It’s the time of the year when those interested in winter sports get excited about the snow in the mountains. Of course, in the time of Covid, no one really knew what kind of a ski season it would be, given that the outbreaks in Victoria and the closure of borders with NSW had severely limited the possibility of just packing up and driving over for a few days. Although there the weather had been very mild, there was snow on the peaks and the TV had shown clips of people flying down the slopes, so I thought, there’d be a reasonable chance of getting a couple of days skiing in this year.
Whilst trying to book accommodation and lift passes online, I saw that there was something of a booking lottery, and only a limited time to book your passes. Getting up very early one morning I got onto the site one minute after the sale of the passes came online. Predictably the site crashed before I could even finalise my transaction. I called the helpline and then came the soul destroying recorded messages of “if you want to book lift passes, press one” that took you round and round to “all of our operators are busy” thanked you for supporting them and then cut you off. Whilst on hold and abstractly daydreaming about burning the resort down, I actually managed to get back online but discovered that I had to buy a pass for a minimum of three days, rather than the two I had planned on. Grrrrrr but never mind… I shelled out the extra money and I had the confirmation number printed out, the mountain access pass booked and our accommodation paid for.
It’s become a bit of a ‘thing’ for Jerry Minor (AKA #2 son) and I to head up for a couple of days each winter and as I haven’t been flying all over the place for work for the past few (try 6) months, this was going to be an ideal opportunity. We were both pretty excited and I started to get the car ready and loaded in the gear that I packed a few days in advance. Not so #2 son, who was glued to his computer screen and for the last few days, had only been coming out of his room for food. I dropped a few hints that he might like to try on his ski gear and see if there was anything that needed to be repaired or replaced but of course, that fell on deaf ears and there was absolutely no packing done in advance. I eventually dumped everything that I thought would conceivably fit him, just outside his door so that he’d have to do something with it or trip over it. Of course, all he did was just step over it on his way to the fridge.
The mid week morning of our departure came around and I made a point of waking him at a reasonable hour so that he had time to have some breakfast and pack, as I loaded the car. This won’t come as a revelation to anyone reading this who has teenagers; but I had formulated a cunning plan and had given him a cut off time that was actually one hour earlier than I intended to leave the house at, just so as I didn’t get stressed out chasing him around the house and out the door. We managed to leave about 30 minutes before my actual planned departure and that was after a torturous five minutes of asking “have you packed X and Y”? and him answering yes……, in a bored but slightly offended monotone.
My several cups of tea with breakfast necessitated a comfort stop about 40 minutes from home and just as I got out of the car, Mrs Jerry called and pointed out that we seemed to have forgotten the Epinephrine pen, did we have the spare? we didn’t of course, even though I had placed it next to his wash bag in the bathroom and I should point out that this is no small omission as #2 son has anaphylaxis – a severe allergic reaction to certain foods; in his case, Crustaceans. Breathing deeply but saying little, I turned the car around and headed for home.
We sat in silence on the way home until he plugged his phone into the car stereo and selected a podcast for us to listen to. He chose something apparently made by a group of young stoners, who discussed their experiences with ‘edibles’ and smoking ‘cones’ I have no violent objections about how people get their kicks but a couple of the guys seemed to have done rather too much of whatever they preferred and talked absolute shite, with the annoying valley speak word ‘like’ appearing every few seconds. #2 son announced his intention to have the sides of his lovely dirty blonde shoulder length hair shaved into a mullet for the end of the year rowing competition and some tattoos done on his arms and chest when he left school. I am sure he was just pushing my buttons, but I knowing that the more I expressed my displeasure, the more determined he’d be; tongue in cheek, I observed that I really admired Mike Tyson’s tribal face tattoo and that perhaps he might like to consider that as well? He was quiet for a moment and and I idly considered slipping a prawn into his lunch, just for fun now that I had his Epi pen, but I kept that thought to myself.
