Guthega River Powder Harvest

Recent snowfalls, and very cold weather made for nice dry snow last week. My ski buddy Rohan and I planned to head out from Guthega towards Mt Tate to take advantage of the decidedly un-Australian conditions.

We had a good early start and made our way over the Guthega Dam.

Over the wall

Guthega Pondage

Receding waters

Always reminds me of some soviet era secret launching pad

Conditions on the skin tracks were hard and kind of icy. However, as we gained altitude prospecting flicks with the pole off the side of the skin track indicated dry snow, very much a rarity down under. We made good time and I was pretty pumped to get some turns under the belt.

Looking back towards Guthega village and the ski resort

Pumped for a big day

We had planned to spend the day lapping the Tate East Ridge, it was looking pretty good form our location at the Guthega Trig across the valley.

Mt Tate East Ridge

Another entry for the “avalanches do happen in Australia” knowledge base

We dropped in and took some awesome turns down to the Guthega River. The snow quality did not disappoint. After tossing our skis over the river and then feebly crossing, we skinned up the other side of the valley towards Mt Tate.

Guthega River

Skinning up to Mt Tate

Our first run through the trees

The snow conditions deteriorated rapidly once we hit the snowline; manky wind affected crap. We made the call to spend the rest of the day at lower elevations within the trees. After clearing the wind scoured crap we had another awesome run hammering through the trees back to the river.

Some of the turns from our second run, wind affected snow can be seen in background

More of our turns

For the rest of the day it was an all out powder harvest. We did four more laps up to the Guthega Trig ridge line scoring beautiful dry snow on every run.

Top turns

Middle turns

Lower turns

Having one of of my numerous rest breaks
(Thank to Jindy Rip Curl for the hat!)

Rohan, stoked with his turns

Steep skin track

For our last run we dropped down the eastern side of the ridge and skied all the way back to the dam wall, a great way to finish the day.

A big day, 1,380m climbed and around 14km travelled

A quick edit of our fantastic winter day out.