Snow Season

“Beep, Beep, Beep”. Its 5:30am on a Saturday morning, and the alarm has just gone off. There is only one reason someone would set their alarm that early on Saturday morning and that would be a trip to Mt Buller! It was dark, cold and misty and ideal conditions just to stay in bed after a hard weeks work, but as there is no rest for the wicked I jumped in my mates car and headed off for that fluffy white snow. Half way there somewhere around Yea, there was other people fufilling dreams by taking off in hot air balloon just before dawn, it was an awesome site. Forty minutes later we arrived at Mansfield for a second breaky and then headed off to the montain. We as usual arrived as the first lifts open and once at the top were ready for our first run down Burnt Hut. It was a little icy, more than I expected, and controlling my board was a little hard. There was a few things that I could put it down to;

1) First run for the season (the most obvious),

2) Modified bindings, which after getting use to are way better, and

3) It was alot icier than predicted.

After a couple of quick runs down the track we decided to try a few of the runs down the side of Burnt Hut. This is where it was really icy and the run had no mercy. I came off my board and in mid flight thought “ok just relax, there is a pile of snow there to break your fall”. Well that pile of snow was iced over to so it was like a rock! It hurt I got a headache and at this stage didnt realise my shoulder was bring me pain for a whole week. We thought we would try the other side of the mountain and see if that was any better. It was way better with a little powder even, which brought back a little confidence and alot more pleasure. When we stopped for lunch was when i realised that my shoulder was in a bad way, up until this stage my backpack had kept my shoulder strapped in, but once that came off it started to hurt. After lunch we headed back out to the other side of the mountain where we filled in the rest of the afternoon with some wild boarding. By the end of the day I started to feel really exhausted and was glad to be heading back home for a hot bath.