We stopped in the foothills of the mountains at the small town of Bright and had a very pleasant socially distanced lunch before picking up our hire skis and snow chains. If you have never been there, Bright is a lovely town that acts as the smart face of rural life meeting tourism. It has obviously suffered badly from the Corona virus shutdown as the town was uncharacteristically quiet and many of the shops were closed. The side benefit of that for us of course being that there was no queue at the ski hire shop. This was unusual, as it’s normally a 20 to 30 minute wait where I end up buying lots of things I don’t really need. Kind of like the $300 screwdriver from the hardware shop. This time, we escaped with a relatively light bag of swag; a new hat and thermal underwear for Jerry minor, who by that time had turned back from obnoxious teenager into a normal decent human being.
The drive up the mountain started after a polite ‘Covid’ check at the bottom of the incline where four men in high vis jackets waited to check that we’d booked into the resort in advance and decide if we looked ‘a bit peaky’ or not. We passed their examination and carried on up the mountain past the lush new growth that has thankfully followed on from the dreadful fires that tore through Victoria mid last year and through to this year. One thing we didn’t see was snow and that was obviously pretty important to us. I was also surprised not to see more cars on the road but in keeping with the lack of tourists in Bright, I thought that the enforced ‘thinning’ of the crowds was probably working.
Eventually we did see snow on the tops of the mountains and all of a sudden, our spirits, but not the clouds, lifted.
Things quickly brightened and it really was enough to be out in each others company and we began to chat about friends, work, school and life after it. We had both been looking forward to going up there all year and we were finally almost on top of the mountains. The temperature was dropping as the metres of elevation rose and by the time we drove through the short tunnel into the resort, it was two degrees above freezing and lo’ and behold, the snow lay round about, even if it wasn’t quite “deep and crisp and even”.
We checked in at the resort office and discovered that Melbourne was being ‘locked down’ to try and stop the spread of the virus and the managers confided that they didn’t know exactly what the ‘knock on’ effects of that would be and they weren’t sure if they would be able to keep the resort open through to the following week. Somewhat chastened, we drove down to our accomodation just as the sun set.
As we climbed the steel stairs, I could hear music and noted a curious but not entirely unfamiliar herbal scent in the air. #2 son looked at me and raised his eyebrows and I was about to ask him how he knew what it smelt like, but then realised that kids today (I have just realised how old that reads…) are fully conversant with most diversions, even if it is just hopefully at an academic level. It turned out that we were staying next door to a shared apartment for the resort staff and they were clearly living the high life, with overflowing ashtrays and several empty beer cartons piled up in their porch.
Having worked in the NSW snowfields some 30 years ago, I was reminded that nothing really changes. As we started to unpack, the herbal smoke drifted through the open door and I wondered if we’d get too cold leaving the downwind windows open. The loud thumping rap music hit me like a punch in the face however and I muttered aloud that I might have to ‘have a word’ with our neighbours. #2 sons grief stricken face told me that this probably wouldn’t be the best thing for his street cred, so I suggested that he join them for a beer and drop the lie that I was a Cop into the conversation.
By the time I got back from parking the car, the music was off, the rubbish had gone from the entry way and the staff had disappeared inside. I was reminded that experience and cunning beats youthful vigor every time…
Dawn on the mountain.
The next morning I fried up a massively (un)healthy breakfast and checked over the gear while #2 son slowly, oh soooo slowly, got ready. I asked him to do one thing for me that day and that was to fill the esky up with snow to ensure that the beer was cold by the time we got back that evening. I thought that with luck, he might just remember and do it. Minutes after leaving the apartment, the resort snow bus stopped just outside the accomodation and we clambered on board. The runs were literally only 300 metres up the road, so we were first in the lift queue for the 08:30 start. The clouds were low on top of the mountain and visibility wasn’t great, but it was hovering around zero degrees and you couldn’t have had a better first run of the day.
