Icebergs, blizzards and 80km/h winds

Guthega dam wall and reservoir.

Despite the title's suggestion that I spent a weekend in Antarctica, my journey was actually into the rolling hills mountains of Australia. I would be overjoyed if the Australian National University Mountaineering Club did do regular trips down to Antarctica, but alas I must accept the offered trips to the Snowy Mountains instead. A group of eight skiers set off from Canberra in the early hours of Saturday morning, journeying south for the town of Jindabyne that spreads along the shore of a hydro lake by the same name. There we abducted Peter Luk and made for the mountains before anyone could notice our departure. It isn't far from Jindabyne to the snow and half an hour had us donning ski boots for the trip ahead.

Our entry point into the mountains was Guthega, a back-route into the Perisher ski resort and access point for the winter playgrounds of Twynham and Blue Lake. Quite apart from its convenient proximity to both, the route starting from Guthega also provides an excellent vantage point over the highest reservoir of the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Scheme, which - at 1585m and well above the snow-line - is partially or completely frozen over for the greater part of the winter months. A few days since the water had last frozen over, we were treated to a view of broken ice-flows strewn across the reservoir. One skier, previously an Antarctic tour guide, said it reminded her of piloting zodiacs through the southern ice-sheets. Somehow, we had forgotten to bring boats for our trip into the mountains. Alas, we were forced to travel on foot instead.

Skiers forced to walk beside the Guthega reservoir.

Skiing our way along the reservoir's steeply sloped bank was no easy task. Keeping the same edges of our skis dug into the slope for an extended period might have proved tiring, but instead proved unnecessary. From the first bridge at Blue Cow Creek - which was built in 2010 to replace the flying fox first installed in the early 60s - there wasn't much skiing to be had until we'd passed Illawong Lodge and crossed the swing bridge across the upper Snowy River. Poor cover, soft snow and many ski-snaring bushes kept us carrying our skis and walking most of the way in our heavy plastic boots.

From there we could strap in and turn our skis uphill. There was no particular destination in mind, just somewhere with deep enough snow to dig ourselves a snowcave and some good slopes nearby to go skiing. There certainly weren't any promising drifts near the bridge, nor along the first stretch route. It was difficult enough finding good snow for skiing, let alone digging. The slopes had been scoured of any fresh snow by 90km/h winds the night before, leaving vast sheets of boilerplate ice to which our telemark skis' fish-scaled bases struggled to stick. Progress was slow but we weren't travelling all that far.

Diggers hitting grass.
Photo courtesy of Clare Paynter.

We found ourselves a snowbank in the lee of a copse of snowgums, dropped packs and took up our shovels. We weren't aiming to fit all eight of us inside a snowcave but the bigger the cave, the fewer tents we would need to pitch in the snow. Although our chosen drift was shallow and we hit grass soon after we started digging, it proved deep and wide enough to dig a shelter for four skiers. We dug platforms for a couple of tents, excavated a kitchen and didn't skimp on the wind barriers or guy ropes. The weather forecast said our nice moderate breeze would soon be turning into a full gale* and no one wanted to be outside reinforcing half-collapsed tents during the night.

The wind was already picking up and the temperature dropping as we cooked our meals, stoves melting their way down into the snow. After passing around some Whittaker's Peanut Butter Chocolate, a new-found favourite of mine for any winter trip, we vanished into our tents to wrap ourselves in sleeping bags. I was glad for our extra campsite preparations, lying and listening to the wind roaring through the branches of  the nearby snowgums.

Snow banked around the Hilleberg.

When dawn struck our campsite, its rays fell upon a sight quite unlike the one that sunset had left behind. We didn't measure the depth of new snow, but I had to dig up almost half a metre of fresh snow to reveal my entire tent. Watching the snow building up against the walls overnight, I had almost gone outside before dawn to do some digging. Ultimately though, enough snow was being blown back off it that it was in no danger of collapsing.

With no sign of the snowcave residents emerging from their slumber, I launched my trainer kite.The wind was a bit low for the 2.5m² foil to let me build up any real speed, but my GPS still clocked me at 19km/h across the flat stretch of snow I'd chosen. Normally that would have felt painfully slow but this was my first time snow-kiting on telemarks and I'd intentionally left my larger depower kite at home. Despite my initial misgivings about kiting with my heels loose, the telemarks performed almost identically to my alpine skis. By the time I returned, the skiers back at camp were geared up and donning skis to take advantage of all the fresh snow.

A good slope had been found the previous afternoon, a few hundred metres from camp, but the consensus of those who had skied it had been that it was too icy. Smothered in fresh snow, it was a dream. The "powder" snow of Australia's Snowy Mountains is a far cry from its counterpart found in Canada and Japan, but it still made for beautiful skiing. I tried several attempts at telemark turns, which varied only in the impressiveness of their concluding crashes. With thick padding to fall into, it was a pleasantly pain-free way to experiment with the style, to the point where I started looking forward to crashing. Grown complacent in my alpine resort skiing, it's become increasingly rare for me to crash impressively. Far from undermining my confidence, this succession of - sometimes high-speed - crashes was reminding me that I can crash and live to tell the tale.

A few of the icicles that formed on the windward side of my car.

We couldn't play forever. Soon it was time to pack away our tents and ski our way back to Guthega. The going was easier with a nice new layer of snow paving our way, and we enjoyed a much more pleasant return journey. Alas the fresh snow had played havoc with our cars. Mine, parked in Guthega's bottom carpark, was thoroughly coated in ice but required only minor excavations and some defrosting to get it moving. The trip's other Forester (because what other car would we be using on an ANUMC trip?) had found parking closer to Guthega but had been completely buried in snow. Two people with shovels took more than half an hour to clear away enough snow to get it moving. Despite the good time we'd made skiing the return journey, the sun had well and truly set before we started driving through the snowbound landscape between us and Canberra.

* Wind gusts up to 80km/h were recorded overnight at the nearest weather station, officially a "strong gale" on the Beaufort scale.