Australian snowchain crisis

I forgot I hadn't written about this. A month or so ago I went for the weekend down to Albury, on the New South Wales / Victoria border to see what Australian snow was like. Albury is about two thirds of the way from Sydney to Melbourne. A long way. I went with my friend Nathan to stay with our friend Skekeeb and his wife Sadiya. My mission was also to show them snow, since neither of them had ever seen it. Ever.

Unfortunately this is what they got.

Turns out that snowboarding in Australia is very much like snowboarding in Scotland. It is an exercise in survival and route finding. I have never been so wet on a mountain before, indeed I have never been on slopes that remained open only until lighting hit one of the lift pylons.

We hired snowchains. Yes! But I wasn't allowed to fit them - the hire guy insisted on doing it. That is my defense, because when I had to take them off myself I got into a complete muddy, oily, frustrated tangle because I hadn't seen how they went on. I eventually declared in a huff that there was nothing for it, we would have to take the wheels off. But I figured it out eventually.

Minus two-hundrend points though. Being generous. But despite the cold and the wet and the dramas, Skekeeb and Sadiya seemed to enjoy themselves. At least now they have a healthy respect for snow.

Comments

[Natalie]

Heh heh heh! I went out and bought hundreds of dollars worth of goretex after my first ski trip to Perisher in NSW...never wanted to be that wet and cold again!