Snow cover was good on the Summit run and freshly groomed. Historically, I’m not a bad skier and have taught in both the service and at a civilian resort here in Australia, but of course, that was over 30 years ago and I am not nearly as young, confident or flexible as I once was. Not surprisingly, I also heal a lot slower. #2 has progressed steadily to a competent grade two skier who can descend most green and blue runs quickly and in control and it was obvious that it wouldn’t be long before I was chasing him down the slopes. We were very keen to get going and we excitedly skied quickly off the lift and on to the very top of the mountain.
It was a case of ski top to bottom, jump on the lift and rinse and repeat until lunchtime. One of the many things I have noticed as I have got older is that I get tired and lose my concentration more easily. This is obviously not optimal when you are hurtling down a steep run at the very edge of control and all of a sudden “ooooohhhh look, there’s a squirrel…” and BANG!, I was face down on the edge of the run in a tangle of ski’s, blinking snow out of my eyes and removing a ski pole from my backside.
Luckily, I was back on my feet in an instant, just before #2 arrived. He obviously noticed me dusting myself off and asked if I was ok? Of course I was, I explained, but that a couple of those ‘bloody out of control ski embryo’s with their arses 6″ from the snow cut me up‘ and in order to avoid cleaning them up, I claimed that I’d taken the heroic choice of the snow bank. #2 nodded sagely, not believing a word of it and obviously recognising that his old man was a ‘bit weary’, he suggested lunch and I nodded gratefully.
We chose the ‘Swindlers’ restaurant, which is just at the top of the main run and I was again pleasantly surprised by the lack of people around. Staff were allowing just 20 people in the restaurant at one time and whilst lathering myself in hand sanitiser I spoke to one of the resort engineers who was picking up his take out pizza, who said he’d be surprised if they were open by the end of the week and that it was a good job we were here now. After a very average plate of fried chicken wings coated with Garamssala and a watery cheese sauce (WTF?), we lumbered back out onto the slopes.
More like it. But the snow was getting a little slushy
For the next two hours we hurtled down the runs, dodged ski embryo’s, got cut up by snowboarders and generally had a fantastic time. I found myself slip into the elusive skiing ‘groove’ and put in some reasonable parallel turns before the 16 year old #2 got tired (Ha!) and he disappeared back to the room to have a lie down. I still had a little energy left and so I thought that I might try a couple of different and more challenging runs before I gave it away for the day.
Alas, I was about to manifest the the hubris brought on by a clear day, a relative lack of joint pain and a stunningly clear run.
I bobbed down and then rose up to take the weight off my skis in order to execute a very stylish parallel turn and for a nano second, glanced up to see the chairlift above me and before I knew it, that f***ing squirrel appeared again and I found myself in the pose of the spinning starfish and I slammed into the snow head first just as a chair of laughing teenage swines passed overhead.
Our next run saw us both about to exit the chair lift and as we’d done on previous runs, I would call out right or left, depending on the best exit route with the fewest people standing in the way and fiddling with their skis. On previous runs, we’d gone to the right, but this time, for some reason, it was fenced off. #2 immediately skied off across my front to the left and I hesitated slightly so as not to trip him up, but instead found myself stuck on the chair and about to turn the corner and head back down the mountain. I had a quick call to make, stay on the chair lift, or jump off quickly. My skis were around 2mts from the snow when I pushed myself off the chair and into the air. I had planned a graceful swoop back onto the slope but instead I landed like a bag of spuds, but with slightly less grace. I heard the clang of the lift bell as it stopped and the lift attendant ran over to see if I had survived the fall. Red faced and puffing, I clambered to my feet after the attendant had untangled my skis and helped send me on my way, to join my doubled over, giggling teenage son.
I made it back to the apartment without further mishap and omitting further mention of my humiliation, I professed satisfaction with how relatively well the day had gone. I then reached for the esky and what was I hoped, a perfectly chilled beer. Wonderously, # 2 had filled it with snow and before I knew it, I had washed down some Nurofen with a couple of very cold beers and fallen asleep. I woke up a couple of hours later feeling like I had been worked over with a baseball bat and debated whether I should just roll over and go back to sleep. However, I struggled into a hot shower and emerged feeling much better and ready for dinner.
