Mount Hotham Ski Trip

I went on a ski trip the past weekend with some friends. I have only ever gone on one day ski trips and you don't get to do too much since you only get a few hours on the snow. We left Melbourne on Thursday night and spent a night at a hostel in Bright, a town along the way. We then got up really early and reached Mount Hotham by about 8am.

We stayed at the Lawler's Apartment right near the main village. Here is a photo below.

The apartment is only about a 100 metre walk from our apartment to the main village and ski slopes. You can see on the right hand side of the photo is our apartment.

We could see the main Hotham Central building from our front steps.

At night, the view of the sunset behind the mountain is also very spectacular.

Once we were all settled in at our apartment, we got kitted up in our rental ski gear. Everyone decided to ski, except David R who had his own snowboard and Jo also decided to snow board. Here we are posing in front of Hotham Central, with some other people behind us who also decided to pose for the photo. From left back is Peter, David R and Kin. From front left is Simon, Jo, me and David M.

For the first day, we all decided to take lessons. I had never been on a ski in my life. I had done snow boarding before for one day but wasn't very good at that. I was surprised how quickly I picked up skiing. After the Level 1 lessons, I could stop and do basic turns already. My balance was quite good. After the lesson I did some skiing on my own down half of The Summit slope. Then in the afternoon, I did Level 2 lessons. Again I found it all quite manageable. We took the chair lift up the hill and did lots of S curves down the hill. It was really fun, but tiring as well.

Here's Kin and Simon taking the chair lift up the hill.

Kin also showed his awesome duck technique for going down the hill. My style wasn't much better, but I did take more chances and go down the hill much faster.

After a hectic day of skiing, we went back to our apartment and relaxed a bit. What did we choose to do, play computer games of course. In particular FIFA 2006 and Nintendo Wii Sports. That got really competitive.

Day two was more of the same as day one. Everyone chose to do more lessons. I was confident enough to take Level 3 lessons. I did ok for the most part of it. We went down quite a few Blue Runs, and I did the Sun Run, Gully Catwalk and Mother Johnson's Return ok. It was only Slalom Gully that got me as my legs were getting really tired and I crashed a few times. The snow was really soft though and my 10 or so crashes during the weekend didn't hurt at all.

Here I am standing at The Summit overlooking Feather Top, which David M told me was one of the highest mountains in Victoria. Isn't it just spectacular.

In the second half of Saturday, we went to The Big D slope and did some runs there. Jo tried to board there but got really frustrated that she kept falling there so she took her board and went back to The Summit with Kin and David M.

Peter, Simon and I kept going on the Big D because it had this perfect wide straight run with hardly any people. We went full steam down in a straight line and I can tell you, the feeling is exhilarating. I felt like I was going so fast but probably in reality I wasn't going that fast. We also attempted this half pipe type run down the side. The first attempt I managed to navigated the half pipe, but then crashed at the first bump. However, I was determined to do a good run on it so did it again and made it all the way down without falling. That run was probably the best all weekend since it felt so fast. Here is Peter zooming down the hill.

For the final day of our trip there, we took it fairly easily. Everyone just did runs down The Summit and we had lots of snowball fights. I even managed to juggle three snowballs. Then it was lunch, some more skiing and finally the trip home.

The weekend was so much fun. The accomodation was great and so convenient. It was fully fitted with furniture and utensils etc. The view from it was good. There was lots of snow so we got a lot of good skiing in. The lessons were very helpful and I went from never being on skis to doing Blue Runs in two and a half days. The company was also great. We joked around, talked, played video games, drank some wine and beer and just had fun skiing and enjoying the surroundings. I am definitely hooked to skiing now and can't wait to go again soon.