GOals for 2010 Aussie ski season

I usually set myself some goals I'd like to acheive each season, be it improve my ability to hold an edge and carve, or preferably get better in cruddy or powder snow (not that we get much of it in Oz).

So this season in Oz:

• Do more slackcountry skiing
• Paralyser
• Mt Wheatly
• Signature hill
• Ramsheads
• Let go of the fear of going too fast in soft snow (powder) and thinking I won't be able to turn or stop if I go too fast.
• Get up the hill earlier so I don't just get tracked out nice snow, first tracks more often!

Laugh away people at the last one, but it is possible, I used to get up and be there at 7.30am to have breaky at Brunelli's and be in the queue ages before the lift opened.

Time Warp

So many years later and many ski seasons later (6 for Blue Cow and 1 in Jindabyne many years later) I find myself a weekend warrior, paying for lift tickets, even splurging and buying a season pass courtesy of my KRudd money this season (Thanks Kev!).

The obsession continues with random purchases of tuning gear, a jacket here and there, new pants, ice breakers in multiple styles or colours to top up the kit.  It's an expensive sport, but it's not too hard to even out the costs a little, which we try to do with some backcountry skiing thrown in, day trips to slackcountry as we call it.  These are areas just out side the lifted area of the resort and don't require overnight stays in tents to acheive some nice runs.

Reinforcement of the obsession

After that first season working at the snow I had made new friends and gained a lot of life skills, it was after all my first time living out of home. Changing from a family of 5 environment to a 3 bedroom unit with 6 strangers is a unique experience and one I am forever grateful I had.

Not just because of the adventures we all had, friends made or lost, the variety of people I lived with or the new things I was exposed to, it was an adventure and I was doing it myself and supporting myself. I saved $1200 the first season and I thought I was a millionaire, it was the first time I'd had that amount of money in my bank account and I was a little scared about what to do with it. Some said "just buy a ticket overseas and worry about everything else later" the everything else was where to stay, what to do where to work etc.

I wasn't too sure about that, doing something without knowing the exit strategy wasn't my thing back then, so after speaking with my Aunt in brissy she got me an interview for Great Keppel Island. So I got the job and headed up on the bus, airfares were too expensive back then, and when I got there was blown away. The Island was exactly what I had expected and I was doing something new, but safe.

I joined the house keeping team as a house maid and proceeded to learn how to clean rooms professionally. Ahhhhh the joys of cleaning rooms, it had it's ups and surprises (lots and lots of tips) and downs (festy feral guests who left anything and everything anywhere and expected it would be cleaned for them). here's a tip - if you leave used condoms or tampons out house keeping will not clean them up, nor should you expect them to dirty people!

I don't have any photo's in electronic form of this period, only memories to tell, but there are too many to put into words for now.

Birth of a snow obsession

How did I become totally and utterly obsessed with snow? It's more than a passion, it's like I've got an obsessive compulsive disorder that compels me to love everything about snow and want to be involved in all things snow. One of my friends has me in her phone as Suse snow although that could also reflect her love of the snow.....

I should start at the beginning, my first glimpse of snow I don't remember as I w

as roughly 2, still in nappies and it was summer! My parents took my 2 older sisters and myself on a christmas farm stay holiday in berridale NSW in 1974, back in the

day you could drive to the base of Mt Kosciusko and walk up some stairs to the summit. I use the term summit loosely as it's more a small hill on top of other hills, so not quite as majestic as other 'Mountains'.

I digress....

So my first glimpse of snow was at the highest point on the Australian mainland and from what I am told I tried everything to wriggle out of mum's arms to get down onto the patches of snow still present. My sisters both made snow balls and played in the snow, but i wasn't allowed to, so unfair.

Eighteen years passed before my next encounter with snow, I had finished high school and deferred my uni course when I saw an ad in the Sydney Morning Herald for cashiers at Mt Blue Cow. I'm not sure why I applied or what I thought i was really doing, but I applied and got the job and started in the last week of May in 1991.

On my first day of work in the bistro the view was inhibited by fog, on the 2nd day there was a blizzard in full swing. I spent quite a bit of time nose pressed against one of the windows mesmerised by the falling flakes swirling around being buffeted by the wind, it was magical.

From that moment I was hooked, 100% hooked.