Food in the snowfields is generally a bit cafeteria like and certainly can be hit and miss, but down at the General store, or ‘Genny’ as its known, which is at the lower end of the resort, we were so hungry that spaghetti on toast would have been fine, as long as there was enough of it. I don’t even remember what I did have, but we both had a couple of very decent local beers and chatted about the day. #2 then rose up to find the ketchup and on his way back he quite unselfconsciously bent down, ruffled my hair and kissed me on the top of my head. There may or may not have been tears of pride in my eyes as the bar was filling up, but the lump in my throat was definitely there. I say filling up, but as far as it could fill up with the strict social distancing in place and so we got to a top of about fifteen people and table service was pretty fast. It may have had something to do with the fact that the two very nice pierced and dreadlocked barmaids were also our neighbours back at the accommodation…
Before we knew it, we’d finished dinner and had caught the bus back to the apartment. Someone’s stereo next door was rapping loudly with more profanity than I’d heard since I picked myself up out of the snotty heap earlier, but they must have seen us coming home as they very quickly turned the music down and closing the window, sadly closed in the heavenly scent.
Due to budget constraints, we had rented a smaller apartment than we normally did and there was only one bed so I had thoughtfully taken an inflatable camping mattress with a built in pump for #2 to sleep on (well, I wasn’t going to sleep on it!), but of course, it failed in the middle of the night and he’d ended up folded like a pretzel on the small sofa at the foot of my bed. He didn’t seem too perturbed and after I had fed him and cajoled him back up to the lifts, he saw how good the weather was looking. It was an incredibly clear day and we were the first to ski down the main run on the newly groomed snow. #2 son was skiing really well and I followed him practicing his turns and just enjoying the morning. I thought how lucky I was to have this time with him and what a fantastic young man he was becoming.
Later on that day, after Jerry minor had again declared exhaustion, I got geared up in my very dated cross country ski gear and hopped on the bus to the start of the Brabralung trail. It begins at the bottom end of the village and runs for 12 km over to the small settlement at Dinner Plain, where we have stayed in previous years. The first part of the trail was seductively easy going and I found myself thinking of the trails I had taken through the silver birch forests in Norway and I remembered the swishing sound of my skis across the snow and the squeak of the ski pole going into the clean unmarked landscape. Of course, I didn’t have my house and an armoury on my back this time and after about three kms, I was in my stride and all was well with the world. I reached a long downhill slope and let my arms dangle loosely by my side and with mind in neutral, the bloody squirrel appeared again and I ran onto a strip of gravel road crossing the track and BANG, there I was, once again, in a tangle of ski poles.
The peaceful, but treacherous, cross country trail
As I struggled to my feet, I could hear the crack of small calibre rounds in the distance. To me, there was only one thing that could be – a biathlon range. I had very keenly competed in biathlons when I was younger and immediately stepped up the pace to what I kidded myself was my ‘average’ 20km cadence back then and sped (a relative term) along the well worn circuit track that had seen many people before me. When you’re competing in biathlons and you come up behind someone with the intention of passing them, it is sportsmanlike to call out “track” or the Norwegian equivalent “løype” which is a polite request for them to step aside. All I heard from behind me was a ‘GET OUT OF THE WAY’ as several little shits tore past me like I was standing still and raced each other around the circular track before heading off and onto the biathlon range.
As I was temporarily engrossed in track rage, I became slightly geographically embarrassed and mislaid the actual Dinner Plain trail. Scouting around, I noticed that the trail turned back on itself and went under the road. The sun was in my eyes, but I could see that there was snow in the tunnel so I started on the short downhill to dip under the great alpine road, mentally congratulating myself on past biathlon glories and only discovering at the last moment that the ‘snow’ in the tunnel was in fact, a white rubber mat. Without having the time to wonder why the hell someone would lay a white rubber mat down, I discovered that it had the braking effect of a brick wall and I went head over heels eventually hitting the mat with my elbow. I know, because this was not my first spectacular fall on and off skis, that I had probably torn something in my shoulder.
