face plant. The entire left side of my body was in tremendous pain. The worst part was that there were only about two witnesses. There were other great crashes throughout the week but thankfully, there were no major injuries for the trip, save for a South African girl who somehow snapped some ligaments in her leg. Ouch.

Bored... or artsy?

Our luck with the weather soon turned as the temperature dropped and snow started falling from the heavens.

Off pissed and off-piste

There was a definite party atmosphere in the trip thanks to the great people, especially the two tour guides, Simmo and Chris. I couldn't have asked for better tour guides. Except Bruce. Bruce is the best. Please give me a season pass. ANYWAY... as the liquid from the sky started to turn into snow the liquid falling into our mouths began to turn into sleep deprivation.

Progress shot of our room's beer consumption

We also ordered an insane amount of pizzas throughout the week, and threw up upon mention of the place Bits 'N' Pizzas by the fourth night. That particular night happened to be the Thredbo Invasion - a pub crawl held by the Ski Kaos folk. A lot of pre-drinking had partaken and the coach to Thredbo was very cheery.

Beer goggles

Stacks on!

Everybody had a great time on the crawl, and I spent a great deal of money. Damn kicking cowboys (like a regular cowboy shot but with some glacier ice on top for a nice kick, hence the kicking part). It was worth it though, and I found myself somehow outlasting Jim. We were watching the Tour de France, and I was trying to wake Jim up for an exciting finish to the stage, but alas he had passed out and my violent shoves did no good at all.

The beer commands you!

The next day was a top day of riding. The runs were still limited, but there was a nice constant stream of snow dusting throughout the day, increasing in intensity at about lunchtime, providing some beautiful views (which I was sadly too lazy to take pictures of) and a surreal feeling while going down some runs.

Thursday

The last day of skiing was probably my favourite day on the slopes. We had some excellent breakfast at Eagle's next followed by some excellent off-piste riding. We went to the highest lifted point in Australia and did both the marked and unmarked runs up there, both of which I enjoyed a lot. We then ended up riding some trees on a traverse, which wasn't that great, but I decided to go off by myself towards more trees, eventually leading me to some more off-piste riding. There was some icy bits but there was also some decent powder and, being the first off-piste I had done since 2003, it made me wonder why I had skipped it the previous two years. After having some unbelievably awesome sausages at the bottom of the slopes, the trip was soon over.

Count it... 11 large pizzas

Highlight of the trip? Probably the off-piste riding at the end. However, this one came close...

The sticker says it all

It's a condom machine with a half-torn off sticker that reads "if product proves faulty, insert baby here for refund". Good stuff.

More pictures

The rest of the pictures I took (sans blurry ones, which I discarded) can be found here. Note that it shows them in reverse order because the Photobucket settings are currently set to show the latest uploaded image.

More on Canada

Only a slightly snow-related side-note (and by slightly related I mean very related), I had gotten confirmation during the week of my interview times at the IEP Work & Ski Canada Job Fair. Both of the interviews are on Sunday, the 6th of August. I interview with Fairmont at 10am and with Panorama at 11am. Like the late Big Kev, I'm excited!