After picking up our gear (mine was serendipidously labelled Alex H) we took the 8am Skitube (a mountain train) to Perisher Valley. We did a couple of runs on the magic carpet run, then the V8 chair run to warm up for our lesson at Blue Cow (another stop on the Skitube).
The lesson was really fun! We agonised for ages as to which group to go into, and since everyone else was agonising too the instructors decided to merge a dark green / light blue group, then split off after assessing our skills on a couple of runs. We landed in the light blue group, of which Andrew was the best and I was the worst. The instructor focused on getting us into parallel turns, hockey stops, and took us up a couple of blue runs (Side Saddel and Zali's) which was great to get our confidence up. I absolutely shat it on Zalis though, and had to snow plow every turn, but, I didn't die! Andrew did amazingly.
We also used a t-bar for the first time! I cannot believe this is a thing, it's fucked up. The first time was OK, the second time we fell quite comically, and now I think we have the hang of it, but only by swearing the whole way up. What a crazy invention! I don't trust them. They always pretend they're going to push you into a pole before pulling you away at the last minute.
We skied across Perisher and Blue Cow, stopping for a curry lunch at the Blue Cow terminal beer at Perisher terminal.
I was much more well prepared for Day 2.
Day 2 was a beautiful blue bird day and we spent it going across the Perisher, Blue Cow, and Guthega runs. My favourite run was from Perisher, V8 Chair down to the Perisher Quad Express Chair (full way up) via the bottom of Escapade, then down the Blue Cow Express Way and Copperhead Road down to the Telemark T-Bar, then back to the bottom of Perisher. We did that a couple of times, and stopped for lunch at the Sun Deck.
Then, on the Norwegian Trail we saw a wombat! No one warned us there was a possibility of running into a goddamn wombat. It was so cute, I can't imagine what it must have been thinking.
We hung around for night skiing and fireworks at Perisher, and dinner at Jax which was a giant plate of veggies for me (thanks Andrew for asking for more steamed veggies), and a self-cooked steak for Andrew.
When going back to grab our skis, we noticed that someone had grabbed Andrew's instead of theirs (there was an almost identical set near by). The very helpful Kate from Perisher explained that this actually happens a lot, and to just go back to the ski hire place in the morning and let them know what happened. Andrew got a new set in the morning in time for his lesson on Day 3, aka the Blizzard of Doom day.
Andrew had an awesome lesson this morning and was lucky enough to land in a group of 3, basically a private lesson. They did Accelerator and Zali's (two blue runs) at Blue Cow; I'm so impressed since it started snowing quite heavily at around 10:30am, which was midway through his lesson. We decided to make our way to Smiggens Holes in the hopes that it would be a bit more protected from the snow, but it certainly was not. After an awesome lunch at the Smiggens Hotel, we did a few runs (at, we estimate, ~20% visibility being optimistic) before deciding to call it a day since the snow was completely taking over our goggles, and make our way back to Perisher.
We almost perished. It was crazy getting back! Although, there was a family with a small child on a tow rope making the same run back to Perisher as we were so maybe it wasn't as crazy as I thought. But, at one point I literally couldn't see a thing and the wind was blowing a gale down the mountain, who's edge was uncomfortably close to the narrow cat track we were on. The mulled wine at the end was absolutely necessary.
I can't believe tomorrow is already our last day! Hopefully the crazy snow today will make it a perfect day tomorrow. We're planning to ski the whole day, then drive to Canberra. I don't feel sorry for looking forward to staying in the beautiful QT Hotel tomorrow night; The Station is functional, but not the luxury we left at The Hyatt in Melbourne.
I'm so glad I've started being able to do blue runs!
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