Heading down into Dinner Plain and putting a brave face on my pain, I noticed a surge of x country skiers heading my way. They appeared to be all on my side of the trail (the left) and I was forced to move over to their side (the right). Once again, I had the sun in my eyes and didn’t notice that this part of the trail was in fact yet more gravel. This was to be one of those slow motion crashes, where you can see exactly what is going to happen before it happens and I even had time to notice that there was a videographer recording the groups efforts and that I was about to literally crash into the shot. I had a split second to to choose an alternative path, one that led into the snow gums and the very uneven clumped snow barely covering fallen branches and roots. I left the track with such speed and did what I imagined was ‘falling with style’ No one seemed to notice and when I disappeared into an impressive snow drift, I lay still until they had all passed.
It was at this time that I resolved that when I got to Dinner Plain, I was going to go straight to the Onsen, the upmarket Japanese style spa, have a long relaxing soak and then adjourn to the licensed cafe, just off the car park to sink what I hoped would be the first of several analgesic beers. I limped the final 200mts to the spa carrying my skis and was stunned to see a sign that the Spa was closed due to Covid-19. I wandered over to the cafe that I knew had a good range of local beer and a decent menu and was surprised not to see smoke coming out of the chimney. Sure enough, it was also closed until 7pm that evening. Oh, the horror, the horror…
Mentally recounting all of the really bad things that I had clearly done in my life and working out if they equaled the previous two hours of the day, I knew there was a warming hut nearby, where I could at least wait for the bus back to the resort without slipping into hypothermia. On the way to it, I saw the bus turning into the car park, but I was too tired to to throw myself onto the road in front of it to force it to stop. I limped over and the bus driver kindly recognised I was hoping to make it back to the bus stop in time and get a lift. She opened up her window and said hello. I managed to stammer out my intentions and she asked if I had a bus pass. Apparently since my last visit there, things had changed with regards to transportation. The bus to Dinner Plain was no longer operated by the resort and you now needed a preloaded card , which of course, I did not have. As the edges on my skis were too blunt to open up my jugular and put me out of my misery, I was forced to throw myself on the drivers mercy and ask her what to do.
It transpired that I had to go to the local ski hire store, buy the card for $10, then go across the road to the accomodation rental office and activate the card. Of course, they couldn’t do it, it had to be done online. As I struggled through the process, I knew that there wouldn’t be enough beer in that esky back at the apartment to deal with the day and I’d probably need to raid our neighbours stash as a stop gap.
But back at the apartment after a hot shower and a couple of cold beers and some deep breathing outside the neighbours windows, I once again felt able to face the world. The resort was eerily quiet that night with only a few people in the restaurants but we managed to find a halfway decent dinner and discussed the trip. It had been a really good, if rather short trip. The snow hadn’t been great, but it had been good enough to get some good runs in – in between me wiping out regularly and I had managed to get a lengthy ski cross country, through some beautiful country.
We thought we’d pack that night and I would get up early and bring the car back from its remote parking place and load it up before the first run of the day. We’d only have enough time for a couple of runs before we had to leave and drive home, but there was enough of an opportunity to make it worthwhile.
In the morning, we dressed hurredly and noticed that our neighbours the resort staff, appeared to have cleared out over night. We drove to the top car park, just near the lifts and got out to put our boots on. Another car with a father and three kids did the same next to us, but it started to dawn upon me once that we were almost ready that we were the only two vehicles in the car park. A lone staff member wandered over and told us that as the borders were still closed, the decision had been made to shut down the resort for the season. Apparently, texts had been sent out late the previous evening, but neither we nor the family next to us had received them. There was nothing to do but shrug, get back into the car and have some breakfast in Bright before heading home…
Until next year then!