Amid some massive electrical storms late Christmas Eve we left Munyang Power Station and arrived at Whites River Hut just as the rain began to fall. The inside of the hut was burnt out in Winter 2010 and the new hut is really comfortable and a more than welcome place to bed down for the night.

Late the following morning we headed up Disappointment Ridge, past Gungartan Trig and down the ridge to Tin Hut in perfect walking weather. We had beautiful views of the Kerrie Range and looking further to the north we could see Lake Eucumbene. We were impressed to see a great view of the Watson’s Creek area on the main range and spent a lot of time discussing future winter ski trips. While there is no better way to spend Christmas day than roaming about in the hills we also took the opportunity to test out the Memory Map HOLUX funtrek GPS. After trying a few different GPSs we were really pleased with this little unit. As the topo maps are preloaded it couldn’t be easier to use and we could pin point our exact location which we were easily able to transfer to our physical map.

Before leaving we also marked a series of way points, we easily made route changes along the way and the GPS recorded our exact path for the trip which we will be able to down load onto our PC. Battery life is about a day, we turned the unit on and off on our first afternoon and then left it on for the second day, by the end of the day (about 6pm) the battery was running out of life. This is certainly our pick for anyone looking for a GPS that offers a lot of detail and is easy to use. Look out for our more extensive review of this fantastic mapping GPS soon.

Just wanted to share our experience with the Madshus Annum and Epoch skis. They really are our choice of ski for the backcountry in Australia. The Annum is single camber (like a downhill telemark ski) with a great climbing pattern on the base. You can climb just about anything and they are so easy to turn.

The Madshus Epoch is the sister ski to the Annum and is the perfect touring ski the Australia’s backcountry. It has a soft double camber and is a little narrower in the shovel (ski tip) which makes it the go-to ski for touring. Provided you pick the right height for your weight, you get plenty of glide on the flats and they turn well on the downhills.

Try them out, we have both in hire and for sale and we are happy to work with you to find the ski that suits. Don’t miss this spring skiing on these skis!
John.

One of our favourite things to do is to introduce our customers to the pleasures of ski touring. We’ve been taking lots of people out lately with the beautiful weather we have had in the past few weeks. It doesn’t matter if you have never skied before, or if you come from a downhill skiing background, it is easy to get away from it all on cross country skis.

We are loving the new Madshus skis that are making it so easy for people to take their first steps in coss country. Look out for a video soon featuring these skis.

The spring skiing season has just begun and there is plenty of snow on the mountains for touring, so give us a call.
John.

Back again with our latest Backcountry Report for 16 August 2011. Haven’t been able to update the report as regularly as we wanted to, but this week we headed up to Schlink Pass from the Munyang Power Station to see how the condition are.

Despite the rain and warm conditions over the past couple of weeks we were really pleasently surprised to find good snow above 1700m. Schlink Pass is just over 1800m and as you’ll see from the video the snow was looking good. Above this height we had reports of great cover on the Rolling Grounds and beyond.

Things look set up for a long spring, and we’ll do our best to keep you posted. Please comment below if you’ve something to share, we’d love to hear your recent experiences. John.